Watershed Festival 2013

Yesterday, we spent most of the day assisting at a local event, the 2013 Watershed Festival, a free event featuring hands-on activities for children and adults. Children enjoyed visiting the various exhibits and collecting tokens that were later exchanged for prizes.

A watershed describes an area of land that contains a common set of streams and rivers that all drain into a single larger body of water, such as a larger river, a lake or an ocean. Not only does water run into the streams and rivers from the surface of a watershed, but water also filters through the soil, and some of this water eventually drains into the same streams and rivers. These two processes are called surface runoff and infiltration.

Grenville (Pat) is involved in several local environmental and naturalists groups, including the sponsor of this event, the Eastern Shore Soil & Water Conservation District\Environmental Education Council. He and another volunteer manned the registration table shown above.

Exhibitors included the Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Eastern Shore National Wildlife Refuge, Citizens for a Better Eastern Shore, Kiptopeke State Park, Eastern Shore Master Naturalists, Eastern Shore Agriculture Research & Extension Center, and Coastal Zone Management; all featured interactive displays focused on the treasures found throughout the Chesapeake Bay and the Eastern Shore.

Several exhibits dressed in pirate gear in keeping with the event's "treasures" theme.

One of the most popular exhibits was the Madagascar cockroach (Gromphadorhina portentosa), called the hissing cockroach because of the unique sounds it makes when they forcing air through the respiratory openings (spiracles) found on each segment of their abdomen. Originating from the island of Madagascar off the African mainland, it's one of the largest species of cockroach, reaching 2 to 3 inches at maturity and is found in rotting logs. Unlike most cockroaches, they are wingless and feed primarily on vegetable material. Their lifespan in captivity can exceed 5 years.

Face painting was another popular exhibit with lots of "Spiderman" painted faces, camouflage ones, and some cute kitties too.

Despite the drizzle and light rain that came and went during most of the late morning into early afternoon, more than 250 people attended the event.
As you can see, we are getting used to this new format which lets the photos be a larger size. However, when posts (like this one) are created using the MarsEdit blog editor (Mac only), they cannot be clicked on to enlarge. It's just a quirk of this blog program — not your computer.
Hope you all had a good weekend, however and wherever it was spent.