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By Laura Drinan
Hometown Weekly Reporter
With springtime and Easter coinciding, many families ring in the season of blossoming flowers and warm weather with an Easter egg hunt outdoors.
Maura O’Gara, Bird Park’s event and program manager, formulated a different idea: an Easter nature quest.
Ideal for children ages two to eight, the quest was open from 10 a.m. to noon on March 31. The adventure began at the Music Court and led families through the clearly-marked trails of Bird Park, searching for evidence of spring.
“Basically, they move along [the trail] and learn about different signs of spring, and there’s clues based on the sign of spring,” Maura explained, showing that at the end of the handout with the clues on it, children can solve a puzzle, which spells out “Happy Spring.”
“When they finish, they end up back here, and they get Easter candy and wildflower seeds from the bunny … It’s the perfect holiday to highlight the signs of spring.”
With the handout from Maura and the volunteers detailing the eight signs to look for, the families learned about budding trees, babbling brooks, conifer seeds, frogs, daffodils, bird nests, and Eastern Cottontails.
After reading about rabbits, the children walked just a little bit further to meet the Easter bunny, a Walpole High School robotics team member, who greeted them on the stone stage. Another robotics team member from the high school handed out goodie bags filled with candy and packets of seeds.
Many of the stops featured an interactive activity for children, too, like searching for tadpoles with nets, smelling daffodils, and holding conifer seeds.
Some families even created their own stations when they paused their quest for a snowball fight using the melting snow that lingered under the shade of the trees.
Last year, Maura hosted a similar quest with an egg hunt stop, but tweaked it to be focused more on springtime this year. With their own Easter egg hunts planned for the following day, many families visited Bird Park for the nature quest and to enjoy the morning in the sun.
With warmer weather on its way, Walpole families can be sure that Bird Park will be hosting more events for the community to enjoy.
