Critters & Moss

We went out to our local nature preserve this morning, and had a good time. The first thing we noticed was the golden "carpet" they've "installed" in the yard! Monkey picked a leaf and carried it around for a few minutes, though I didn't let him take it into the nature center itself. It was OK though. He was no sooner inside than he found something else to be interested in! We'd seen some of it before, but this time we also visited their "pond room," and found some interesting things to look at. For instance, the largest frog I've ever seen, a bullfrog, and the smallest frog, a spring peeper, no bigger than the size of a quarter.

bullfrog

spring peeper

This is the last frog we looked at. He also looked at us, and seemed quite intelligent about it. When we walked up to his aquarium he hopped out of his water and came over to check us out. Looked at whoever was speaking. Generally was much more friendly than your average critter. I didn't catch what kind of frog he is though; too busy watching him watch us.

Photo credit: Monkey

At this point I required Monkey to go outside again. Nature being outside, I thought this would be more productive. But on our way out we stopped at the office and checked out a pair of binoculars. That was pretty cool. Not that I got a turn with them, but it was cool that they had loaners available! Then we took off on the park's trials.





About this point Monkey started asking me to show him "cool things." The first thing we looked at was some spiky soft moss growing on the base of a young tree, but the photographs I took turned out fuzzy. I was bummed, because I remembered there was a moss and lichen challenge on the Outdoor Hour and had been thinking maybe these would work. Next we found these pretty leaves that are so beautifully contrasting.


It's kind of hard to see, but here Monkey is checking out the seeds on the yellow plant from the last picture. He wanted to know what the brown clump at the top was, and I told him the seed head. Good thing that he didn't ask any more: I realized that I don't know much about this stuff, in spite of all I have learned in the past year, and should read about some of these things in the Handbook of Nature Study!





It was about this point that Monkey began climbing to find more moss and I realized we needed a new rule: Mom holds the binoculars while Monkey climbs. Fortunately, the very little bit of dirt that got on them brushed off easily.



This is the moss Monkey was climbing up to look at.






Crustose lichen

The big excitement happened at the very end of the trip. We'd gone into a little opening in the trees to look at a bunch of rocks with some big splotches of lichen, when I just about stepped on a snake! It was well camouflaged: I didn't see it until I moved just before I would have put my big foot on it. I was startled. I squeaked. Then I had Monkey come over and look at it too. He had a hard time finding it, but eventually did it. The folks at the nature center said that it was a garter snake when I returned the binoculars, and were glad we'd see it because it tells them the garter snakes are moving from the one side of the preserve to the other for their winter hibernation. Because it was so well camouflaged, I couldn't get any great pictures. Here's the best one, with everything but the snake in black and white to help you see it. It's amazing to me how well it still blends, after editing the picture to make the snake more obvious.

Wildflowers!

Back in late March and early April, they were doing wildflowers at The Outdoor Hour and I was all excited about finding some of the early spring wildflowers that Barb was talking about. But in spite of several trips out looking for wildflowers, we never did find any. They're blooming now. I guess that Barb is considerably further south than we are. Also, I looked in some different places. We recently discovered a bike trail that leads right to our "big garden," avoiding nearly all of the traffic between here and there. As if that wasn't wonderful enough, it goes through the local tech collage grounds and they have some lovely grassy flowery stuff to ride through. Here are some of the things we saw on our most recent trip through our trail and to the big garden.


Tall grass with Queen Anne's Lace, or wild carrot.


Here's a close-up of the tiny blossoms that make up the flower head.


And this is the very striking flower bud.



Then there's this dainty little cluster, which I don't know the name of, though it's very common around here. Grows along the edges of all sorts of places.

And we've got some wild daisy-sunflower looking things. I haven't had a chance to look these up either, but it's on the agenda. Once I know what they're called, I can have a look at the Handbook of Nature Study and see if there's anything in there for any of our flowers.


Our new bike and trailer have been great for getting out there and finding the flowers. We would likely never have found the little nature spot at the Tech had we not had the bike. There's quite a bit to explore back there.

Already, I'm beginning to see how the awareness of nature is becoming a part of Monkey. When we got to the garden, I was tired, so we sat for a few minutes on the picnic table, and Monkey saw this feather underneath. It took several tries for him to communicate to me that there was something interesting under there that he wanted to show me, because when I looked I just didn't see it! But finally I found the tiny feather that had caught his interest, so we took a picture for his nature book.

One of the pleasures of the garden is the raspberry patch that is sort of a free-for-all patch. Monkey approves.





While we were there, Monkey showed me a cloud, so we took a picture for his book.

Things to Do Outside

One of the hardest things about going outside is figuring out what to do. So I'm making a list. If I miss something, add it in the comments please?

Outside Stuff

*Go on a walk
*Ride a bike
*Gardening
*Push Monkey in the swing
*Pick flowers
*Fly a kite
*Shoot some hoops
*Nature Walk
*Play catch
*Go camping
*Play sports
*Running
*Take pictures
*Stargaze
*Moongaze
*Birdwatching
*Cloud watching
*Swimming
*Hiking
*Rollerblading
*Lawn care
*Playdates at the park
*Reading
*Canoe/kayak
*Sketching

Still No Wildflowers

We tried another park today, looking for wildflowers. I think the folks that are seeing them either know a whole bunch more than I do, or they are considerably further south. We're still in early spring here. I think we're supposed to get more snow this week, though I hope it's not much. We're all rather tired of snow. But there is, in fact, nature out there. And looking for the wildflowers this week has been very enjoyable, even if we didn't find any.

We saw a bunch of red pine trees.




Which Monkey and I took a look at to see what they were. I pulled out my field guide, which I had remembered to bring today, and figured out what we were looking at. Short, squat pine cones. Double needles. Red pine.





There is a lot of grass, which when summer comes will be much less pleasant, as it is known to be home to ticks, and if the flowers ever get here, the bees will also like them. Spring is much easier for this Mama, who's still making the transition to outdoorsman. But for now, it was pleasant and beautiful, and I was pretty comfortable letting Monkey explore it a bit.

Nature Study: Wildflowers?

The Outdoor Hour is doing wildflowers right now, and I was all excited about findiing some of the early spring wildflowers that Barb was talking about. One of the blogs I visited in the past couple days (sadly, I can't recall which one) mentioned that there are a lot of wildflowers at this time of year, before the trees leaf out because there is more sunlight on the forest floor. I guess I picked the wrong place to go looking for flowers, because we didn't find a single flower. But we still had a good time. It's still early spring; my crocuses aren't even blooming yet. We'll have to try again.

We went to the same area that we saw the hollow tree at earlier this spring. The hollow tree wasn't nearly as interesting to Monkey as it was last time. Instead, we headed up the hill exploring the low-hanging pine trees as we went.



There was a riot of birdsong going on all around us as we were looking at the trees and their pine cones. We heard red-wing blackbirds (my favorite), a blue jay, and black capped chickadees. There was also at least 2 bird calls that I didn't recognize. We couldn't see much of these birds. They were flitting from the top of one tree to another, and Monkey was too busy for me to stand still and try to photograph or even really look at them very long. We did see some Canadian geese and a duck, probably a mallard.



But mostly, we looked at trees. I wished that I had brought along my tree field guide, but I didn't grab any of that stuff this time, just my camera. Monkey is still too little to do "notebooking," so we're going to keep a Nature Book for him: a photo album that he helps choose the pictures that go in it, and has more access to than the rest of our scrapbooks. We chose a picture to go on the front today, and picked a couple of our pictures to go inside.

A Busy Day

Monkey discovered that Daddy was painting the walls in the basement this morning, and of course he wanted to help. So we found a brush for him and let him go at it. This was really thick paint, so there were nearly no drips or splatters, making it an ideal paint for a munchkin to try out.



The original plan had called for some nature study and outside time this morning, but it's pretty cold again, and Monkey's been complaining about his ears, so we opted for watching the feeder. This is new and interesting again because several months ago we had so many squirrels and chipmunks (greedy little things that they are) visiting our feeder & eating in 2 days what it would have taken the birds about 2 weeks to fill, so we stopped filling and have just recently started again. It's only been this week that the birds are back at the feeder. In addition, we also hung up a new feeder that should be less accessible to the squirrels and chipmunks, so hopefully we won't have to quit if they notice the food again. Since it's been so long since we had birds, Monkey was quite happy to sit and watch them a few minutes. We had a black capped chickadee that went back and forth several times from the feeder to the lilac bush to eat his seed, then back to the feeder for another.



After the chickadee left (and lunch was over) we went to the computer and listened to a recording of the chickadee's song, and then Monkey looked at the bird book before settling in for a nap while I read him a little more of the Swiss Family Robinson, which is our current read-aloud.

This afternoon we have a library run to make and some potatoes that I plan to can. It's a busy day!

Outdoor Hour 1: take 2