PEEC Summer Scavenger Hunt
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PEEC Virtual Scavenger Hunt Series
With the support of the Alliance for Watershed Education of the Delaware River (AWE), PEEC is hosting a six-week scavenger hunt throughout the region. Every Monday, beginning June 22, PEEC will post a themed list of different plants or animals to our social media pages. Participants take a photo of each organism on the list and submit the photos to PEEC for a chance to win some fun prizes!
How to participate:
1. Like us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to see updates every Monday on the scavenger hunt theme for the week.
2. Get outside and take photos of the plants and animals of the week! Signs of specific animal activity are acceptable in place of elusive creatures.
3. Submit your photos to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 5pm the following Sunday and complete this quick Scavenger Hunt Questionnaire to be entered to win.
4. Submissions will be reviewed for accuracy and the participant or team with the most correct submissions will win either a $20 voucher for a PEEC public program or a PEEC water bottle and T-shirt.
There will be a drawing every week which means multiple chances to win! Spend the summer enjoying the great outdoors with us!
Accessibility Statement for www.peec.org
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Pocono Environmental Education Center is committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. We are continually improving the user experience for everyone, and applying the relevant accessibility standards.
What are we doing?
We are taking the following measures to increase and then maintain the accessibility of www.peec.org:
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Include accessibility throughout our internal policies
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Provide continual accessibility training for our staff
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Acquire external resources for evaluation, monitoring and issue remediation
What is our conformance status?
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA.
We have made and will continue to make improvements to www.peec.org in order to attain and then maintain conformance with WCAG 2.1 level AA.
How are we doing?
We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of www.peec.org. Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers on www.peec.org.
You can get in touch with us in any of the following ways:
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Email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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Call us on 570-828-2319
The First Big Spider
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- Written by PEEC - Janine
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A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
The first robin of spring and the first flower are not spring’s only harbingers. There is also the first mosquito, the first tic, the first big spider. This one was about three inches from end to end. I disturbed her when I removed the deck chair covers from their bin. She scurried away.
I think she is a dark fishing spider, Dolomedes tenebrosus. The females are much larger and, like many spiders, sometimes kill and eat the males, depending whether, during courtship, she is more in need of a mate or a meal. Timing is everything.
Fishing spiders usually dwell near water and hunt for small aquatic life. They can swim under water or, not miraculously in their case, walk upon it. What is unusual about tenebrosus is it is a fishing spider that doesn’t fish. She is a water spider that lives in the forest, the only one of over a hundred varieties of Dolomedes to do so.
They live in forests near human dwellings, and frequently find themselves indoors. They appear in April and begin hibernation in the fall. Their bite is slightly poisonous, like a bee’s. They are timid and run from humans, as this one did. They eat various insects and burrow into the ground if threatened.
I respect a fishing spider that doesn’t fish, that has adapted to a different environment from that of her relatives. At some evolutionary point did tenebrosus decide that walking on water was okay, but wanted some shade? What random complexity of evolution brought this about? Did some of the dark fishing spiders wander too far from the river and had to find food and shelter among the trees, some succeeding?
I read something more intentional into it. I imagine a spider finding the fishing life too complex, too busy. Too many other spiders competed for too few insects. The river might have been a bad influence on spiderlings. Like Dolomedes tenebrosus, I am not a natural in the forest, yet we both survive by adapting when we can, scurrying away when we must.
