Bird & Nature Blog
A clutch of the latest stories from Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance
All of us in SoWBA enjoyed the recent newsletter about Citizen Science, with Mickenzee's account of the Lincoln Elementary School's citizen scientists my favorite.
SoWBA and the Southern Wisconsin Chapter of Trout Unlimited recently hosted those 4th graders on their and our annual end of the year field trip. For many it's their first chance to see and hold a fish.
Photo by Carolyn Byers
Recently I read a fun and fascinating account of a successful introduction of another lovely species with a great name to new, happy, and much needed homes. Please use the following link for this story concerning the starhead topminnow. And that photo on p. 1; isn't that a cute little fish? John Lyons and his "Topminnows For Tomorrow" team (this blog is full of great names and titles) worked incredibly hard over years on this introduction and then wrote a lively article on that process and its results.
Photo by Joshua Mayer
Fall in Wisconsin is a burst of colors, brightening and fading, with shades and textures unimaginable. Driving down the road, a fall scene plays outside the window; the prairie morphs from orange to yellow to brown and into red. Patches of color blend together, all warm, all losing their chloroplasts, anticipating a lack of sunlight in the coming winter.
If the photo above gave you heart palpitations: never fear. It’s burn season (and that’s a good thing!).
Burning is key for many reasons to the health of prairies and savannas. These systems are fire dependent. Fire renew fertility, spark the reproductive cycle of some plants, suppress woody vegetation, and control some invasive species. No fire = no prairies, no savannas.
Photo by Roger Packard
