Bird & Nature Blog

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Birds, Beauty, and Not Too Many of Us

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With proper respect for social distancing, I hope many of you are able to get out and experience what nature can offer. We in Madison Audubon and other conservation organizations talk, plan, raise money, volunteer, and finally spend hours and hours in the field restoring parts of nature. Time to remember that nature can restore us.

Some of our favorite places to experience nature — state and county parks, for example — might be drawing crowds that push the social distancing limits. Here are two suggestions for off the beaten track lands that will be glorious to visit and not too crowded.

Photo by Joshua Mayer

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Bird Your World

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Welcome back to our Entryway to Birding blog! We are another week closer to spring and new birds are arriving in Madison by the day. Common loons are diving on Lake Monona. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers are back drilling their holes. Golden-crowned kinglets are flitting fast about. Our daily schedules may be thrown to the wind, but the rhythm of the seasons is still a constant—and there is comfort in that.

Last week, I wrote about the joy, the comfort, the wonder of birds—and how watching them can help us feel more connected to the world around us. This week, I’m going to explore the places that connection can take you.

Because the truth is … birds are just the beginning.

Photo by Caitlyn Schuchhardt

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Streaming Birds

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Streaming Birds

Spring is sprung and our bird friends are oblivious to our anxiety. Their beauty and vitality can take us out of ourselves for precious rejuvenating hours.

How about a new place of many of you to look at some of our most interesting birds and some other amazing creatures? Try spring creeks!

Much of Madison Audubon's territory lies in Wisconsin's Driftless Area and holds a resource that is quite rare globally: spring creeks. A spring creek is spring fed; as important, the source of those springs are sandstone and limestone aquifers that confer wonderful productivity to the water.

Photo by Joshua Mayer

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Look to the Birds

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Do you know that feeling you get when you look at the stars on a clear night? When you stand alone, in silence, with a whole universe twinkling above you? Such a vast array can make us feel small—minuscule, even—but connected to the world in a deeply intimate way.

Do you know that feeling? That deep sense of awe, of wonder, of connection that swells in your soul?

That’s how birding makes me feel.

Photo by Monica Hall

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A DIY bird walk at Lake Farm County Park

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On March 18, 2020 Madison Audubon made the tough decision to cancel all field trips through May 2020 to protect our community from the spread of COVID-19. However! Birds bring so much joy to life, and birding is a great activity you can do independently or with members of your household, so we wanted to provide you with a resource for recreating some of the field trips on your own.

Let’s start with the one scheduled for early April, originally led by Patrick Ready, local bird guru and pottery-making extraordinaire. Pat put together this DIY bird walk at Lake Farm County Park. Thank you Pat, and happy birding!

Photo by Phil Brown