Shorebird Food Webs Adapted from “Salt Marsh Food Objectives nonbreeding have been lost to Web.” San Francisco Bay National After this activity, students will be development. Wildlife Refuge. “Salt Marsh able to: Manual.” ■ Identify at least five different For more information on shorebird plants and animals from one of habitats, read Shorebirds Depend Grade Level: lower elementary, the seven habitats. on a Chain of Healthy Habitats in upper elementary/middle school ■ Name at least two relationships the Shorebird Primer. Duration: one 30-minute class between plants and animals. period ■ Name at least two shorebirds that Activity Preparation Skills: critical thinking, problem live within the habitat studied. 1. Select the habitat food web that solving, predicting, discussion, and ■ Explain what it means to be an you want to explore with your vocabulary endangered species. students from the Shorebird Subject: science ■ Define the word extinct. Food Web Cards. Concepts Materials 2. Photocopy the Food Web Cards ■ Habitat is the place where an ■ Ball of yarn to create a web onto cardstock and cut them out. organism lives because it is ■ Shorebird Food Web Cards adapted to find food, water, for either: tundra, salt marsh, 3. If you have more students shelter, and space there. freshwater marsh, mudflat and in your class than you have Numerous habitats are located sandy beaches, rocky-intertidal cards, photocopy and cut extra within an ecosystem. habitat, or grasslands. producer cards. It is okay ■ Shorebirds are one part of a for more than one student to healthy functioning ecosystem. Introduction represent the producers in the ■ Both shorebirds and humans Habitat is the place where species food web. In reality, a healthy depend on clean, healthy find food, water, shelter, and space food web requires a greater ecosystems. to survive. Habitat is found within number of producers to support ■ Wetland and grassland an ecosystem. An ecosystem the other organisms. ecosystems provide extremely consists of all living parts (plants important habitats for shorebirds. and animals) and the nonliving Procedure parts (air, water, soil, minerals) 1. Ask the students to form a circle. Vocabulary in an area of any size, interacting Hand out a food web card to each ■ ecosystem and linked together by nutrient student. Save the sun card for ■ endangered flow and energy from the sun. yourself. Let the students know ■ extinct There are many relationships and that it is okay for several people ■ food web interactions between the producers, to have the same cards. ■ producers the green plants that use sunlight ■ consumers to produce their food, and the 2. Ask the students if they know ■ predators consumers, those animals that feed why several students are ■ prey on plants and each other. These representing producers in the ■ habitat relationships and interactions in an web? These are the producers ecosystem can be demonstrated as at the base of the food web Overview a “web,” with each plant, animal, which usually do outnumber the In this activity, students take on the or nonliving part connected to each consumers in nature. They have roles of abiotic or biotic components other either directly or indirectly. to support the animals at the top. of a wetland or grassland habitat. When one part of the web is Using a ball of yarn, students touched, every part is affected. 3. Have the students read their create a web to demonstrate how cards silently, then aloud to the shorebirds are connected to all Plants and animals are considered rest of the class. Ask them to parts of their habitat. They discover endangered when there are so listen to each other carefully for how changes in the food web can few of a particular species left clues to the order of the web. affect a shorebird’s survival. that it runs the risk of becoming Explain that they will have to extinct. Many shorebird populations connect their organisms to other today are in trouble because organisms they depend on. the habitats they depend on for nesting, migration, stopover, and S H O R E B I R D S M 163 I Explore the World with Shorebirds! S A T R ER G S RO CHOOLS P 4. You, the “sun,” start the web 8. Have a class discussion of the Make a Food Web Mobile activity. Read your card, then following questions: Divide your class into seven wrap one end of the yarn around ■ How does the loss of one teams and assign each team one your hand and pass the ball of species in the food web affect of the habitat types included in yarn to the student representing the other species? this activity. Instruct each team the organism you are connected ■ What would happen to the to color its food web cards and to. For example, the “sun” would food web if one of these species assemble them into a mobile. Ask connect to a “plant” and say “ I were to be permanently them to highlight, in any way they am the sun and I provide energy removed from the habitat? choose, any species in the web that for the plant to grow.” NOTE: ■ What does it mean when are endangered. Have each team Connections can be indirect— a species is listed as present its food web mobile to the that is animals also require air, endangered? entire class before hanging it in the water, and sunlight. ■ Are any animals in this food classroom. web endangered? 5. Now the student with the ball of ■ What do you think we can do to yarn reads his or her card and keep shorebirds from becoming passes the ball to the organism endangered? he or she is connected to. For example, a student with a plant Additional Activities card would then pass the ball of Food Webs in Other Habitats yarn to an animal that eats it and Make another set of food web cards say “I am a plant and provide for a habitat not found in your area. food for ____.” After creating this food web as a class, ask students to research this 6. Continue this until all the food web further. What other plants students are connected by the and animals live there? What are web of yarn. the environmental conditions in this habitat? Refer older students to the 7. Discuss with students what Habitats Student Readings in the might happen if one species were Types of Habitat activity in this lost from the web. Simulate section for more information about removing one of the organisms important shorebird habitats. from the web by tugging on one line in the web or have one Shorebirds of Your Habitat “organism” drop its line. Instruct Read the Shorebird Profiles everyone who feels the tug to found in the Appendix to find the gently tug the line(s) she or he is shorebirds mentioned in your food holding. This ripple effect should web. Find and color the matching pass through everyone in the shorebird illustrations in the web. Shorebird Coloring Pages of the Appendix. S H O R E B I R D S M 164 I Explore the World with Shorebirds! S A T R ER G S RO CHOOLS P List of Food Web Cards Food Web Habitats Tundra 166 Freshwater Marsh 169 Rocky-Intertidal Habitat 173 Mudflats and Sandy Beaches 176 Grassland 180 Salt Marsh 183 S H O R E B I R D S M 165 I Explore the World with Shorebirds! S A T R ER G S RO CHOOLS P Tundra Food Web Cards Sun Water I am the sun. Everything on earth depends on I am water. All living things need me to survive. me. And in my hands I hold the web of life. Most plants and animals find me pooled in small depressions on top of the soil. I cannot seep into the hard frozen permafrost of the tundra. Air Soil I am air. I am made up of oxygen and nitrogen. I am soil. I am very important to all living I am very important to all living things. Fish, things. Plants use the nutrients in me to grow. which do not breathe air directly, get oxygen Only the top six inches of me thaws in the from the water. It is important to keep me clean summer. Animals get their nutrients from because pollution in the air is harmful to all plants. When living things die, they decompose creatures. and form a spongy layer on top of me called peat. Zooplankton Phytoplankton I am zooplankton. I like to eat detritus, I am phytoplankton. I use sunlight to produce phytoplankton, and other zooplankton. I am my own food. Many different organisms like to eaten by lots of different animals, including small eat me, including aquatic worms, zooplankton, fish, crabs, worms and snails. I can be found and insect larvae. You can find me floating in the in the small pools of water scattered across the small pools of water scattered across the tundra. tundra. Lichen Detritus I am lichen—part algae, part fungus. I use I am detritus—dead plant material. When I was sunlight and nutrients in the soil to grow. I am a live plant, I used sunlight to produce my own one of the main diets of the caribou that nibble on food. When I died, I decomposed into a material me year round! that feeds lots of other animals. Zooplankton, insect larvae, grasshoppers, and beetles eat me. S H O R E B I R D S M 166 I Explore the World with Shorebirds! S A T R ER G S RO CHOOLS P Tundra Food Web Cards Cloudberry Cotton Grass I am cloudberry.