Nature Club -October 12, 13, 14

We all went BATTY this week in Nature Club! Since it's only a few weeks until Halloween, I borrowed a Bat Kit from the DNR so we could learn about those much-maligned little animals. We learned that bats are not birds, they are mammals. They fly at night using echolocation and eat many, many mosquitos. We looked at bat books, played bat games, played with toy bats and got to see a real bat and a real bat skeleton encased in plastic. Great stuff and the preschoolers loved it!

Critter Watch

I just had to post this- it's an eagle sitting on a fence post in our horse pasture. It's a young one, probably 2 years old. It's hard to tell from the fuzzy picture, but it IS an eagle. We watched it with binoculars for about 20 minutes. It was watching the grass for mice and rabbits. Very cool!

Week of September 27, 2010

This week had absolutely perfect weather for our first week of Nature Club. The kids were as excited as I was to get outside and look for nature. But first we had to talk about what natural and man-made meant, some terms I will use all year.
It was very easy to find a lot of natural items on the ground and happily, not so easy to find man-made items (trash). We had fun taping things to a poster and very quickly picked up the idea of what was too big or heavy to tape down. Also, we decided NOT to tape live insects to the poster because we didn't want to kill them.
P.S. I'm sorry Starla is upside down! I can't figure out how to turn it over or delete it! Will learn by the next post!
Gorgeous days like these make -20 degrees more tolerable!

August 27

Yesterday was Dragonfly Day! Are dragonflies lucky? I don't know, but they are beautiful and somehow mysterious. It was probably a coincidence that yesterday I mailed a manuscript to a publisher involving dragonflies, and all morning I saw dragonflies everywhere I went! I must have seen 50. So was it a coincidence or do the dragonflies know something....?


Much later...Sept. 30- Yeah, it was just a coincidence! I received an extremely nice and complimentary rejection letter...but still a rejection.

Critter Watch

I love to watch the barn swallows swooping in and out of our barn. They don't look like they are catching insects, they seem to be flying for the sheer joy of it.
The barn swallows make nests that look like little cups of mud and straw, with horsehairs woven in that hang down.
We also have cliff swallows nesting under the eaves of our house. Those nests look like gourds made out of clay. Those swallows like to swoop around the house also. And, of course, they leave droppings all over my deck! Luckily, those wash off pretty easily with water. I don't mind the clean-up too much because the birds are so much fun to watch.
I saw a coyote out in the horse pasture. I don't know if it was a male or female, but it was taking a roll in the grass and just kind of chilling out there. I'm glad they are back.

Critter Watch

Last weekend was fantastic! I watched a hummingbird eating from my shrubs in the front for several minutes before he flew away. The deer are moving all around at all times of the day. We can watch egrets and blue herons in our marsh every day. My bluebirds like to come up to the house and sit on the deck. They make a mess to clean up, but they are so pretty it's worth it. There is also one aggressive male bluebird that fights with his reflection in our windows. Yesterday he was attacking our truck windows! What a fighter!

Critter Watch

Rain, rain and rain! We are finally caught up and it's STILL raining! This is a good thing- the past two summers have been extremely dry. I saw two deer this morning, as well as pheasants and turkeys. The eagle flies by regularly. I think it lives nearby. Have not seen any coyotes this spring, but we hear them sometimes at night. And with the two bears seen in the suburbs recently, I keep thinking I may see one of those someday. Not that I really want to!