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Combines Bird Study, Botany, Insect Life, Reptile Study, Stalking, & Zoology

Requirements January 1952 until June 1972

1. After personal investigation, select for study one typical wildlife community, approved by your counselor (forest, field, marsh, pond, desert, mountain top, ocean shore, etc.) near hour home, or your favorite camp site. Take at least two hikes within that area and do the following:

(a) Submit a list of the most commonly found plants (trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses, etc.) and animals (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, mollusks). (b) Report on kinds of soils and most commonly found rocks. (c) Describe springs, streams, lakes and other waters found.

2. From reading or talks with your counselor tell how temperature, wind, rainfall, altitude, geology, tide, wild or domestic animals or man help make the selected area what it is. Tell what is meant by the term "plant succession." From reading or talks with your counselor, tell briefly what successions have occurred in the selected area in the last hundred years and what would probably happen in the next hundred years and what would probably happen in the next hundred years if the area is undisturbed by man.

3. Do all of the requirements in two of the following fields:

Birds

(a) Identify in the field twenty species of birds. (b) Recognize ten species of birds by calls or songs, or determine their presence by nests or other signs. (c) Make and set out three birdhouses or two feeding stations and tell what birds used them; or photograph nests of four species of birds.

Mammals

(a) Identify in the field six species of wild mammals. (b) Recognize in the field the signs of six species of wild mammals. (c) Make plaster casts of the tracks of three wild mammals; or photograph two species of wild mammals.

Reptiles or Amphibians

(a) Recognize the poisonous snakes in your area and identify in the field six species of reptiles or amphibians (snakes, turtles, lizards, frogs, toads, salamanders). (b) Recognize three species of toads or frogs by their voices; or identify three reptiles or amphibians by their eggs, dens, burrows, or other signs. (c) Raise tadpoles from the eggs of some amphibian, or raise adults from tadpoles; or keep an adult reptile or amphibian under conditions that keep it healthy for one month.

Insects or Spiders

(a) Catch and Identify thirty species. (b) Collect and mount thirty species. (c) Raise an insect from the pupa or cocoon or raise adults from nymphs or keep larvae until they form pupae or cocoons; or keep a colony of ants or bees through one season.

Fish

(a) Catch and identify four species of fish. (b) Collect four kinds of natural animal food eaten by fish; or make an artificial lure and catch a fish with it. (c) Develop a simple aquarium containing fish and plant life and keep it successfully balanced for one month.

Mollusks and Crustaceans

(a) Identify five species of mollusks and crustaceans (clams, mussels, snails--shrimp, crabs, crayfish). (b) Mount at least six shells. (c) Make an aquarium and keep in it two species of mollusks or crustaceans under such conditions that they stay healthy for a month.

Plants

(a) Identify in the field fifteen species of wild plants (trees, shrubs, ferns, grasses, mosses, etc.). (b) Collect and label correctly seeds of six plants; or collect, mount, and label leaves of twelve plants. (c) Build a terrarium of at least three species of plants and keep it successfully for one month.

Soils and Rocks

(a) Collect and identify soils found in three soil profiles; or ten rocks representative of the area. (b) Find at least six species of animals that live in soil. (c) Grow seeds for one month in two kinds of soil and describe difference in rate of growth.

4. Select one species of plant, mammal, bird, fish, reptile or amphibian and, from personal observation and reading, write a simple life history (how and where and when it originated; how it grows; what it eats; what eats it; migratory habits if any; how and where it spends the winter; its natural home, etc.).

The following are the requirements for the Nature merit badge for