Kids Make the Best Scientists

If you are an elementary student in the Columbia Gorge, odds are you can identify this bird.  You’ve also probably squawked its call, “WOK, WOK,” to ask for its favorite food (fish, in this case represented by cheerios) and even hidden a “nest” to safely protect your ever-growing clutch of eggs from predators. If you happen to be a parent of one of those students, you might have been quizzed over the dinner table to see if you could accurately define the word “crepuscular” (spoiler: animals that are active at dusk and dawn).

The Black-crowned night heron has become the unofficial mascot of the Nichols Natural Area, inspiring a game that has delighted students visiting the site for more than a decade. And yes, Black-crowned night herons are in fact, crepuscular. Each year hundreds of students from across the Columbia Gorge visit the Nichols Natural Area for field trips where they learn about the Columbia River, riparian zones, and the species that depend on them. Students engage with their senses, explore scientific thinking, and investigate how humans impact the world around them.

If the heron is our mascot, our motto is “kids make the best scientists.” The Nichols Natural Area is the living laboratory where students get to explore, make observations, and tap into their natural curiosity. The three-acre riparian zone habitat serves as an outdoor classroom where kids lead the way and every field trip becomes an opportunity for discovery.

This spring, nearly 400 students from White Salmon, Hood River, Odell, and Portland visited Nichols with their teachers, parents, and friends. Guided by Columbia Riverkeeper’s environmental educators, students explored the site through hands-on activities and games. They examined beaver-chewed cottonwoods, learned to listen like deer and stalk like herons, watched osprey dive for fish and parade their catch overhead, and reflected on how human actions can shape the natural world.

The Nichols Natural Area sits within a former industrial site, and about a decade ago, the City of Hood River placed the property under a conservation easement to protect it for habitat purposes. Since then, Columbia Riverkeeper has worked alongside volunteers, students, and community members to restore the site, planting native trees, creating wildlife habitat, and offering environmental education programming in both English and Spanish. 

After a field trip to the Nichols Natural Area ends, students go home with more than new vocabulary words and wildlife facts. They leave with a deeper connection to the Columbia River and a better understanding of the role they can play in caring for it. And somewhere along the way, between a heron’s “WOK, WOK,” an osprey’s dive, and a beaver-chewed cottonwood, they discover something powerful: kids really do make the best scientists.