Winter Hike

More Nature Study - Book 2

Winter Weather Walk

Winter Bird - Chickadee

We did two challenges this week (and I'm so excited I'm able to blog about them!).  We spent some time learning about the Black Capped Chickadee and had fun doing the Chickadee pastel tutorial at Hodgepodge. 

I only took A and N on our nature walk - O and J had a cold, S was napping. 

Signs of winter - cold! cold! cold! We haven't had much snow, but the temperatures were below freezing on this day.  There were also patches of snow even though it hadn't snowed for over a week.

The wind was really strong and loud- we were in a couple places where the wind was howling and we wondered if there was an animal or vehicle of some kind making the noise, but I think it was only the wind.

We saw crows, robins, and mourning doves, but not any of the smaller birds - everyone else must have been hiding from the wind. We also saw several deer heading over a hill and decided to climb up, hoping we would see them again. We found a deer trail and used this time for a "silent nature walk." Unfortunately, we didn't catch up with the deer.

N was excited to find this heart shaped moss. 

We've been watching our bird feeder for chickadees, but I don't think we've ever seen any in our area. We've seen sparrows, house finches, and a few other birds we are working on identifying.

S *loves* watching the birds come to our bird feeders. She gets excited, demands we all come look, and then knocks on the window so the birds will all fly away at the same time. She also likes the watch the cats that are attracted to the feeders. Anyone else feel guilty about offering a buffet for the cats? So far I'm not aware of any casualties.

Spring Hike - Interesting Discoveries

Identifying plants, butterflies, etc. is time consuming and hard to do with kids hanging on me (and computer equipment!) - some of our discoveries I have identified.  I'm working on the rest and will update as possible.  I'll number them - if you know what anything is, please (pretty please!) leave a comment.

1.  Waterleaf

Waterleaf picked for me by J. 

 2. Yarrow - I think :)

3. Lichen - A is particularly excited about Lichen and was thrilled to find this stick covered with it. Do you want to know "All About Lichen" and learn more than you thought you wanted to know?

4. My friend called this dainty blue and white flower a "Virgin Blue-Eyed Mary," but when I looked it up I didn't find any similar images under that name. 

5. Ranchman's Tiger Moth Caterpillar

6.  Starflower/Prairie Star Flower

7.  Yellow flowers are so hard to identify - there are so many of them! This flower had 7-9 flower heads per stem with 5-7 stems per plant.  I was leaning towards one certain flower, but I've lost my notes and am having a hard time finding what I thought it might be in my book again - Sagebrush Country: A Wildflower Sanctuary. 

8.  I am pretty sure this next flower is not native.  I know its some kind of tulip as I saw it at a local tulip festival, but I don't remember its name. I'm going to blame the tulip eating deer who forage throughout the city for transplanting it, but I kind of have a grudge - tomatoes last year, broccoli & cauliflower the year before.  

9. Forget-Me-Not - maybe :) I almost think it doesn't have the same look as a Forget-Me-Not, but looks enough like it that I'm not sure.

10. Mountain Dandelion

11.  The next flower is a complete mystery - I've never seen a simliar flower.  The flower blooms in the middle of the leaf - it was a remarkable looking plant.  The lower picture shows more of the plant and an unbloomed flower. 



A couple more discoveries without pictures:

Wild Onion - Not blooming yet, but that strong, unique scent is hard to miss.  It smells so wholesome and fortifying (deep breathe, sigh), and they are beautiful when they bloom.

Cactus - Prickly Pear I believe, and not necessarily a new discovery.  We do like to watch for the blooms and my kids love shrieking out warnings - "Watch out for the cactus!"

Bluebirds - I believe they were Mountain Bluebird, but they didn't wait around for me to know for sure.  However, the Western Bluebird isn't commonly known to be in our area so I can somewhat safely assume they were Mountain Bluebirds. Can you ever safely assume anything to do with nature?

Mystery Butterfly/Moth - my daughter tried to catch it as I tried to take a picture - c'est la vie.  It was dark brown, maroon, or black with a white band on the edge of the lower wings, possibly the upper wings too - is that description helpful? No? Well, I've looked at hundreds of pictures and still haven't identified it, and I'm the one who saw it! So don't feel bad.

I think we will use this hike throughout the Spring - Summer - Fall to continue discovering new things as this area changes.

Spring Mammal Study

For our Mammal Study, as part of the May Newsletter for the Handbook of Nature Study challenges, I let the kids pick a mammal that is native to our area.  I had them research and answer questions about their mammal - where do they live? what do they eat? what kind of a home do they have? who are their predators? and so on.

A picked the Red Fox, an animal we have seen in the wild before, although not in our current city. He chose to look at a few websites to learn more about them. 

 Red Fox - Utah Schools.  Red Fox - Utah Division of Wildlife.

A's notebook page-

N picked the Mule Deer, an animal we have seen in our backyard before.  She used the dictionary and websites too. 

Mule Deer - Utah Schools.  Mule Deer - Utah Division of Wildlife.

 N's notebook page- 

Winter Wednesday 2011 #4 - Tree Silhouettes

We went on a nature walk around our neighborhood with the goal of finding as many different tree silhouettes/shapes as possible.  It has warmed up arond here, but we do have some snow and the winds are still very cold. 

 Winter is also an excellent time to see details of a tree that would be hidden by the leaves in the other seasons - trunk and branch colors, if there are buds or not, or any empty birds' nests. 

When my daughter was drawing her silhouette picture she also decided to draw the tree in the 4 seasons. 

Autumn Series 2010 #10 - Autumn World

 Outdoor Hour Challenge - Autumn Series #10 - Familiar Spot

We are running behind with the Autumn Series challenges, but are still trying to complete them even though our area has definitely taken a turn into Winter!

We decided to visit a local park that we have often used in past challenges, but have never visited in the winter.  Most recently we visited the park for the Autumn Series Challenge #5 - Seasonal Tree - you can visit this post to see some pictures of how the park looks in Autumn.  We felt very much like the speaker of this quote found in the challenge on the Handbook of Nature Study blog:

“Yet, with all my familiarity with this brook, I did not know it in the winter. Its pathway up into the winter woods was as unexplored as the arctic regions. Somehow, it was not a brook in the winter time. It was merely a dreary waste, as cold and as forbidding as death. The winter was only a season of waiting, and spring was always late.”
The Nature Study Idea, L.H. Bailey, contemporary of Anna Botsford Comstock.  

Usually I am (partially) directing our explorations to focus on the current challenge we are learning more about.  However, during this visit I really challenged myself to keep my mouth closed and let the kids guide me. 

The gulley which we have usually seen as dry, or a muddy mess, now has a small, partially frozen stream traveling through it.  A and N ofcourse had to get close to investigate. 

One of the things the kids were excited about were all the things they were able to see that we weren't able to see in past visitis when the trees and plants were full and providing shelter and cover.    In the picture below the kids were investigating a bunch of boards and sticks someone had used to build a fort - something we'd never have guessed was there! 

In this picture the kids are watching a deer in the upper right corner.  While we have seen deer at this park before, it was much easier to watch on this day. 

 The kids also spotted this large bird's nest. 

 We stopped to visit our friends in the pond. 

 The pond is frozen so they spent a lot of time throwing snow balls on the ice - exploring and learning from their experimentation!

We really enjoyed expanding our experience with this favorite park by visiting in the Winter!

Autumn Series 2010 - Queen Anne's Lace or Weeds

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Autumn Series #6 - Queen Anne's Lace or other Autumn Weed

A and N spent time out in the beautiful Autumn weather sketching the flowers they chose for their year-long observations.  You can see their summer pictures here:  Summer Series:  Queen Anne's Lace

N chose to observe a Delphinum plant:

 A chose to observe a Burgundy Gaillardia plant.

We also spent time looking at "weeds" and seeing how different they are now they are dead and dry.  We tried to find plants that we had looked at during the summer so we could compare them. 

Sunflowers

 Sweet gum . . . something or another.  I forget the full name, but this plant makes your hands horribly sticky, has little ball shaped yellow flowers, and millions of seeds!

 Mullein - this young plant will winter over and then bloom in the spring. 

This is a full-grown mullein

 A variety of the ever-popular tumbleweeds, or umbrellas for little girls :)

Rabbitbrush - late-bloom is the yellow on the right and end-of-bloom on the left 

 And because of the wonderfully, unseasonally warm autumn weather there were plenty of late bloomers for us to discover as well!!