Love & other good things

Love & presidents
The Chico Creek Nature Center (1968 E. Eighth St.)—which seems to be hosting an awful lot of interesting events of late, for folks of all ages—is offering two Valentine’s Day camps for local kids (who just happen to be out of school that day): Love the Park Day Camp and Parents’ Night Out Evening Camp on Friday, Feb. 14, as part of its ongoing Camp Chico Creek program. The day session runs from 7:45 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and the evening session from 4 to 10 p.m. Costs: day session, $35; evening session, $20; both sessions, $55.

“Like our summer camps, our school-year camps offer crafts, songs, up-close animal visits, naturalist led activities, games and a meal,” the nature center’s website (bidwellpark.org) says.

Also, on Monday, Feb. 17, the nature center is offering a Washington’s Birthday Camp Chico Creek program, from 7:45 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.

Call 891-4671 for more information.

Love & anthro
Heather McCafferty, curator at Chico State’s Valene L. Smith Museum of Anthropology, sent me a press release extending an invitation to all community members to the museum’s Feb. 14 celebration, from noon to 1 p.m., of the Valentine’s Day birthday of Valene L. Smith, professor emeritus of anthropology, and for whom the museum was named.

“Enjoy sweet treats and hot coffee, and enter a raffle to win a box of Shubert’s chocolates,” McCafferty wrote. “At 1:15 p.m. … student docents will lead a tour of our current exhibit, Into the Blue: Maritime Navigation and the Archaeology of Shipwrecks.”

Scholarships for new and/or young growers of food
Cultivating Community North Valley recently announced that it is offering 10 mini-grants of $240 “to lower-income urban and rural produce growers to encourage new vendors to sell at small farmers’ markets a minimum of six times before June 30, 2014,” as a recent CCNV press release described it.

“CCNV’s mission is to increase food security in Butte County and surrounding farm area, starting with the underserved,” the press release noted.

Applications, which are due March 1, are available at cultivatingcommunitynv.org. Call 680-3217 or email lindsey@grubchico.org for more information.

Volunteer at Gray Lodge
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has put the word out that it is seeking volunteers ages 18 and older to take part in its annual Wood Duck Nest Box Program at the beautiful Gray Lodge Wildlife Area, near Gridley. As the DFW’s press release put it, the program “is the largest volunteer nest-box monitoring program in California.”

Attend the March 8 orientation, from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., at Gray Lodge to learn data collection and habitat maintenance “which is used to understand the local wood-duck populations and other wildlife, including wrens, flycatchers and owls.” Every-other-week morning nest-box maintenance checks take approximately three to four hours and will be conducted from April to July.

Reservation required to attend orientation; call 846-7505 to register and/or for more info.