Tag: nature
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Baby Owls have Fledged!
It’s official — all three of the baby owls that I’ve been watching have fledged. The owlets have left the nest! We found the babies and one of the adults in a tree across from their nest. I know it looks like one or two of them are hanging from the branches, but that’s just…
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Baby Owls Fledging … Sort Of.
I went back over to the green belt to check on the baby owls today. They are doing well, but two of them are a little reluctant to leave the nest. Mama and a big bundle of feathers, to the right, were spotted first. Mama kept prying up bark. My husband asked if it could…
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Baby Owl Day
You know how it seems like there is an official Day for just about everything? I’ve decided to officially declare this Baby Owl Day. Why? Because I finally got to see them! I’ve been told that there are three owlets in the nest. Here, I can only see two for sure, and then mama in…
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Wonder Returns
When I started my blog, lo these many years ago, it was, in part, to celebrate that unexpected wonder around us. But it’s been a hard few years for all of us, and I just wasn’t feeling so wonderful. Yesterday I went out birding with Anne, one of the folks I met on my recent…
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More Extremely Early Flowers
I saw this little plant in the rocks along our dog-walk route. Yes, that is a bit of snow sitting on it. My botany training from long ago says that it is a Senico, or common groundsel, in the sunflower family. It’s native to Europe, and probably came over in seeds of some sort. I’ve…
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Monarch Butterflies Overwintering In Mexico
I remember the day in the 1976 that I ripped open the butcher paper wrapper to the National Geographic Magazine to see the cover of the woman covered in Monarch Butterflies. She had just tracked down where they went every winter, and shared that information with researchers in Canada. For me, that moment represented was…
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2023 Pika Pilgrimage
My husband and I headed back up to the high country this week to count pika. I’ve been asked if we get bored doing the same site every year. My answer is — it’s not the same site. There’s something new every time. This chipmunk has just jumped up from the rock beneath it to…
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You Otter See the Otters!
Last week, my husband and I took a long-delayed vacation in Monterey, California. The highlight of the trip were the sea otters that live in the kelp beds fifty feet off the beach. Before over hunting decimated them in the 1800s, sea otters ranged from Japan to Baja California, Mexico — 150,000-300,000 of them. But…
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Cooper’s Hawk Snags a Finch
Trigger warning: The small bird died. I was getting ready to start making dinner last night when I saw a shadow swoop over the back porch, low, fast and dark. When I looked up, I saw a squirrel running down the top rail of the fence faster than I have ever seen a squirrel run…
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Patterns in Nature
I started off thinking this post was going to be about the fact that sunflowers make two different kinds of flowers, which I think is really interesting. When we think of sunflowers, we think of the big showy flowers around a central disk. But the disk is made up of flowers, too! And actually, the…
Amy Law, Science Geek 