I am most intrigued with your Nature Curriculum page. As a 4th grade teacher/nature lover and permaculturist I will be making a great amount of use out of your site this coming school year.
Although I live in the Sonoran Desert there are plenty of experiments and ideas I can use for my 4th graders: Hitchhiking Plant Life, Growing a Cloud, Knots for the Outdoors are just a few examples of things I am planning to add to my curriculum for this school year.
I also can't believe that you aren't getting at least a dozen responses/comments to every one of your blog posts. You truly have some great info.
It’s rare to get snow conditions that reveal as much track detail as I’ve seen this year. It’s even more surprising to be able to watch the animals move in their tracks and then have those tracks to study.
This group of wild turkeys were in a relatively open area.
When I hear a Wood Thrush sing for the first time each season, it’s a moment of pure joy. This has been a remarkable year. I not only got to hear a few stanzas, I got more than a glimpse. I’d love to have gotten closer, but I’ll take what I can get:
It’s very odd to be wandering through an urban park, like New York’s Central Park and see more wildlife in a few minutes than I typically see on my usual Hudson Valley hikes.
I first thought this was a cat stalking the migrating birds, but a closer look revealed a raccoon on the way home from a night’s foraging:
As I worked on identifying migrating warblers, I was totally surprised to find that not only squirrels, but cardinals, robins, and even house sparrows would approach anyone with binoculars, expecting seeds.
You just don’t see that in a typical wilderness situation. (more…)
Each year at this time I dig out my Birding By Ear tapes. I often hear more than I see, especially once the trees are in full leaf.
After years of struggling to identify warblers, I discovered that in addition to the many experienced bird watchers who lead tours through New York’s Central Park, a number of passionate Audubon Society members are very willing to share information on where to spot them if you turn up in the right part of the park with binoculars around your neck. It seems that city warblers are nowhere near as shy as their rural cousins. I’ve seen more birds in the last two weeks in NYC than I’ve seen on my own in several years.
New York bird watchers are to the birding world what “Wildman” Steve Brill is to the foraging world and Gary Lincoff is to mycology – passionate urban naturalists who are delighted to share their discoveries.
Here are a few birds I’ve seen for the first time: (more…)
The robin’s whinny woke me up this morning and it occurred to me that I’ve been twittering and tweeting – or at least present while others twitter and tweet – for years.
I’m headed outdoors to spend the day with the robins, blue jays, cardinals and the rest of the original twitterers.
I was so busy focusing on the hawk, I don’t know what the squirrel did next, but the hawk sat there for another minute or so - long enough for me to get a few shots like this:
The hawk flew off in the direction of the squirrel. I didn’t hear or see anything. I haven’t found any tracks that suggest the two did more than surprise each other.
Later on, I got in touch with Bird Lady and learned this immature Cooper’s Hawk, prefers to eat birds. But how did the squirrel know that?
English is a confusing language, so I’m not surprised that what I think are keywords are misunderstood by Google and other search engines. But every once in a while I get lucky.
Whatbird.com is an interactive bird identification site. What makes it really user-friendly is the amazing amount of detail organized in a user-friendly way. I spent hours listening to comparison recordings of thrushes, which are more often heard than seen, comparing photos and illustrations for visual identification, and checking out regional behavior differences in this easy-to-read display of scientific data. (more…)
The camera is within 20 miles of where I live. I’m surprised to see the cardinals laying eggs so late in the season. According to the accompanying discussion, the baby cardinals will fledge by October.
Sometimes I love the Internet. There’s no way I could get this close to a nest without disturbing the cardinal.
