Spring Series #6 - Apple Trees

Outdoor Hour Challenges - Spring Series #6 - Apple Trees

We have been dealing with a medical situation concerning our 3 year old, O, which you can read about on our family blog if you are intererested. Unfortunately, this means the end of our school year was interrupted - I've spent 2 or 3 days a week at the hospital and the days at home I've been trying to catch up on home-stuff. But because it is Spring there are lots of wonderful things happening all around us, and now that it looks like we will have a break between appointments we are catching up with the Spring Series challenges.

With this Apple Tree challenge we did a condensed version - we found some apple trees at a home improvement store :). Even though I had read through the Handbook of Nature Study Apple Tree section, with my kids I stuck to the suggested observations in the challenge post and had them do a picture for their nature journals.

Some of the exciting things that have been happening in our own neighborhood:

The black-chinned hummingbirds have returned. We could hear them flying around for a few days before we took the hint and put up our feeder. We have seen several males competing for the feeder and chasing each other away. If we are sitting on the deck and holding very still, they will come drink from the feeder.
On our neighbor's deck we have an American Robin couple who look to be starting a family. They built their nest on an outdoor speaker. We were all worried about how stable this location would be, but it has weathered several windy storms this week and even a snow storm this morning. It was exciting for my kids to watch as the nest was being built and then to stay on the look out for the eggs. We haven't seen the eggs - I don't think we are close enough. However, we have spotted the male and female changing places as they take turns sitting on the nest..
We spotted this bird of prey and were amazed to identify it as a Turkey Vulture. We have seen it on several different days - soaring above us on the look out for a tasty meal.

Spring Series #5 - Cattails

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Spring Series #5 - Cattails

Autumn Cattail Study

Winter Cattail Study

We headed to the park where we have observed cattails. A couple years ago this was more pond and lots less cattails, but the water level has dropped and is now covered with cattails.
We were a little disappointed not to find any new growth . . .
Until we found this little guy. We were very careful not to damage it as it was the only new one we could find.

We pulled up an old one to examine - leaves seem to be growing opposite, but it was hard to tell.

The roots

The head

We were delighted to observe and listen to a number of red-winged blackbirds. Their calls were very beautiful and different sounding from the other birds we usually listen to. This is the best picture I came home with - they didn't think posing for my camera was very important.

Of course the kids had lots of fun playing too!