Advocacy

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Mother Birds

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A house wren mom has won my heart this spring and summer. The wren couple occupied a wren house set in my apricot tree this spring. For weeks now, Mom has called and hunted through the front yard, ceaselessly bringing one bug after another to the babes. She'll perch, bug in beak, and call to the young ones, and feed them when they reply. Sometimes the bugs are large and visible, other times much smaller (I'm always hoping the real small ones are ticks). She never stops, and ranges from the ground beneath some bushes to 30 feet up a dying birch, which should be full of bugs, and every level in-between.

Photo by Kelly Colgan Azar

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Great American Outdoors Act & #FundLWCF

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Great American Outdoors Act & #FundLWCF

Almost 60 years ago, Congress and President Kennedy had a great idea. Let's, they said, in a fabulous moment of collective wisdom, create a big, stable, and permanent source of conservation funding for the entire nation. It will help fund everything from the acquisition of a national park to the development of a county park. It will be available to every part of the country.

They so created the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), funded by fees paid by the oil industry for offshore drilling. We need your help to support it. The Great American Outdoors Act would direct the full funding amount to LWCF annually. Your legislators need to hear from you. Call them. Email them. Share about it with your friends via email and social media. Use the hashtag #FundLWCF. More resources are listed below.

Madison Audubon photo

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Three Friendly B's

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Three Friendly B's

The harvest season has begun in earnest at our house with a quick flurry of honeyberries followed by the start of the juneberry and raspberry seasons with a few pie cherries thrown in for good luck.

I must start with a thank you to the bumblebees. As far as I can tell, they are the only pollinators of honeyberries and the principal pollinator of the raspberries. I'm not as sure about the juneberries but they probably help there too.

Photo by Hirotomo Oi

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What came first: the bug or the song?

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What came first: the bug or the song?

Looks like the summer will be wet and warm—good news for my nominee for the most fearsome of Wisconsin's animals. No, not our two rattlesnakes… no, not ticks as loathsome as they are… no, not our most dangerous mammals, the Holstein or Jersey bulls. Ladies and gentlemen, meet, if you dare, North America's largest mosquito, the gallinipper.

I don't think they are new to Wisconsin but I'm betting they are much more common. I speculate that our changed climate is the reason. The bugs need hot, muggy weather, and water standing in those pastures where their prime prey lives. The changed climate reliably produces that weather and those conditions.

Photo by Carl Wycoff

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6 conservation lessons from a COVID spring

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A set of lessons is of particular concern to conservationists and policymakers in Wisconsin. We can't help but see how important the outdoors are to everyone at a time of crisis, worry, and misery. As the plague started, people wanted to be outside. While some pursued favorite activities like birding or fishing, many just wanted to be outside walking and surrounded by Nature's variety and beauty. These walks and outings became a consistent and safe consolation. Backyards, neighborhoods, and small municipal parks were certainly important for folks, but a huge number of us hungered for bigger, more varied, and more beautiful places. Places we could—at least temporarily—lose ourselves and the burdensome consciousness of all that was going wrong and might get worse.

Here are the top 6 lessons I think we as a nature-loving community have learned or should learn through our rollercoaster experience with COVID-19.

Madison Audubon photo