They took a surface picture of Betelguese, only just, a couple of hours ago! Betelgeuse is close, only about 600 light-years away in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the largest stars known, a red super-giant with a radius around 1400 times larger than the Sun’s. It’s also pretty young, just about eight …
Category Archives: nature study
Owl
Following my nose, trying to find what was smelling so bad in the front yard, I almost stepped on him, the Barred Own. Flattened over his prey in the growing dusk I hadn’t seen him. He took off silently. Startling. Here’s what he had been covering: a headless cottontail in the front yard (photo taken …
Look at These Two
Funeral for a Sparrow, Chicken Eggs, Clay Bird
A friend found a dead sparrow and brought it to us for our home school. It resided in our freezer for a couple of weeks until today we remembered it. We unwrapped it and studied it for a bit, which wasn’t easy as it was frozen stiff. Then Amie suggested a funeral. We brought it …
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Sun Motions
This is a cool tool. Put yourself on the north pole, or at, say, 74.8 degrees N latitude. Is this nature study? I’ve rediscovered Tim Morton’s books on ecology, among them Ecology without Nature and The Ecological Thought, where he introduces the concept of dark ecology as a means of expressing the “irony, ugliness, and …
Dragonflies
We had the clothesline out on Sunday to dry out some tarps, and it was graced by two dragonflies who really liked their perch: they let us photograph them from pretty up close, and whenever they flew off, they returned immediately, so we got to try the new camera’s macro function and lens.
The Stuffed Birds of Natural History, Against De-Extinction
On MLK day we went to the Boston Museum of Science with friends. We mostly hung out in the Green Wing with the New England birds and natural history displays. I enjoy studying the stuffed animal skins, the skeletons and fossils in their glass cases. No doubt some of my preference is due to the old-timey-ness, the absence …
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Cranberry Picking
Today I had planned to clean the house. It badly needs a vacuum and a scrub. But before I could get started, a friend called and said she wanted to go on a walk that my group, Transition Wayland, was organizing though Wayland Walks. Wayland Walks is a great spin-off, Â run by two of our …
Woodcocks or, Of Extinctions
Some time ago (April 16) we returned to the field of the Full Moon/Grief walk. Our group was smaller this time. We had timed our congregation to dusk, because that is when the male woodcock performs its sky dance for the benefit of the females of the species. Woodcocks are crepuscular, most active around dusk and …
Fruit Orchard on the Slope: Soil Analysis and Amendments
Been thinking about that slope: will the soil support what we ultimately want to plant there, and how do we best prepare it? This south-west facing slope, relatively sunny – somewhat shaded from the southeast and northwest, more so as you go further down the slope – will be a fruit orchard: we’ll plant blackberries and …
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