Bird & Nature Blog

Our Amazing Birds: White-Breasted Nuthatch

Our Amazing Birds: White-Breasted Nuthatch

A young farmer neighbor of mine, untrained in the niceties of ornithology but, like many countrymen, keenly observant of its facts, calls the white-breasted nuthatch “that upside-down bird.” No name could be more appropriate, for this nuthatch, at least during waking hours, spends fully as much time with its head lower than its tail as it does in a more conventional position. Why the bird seems to think no more about running headfirst down a vertical tree trunk than of climbing straight up it is doubtless its own affair. To us it looks fool-hardy and provocative of cerebral hemorrhages. But nobody has ever seen a nuthatch come to grief that way!

Photo by Monica Hall

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Rebuilding a Wetland

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On September 10, 2018, after many months of planning and countless meetings and discussions, something big began happening at Goose Pond. Two bulldozers, a large backhoe, and an excavator rolled in Monday evening ready to start moving thousands of cubic yards of soil out of the canary grass dominated wetland. For the next four days, LMS construction worked long hours creating seven wetland scrapes for Goose Pond Sanctuary.

Photo by Arlene Koziol

Madison Audubon earns national land trust accreditation!

Madison Audubon is a non-profit that works to acquire, steward, and conserve land – in other words, a land trust organization. Back in 2012, we made a bold decision to seek national land trust accreditation, a mark of distinction awarded to organizations meeting the highest national standards for excellence and land conservation permanence. This was no easy undertaking. Indeed, of roughly 500 Audubon chapters in the U.S., there is only one other chapter that has received this distinction. We're proud to say that Madison Audubon is now the second nationally-accredited Audubon chapter and among an elite group of other land trust organizations around the country that have received this recognition!

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One of these is not like the others

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One of these is not like the others

North America’s smallest falcon, the American kestrel, is getting a leg-up in south-central Wisconsin. Four orphaned kestrel chicks were discovered and brought in for rehabilitation, and placed into foster kestrel nests that allowed the chicks to be raised by wild mothers with nestlings their own age. This effort was done in partnership between Madison Audubon, Central Wisconsin Kestrel Research program, and Dane County Humane Society’s Wildlife Center.

Madison Audubon photo

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A snowy owl who almost made it back home

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In January 2018, a snowy owl near Arlington, WI was outfitted with a GPS transmitter and tracked by hundreds of scientists and community members. In April, he was found dead in Benton County, Minnesota. The story of “Arlington”, the snowy owl, is one of science, conservation, and community.

Snowy owls hatch and spend their summers and fall in the tundra of northern Canada, and migrate south in early winter, especially in years of high lemming populations when many young are raised. One particular snowy owl was six months old in December when he stopped to spend the winter near Madison Audubon Society’s Goose Pond Sanctuary and the UW Arlington Agricultural Research Station, 17 miles north of Madison. He was one of thousands of snowy owls that flooded into the northern United States and southern Canada during this snowy owl “irruption year”.

Photo by David Rihn