Bird & Nature Blog

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A Happy Home for Trout, Sculpins, Yellowthroats, and Flycatchers

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Time for some good news. Please see this link that will lead you to the news of the latest Dane County acquisition: 160 acres just south of Verona west and north of the intersection of STH 69 and River Road.

The press release focuses on Badger Mill Creek, the Sugar River, trout, flood control, and water infiltration, all important and in the context of this news, happy topics. Please note that the County has committed to restore almost all 160 acres to prairie. That's why the future management of the property will help protect streams and groundwater and mitigate floods but think of our grassland bird friends. A happy, happy home in their future.

Photo by Arlene Koziol

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Twitching, Pishing, and Dipping, oh my! Learning the Birding Lingo

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If you’ve started birding during the pandemic, you’ve probably been going it solo—without the company of fellow birders on a group walk or field trip. Thankfully birding is perfectly suited for this! You can social distance, explore nature at your own pace, and enjoy the meditative benefits that come with the hobby. But at some point, you’ll likely find yourself interacting with the larger birding community—whether locally or online—and you might find that you’ve been missing out on some birder-to-birder socialization.

Birding, like all hobbies, comes with its own culture. Learning the language that some birders use in the field can help you discover more about the hobby and how to participate in it responsibly, but also help you have more fun and connect with other birders over shared experiences.

This week’s Entryway to Birding blog brings some context to some of the stranger terms you might hear in the field. So if you’ve been wondering what it means to “dip” on the sighting of a “vagrant” bird, read on! This week is for you.

Photo by Caitlyn Schuchhardt

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Teaching Outside: Outdoor Routines

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Teaching Outside: Outdoor Routines

In our last blog post, we discussed some tips for getting ready to take your students and lessons outside this coming school year. Now it’s time to think about the importance of creating routines for your students in your outdoor classroom, and we will leave you with some of our favorite ideas for routine-building activities.

Establishing outdoor routines with your students can help them engage in the natural world and provide structure for outdoor lessons. Providing consistent structure helps ease the transition out of and back into your indoor environment. Students will know what to expect from their time outside, and they will learn how to guide themselves from one activity to the next.

We will also include some ideas for transferring these routines to an online learning format as many schools are starting the school year virtually. Nature is a great way to connect with kids even when you cannot all be outside together, and you can set up outdoor learning routines for your students to do as they are able off-screen and at their own homes.

Madison Audubon photo

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Tips for Tricky Bird IDs: Shorebird Edition!

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Identifying birds is hard. No matter the species, no matter the time of year—it’s a challenge. The right bird but the wrong lighting conditions can fool even an expert birder, but us newbies? Oof, sometimes it feels like we don’t even have a chance.

Every season, it seems like there are new arrivals destined to fool us, again and again. Right now, it’s shorebirds. In the few months that they’ve been gone, it feels like everything that I learned about shorebird ID migrated north with them. And unfortunately, it doesn’t look like my shorebird knowledge made the return trip, so I’ve had to do some studying up!

In this week’s Entryway to Birding blog, I’m going to share some of the most helpful shorebird ID tips I’ve picked up along the way. I’ll also talk through some side-by-side comparisons of some of our most common, yet confusing, shorebirds.

Let’s get started!

Photo by USFWS Northeast Region

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Getting Ready to Teach Outdoors

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Getting Ready to Teach Outdoors

There are a wide-range of benefits to teaching outside, and we are here to help you prepare your students and yourself for the learning that awaits in your natural environment.

The biological realities of living with COVID-19 is pushing our society to rethink and redesign the spaces we inhabit. Practicing outdoor learning can be one resource to draw upon as we change our education system to rely on safe social practices.

Here are some ideas for everyone, in all areas of the education system, to think about before you venture outside with your students.