Just as we’re putting in the fence, up pops another predator: a big wild turkey, right in our front yard! I think it was munching the buckwheat, which is succulent right now. So just a few yards away from the vegetable garden (luckily, at that side, the fence was already up). It’s bittersweet to spot …
Category Archives: nature study
Animal Tracks in the Snow
The temperatures have soared (in the low 50s today) and all the snow is melting. Funny, how all the stuff that fell on the snow but was covered up again is now showing on top: dust, twigs and leaves, tiny seeds… whatever snow is left now is no longer purely white. But last week, before …
Shapes of Snow
: peaked egg white snow : : closer up : : pocked snow (and Amie’s boot print) : : waves of snow : : closer up : : packed snow : : drifted snow : : crusts of snow :
Winter Wednesday/Outdoor Hour: Beech Bark in Winter
I decided to combine this week’s Outdoor Hour and Winter Wednesday challenges. For the first we observe a tree throughout the seasons. Those who have followed the challenges from the beginning have done this three times already and will be completing the year. But as Amie and I have just joined the Outdoor Hour, this …
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Journey North: Migration Study for Kids
Amie and I spotted the first Robins of the year on 21 January. One of them was climbing the cranberry bushes underneath our feeders and kept falling off. He looked clumsy, groggy. Our neighbor – who can tell us which bird settled in our gardens in which year, going decades back – told us that …
Tree Drawing: Winter Wednesday and Observational Drawing (Gone Awry)
We returned to the Winter Wednesday tree challenge yesterday (read our first entry here), which is about tree silhouettes. Amie decided to draw the large pine trees in our neighbor’s yard (all the trees in our own yard are too close to see in their entirety from the window). (The picture below was taken a …
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More Squirrel Shenanigans – and the OWLS!
To follow up on yesterday’s Outdoor Hour Challenge on Squirrels, here are some of today’s nature pictures. Squirrels, of course. Even though I dug out the snow around the bird feeder, they are still attempting to get up onto the baffle. The prickly bush approach must have been too painful, and it wasn’t working anyway: …
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Winter Wednesday: Trees and Their Bark
This challenge is really called “Tree Silhouettes,” but as the trees on our property and in our neighborhood are so crowded together, most of them haven’t grown into the typical shapes they would have had, had they been in an open space where they didn’t have to vie for sunlight with others. Except for the …
Outdoor Hour Challenge #45: Squirrels
Outdoor Hour Challenge #45 is Squirrels. We have plenty of them, three at least, all Eastern Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis). They come out when the sun is bright on the snow. Comstock writes charmingly about squirrels, and she quotes from Thoreau, which I find always makes for captivating reading. They both seem to describe exactly …
Copying Drawing and Writing from a Book
We had another snowstorm today. Preschool was closed. Amie and I sat ,in our PJs, at her table and decided to draw something. She chose her favorite book of animals, an older edition of the Visual Encyclopedia of Animals (DK). I think she likes this book because it is small, but thick and compact with …