Bird & Nature Blog
A clutch of the latest stories from Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance
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.
Emily Dickinson's famous line—"Hope is the thing with feathers"—finds its way into many bird essays. But the news about the official extinction of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (and other species) reminds us that despair also can cloak itself in feathers.
Ivory-billed Woodpecker at nest, taken by Dr. James Tanner, at the Singer Tract in 1935. Photo: Science History Images/Alamy. See National Audubon’s article for more info and photos.
This month and today are cause for celebration. September is Public Lands Month and today is Public Lands Day (please see this link for the WDNR's announcement of the day). You'd think one or the other would do but public lands do deserve a lot of attention.
Madison Audubon photo
I took a break from the advocacy blog after the massive push to renew the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program this summer. The conservation community's official position is that we tried hard and that the Stewardship re-authorization was better than it would have been without that extraordinary effort on the part of many conservation organizations and thousands of citizens.
True but not true enough. The re-authorization is inadequate in funding and duration; and any anonymous member of the Joint Finance Committee can, in effect, veto many Stewardship grants. Incredible and incredibly sad.
Photo by Joshua Mayer
