Wisconsin School of the Air; Wonderful world of nature; 1; Welcome to The Wonderful world of nature

The wonderful world of nature. I was guns in school of the air series conducted by Robert S. Heller Samina professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Today's title Welcome to the wonderful world of nature. Now here's Professor Ellison. Hello boys and girls and welcome to the wonderful world of nature. We'll be meeting each week at this time during the coming school year and we'll be learning about nature and our environment. But one hour a week is hardly enough so that I hope that you think about the programs during the remainder of the week and that you will always be alert and learning. I think that we're studying a subject that can be great fun. Nature is always changing and there's so much variety that there is something to interest everyone. Let's talk about some of the programs that are coming up. We'll have 10 bird programs during the year starting next week with a

program about our woodland grouse. One program will be about black birds. There are many kinds of black birds in Wisconsin and I think that you may be surprised to learn that some of them aren't even black. Canada geese will be flying through our skies quite soon. And one of the programs will deal with these big wild birds in the spring. We'll welcome back our songbirds with some programs about them. These programs will deal with the way the birds live what they eat and how to attract some of them. You'll hear their songs and I hope learn to identify them. Wisconsin's mammals are the subject for another group of programs. You'll be learning about otters weasels and about the smallest of our native mammals. Do you know which mammal is the smallest of our native mammals. Did I hear

someone say a shrew. Well you're right. Shrews are much smaller than mice. And we'll be talking about them later this year. Now we aren't going to neglect the animals that live in our lakes and streams either. And we'll have two programs on different kinds of fish that live in our state's waters during the year. There will be a number of programs about native plants and we'll talk about trees about weeds and even about wild delicious berries some of the programs won't be about plants or animals at all but will be about the environment about marshes those wet interesting places and we'll have a program about the problem that modern man is having with the disposal of his mountains of trash. Yes they'll really be quite a wide variety of programs and there will be two special programs that you will help me write.

These are the question and answer programs at the end of each semester. I'll ask you questions and answer them on the air. In the meantime if your class has questions that you can't answer write them down and save them and later on I'll ask you to send them in and they may become part of our question and answer program or whatever else you may learn boys and girls. I want you to learn one thing from the wonderful world of nature series. I want you to learn that right here in our state of Wisconsin we have an amazing variety of native plants and animals. Everyone knows that there are strange exotic animals in Africa and in the tropics and even in Antarctica. But often we fail to appreciate the