Bird & Nature Blog
A clutch of the latest stories from Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance
Growing up in Arkansas, we had several informal state mottos. "Quid Pro Quo" for example—pretty self explanatory. Another, "Thank God for Mississippi" requires context. Whenever national rankings came out with measures of human well being in the realms of health, education, welfare, etc., Arkansas was always ranked 49th, saved from the bottom by Mississippi always being ranked 50th. I thought of that phrase upon hearing the report of last week's meeting of the DNR Board.
Photo by Arlene Koziol
Monday was a fun day at Goose Pond, one of the first days of seed collecting. The target species was wild lupine. Volunteers collected at Goose Pond and the Erstad Prairie, Madison Audubon’s land adjacent to the Schoenberg Waterfowl Production Area, north and east of Goose Pond.
Photo by Joshua Mayer
"Sumer is icumen in/ Lhude sing cucco" — for those of us with some British ancestry, that's the start of a song our ancestors would greet the summer in the 13th Century. It's charming, important to musicologists, and vaguely familiar to folks who remember Chaucer from their survey of English lit course. We in Madison Audubon would probably agree that the start of summer and any celebration thereof should include birds. Surprisingly, mercifully, and thankfully, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Board probably agrees.
Photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren
Swapping nature stories with kids is one of my favorite parts of each education program lesson. It’s a fun, loose, easy part of class that can be silly or serious. But the real reason I love it so much is because it gives me a little window into each kid’s relationship with nature. I can learn about what they’re noticing, what’s important enough to them to remember, and what they think is interesting enough to tell me. We learn how they feel about a sighting based on how they tell it: was the snake they saw scary or cool? Did they feel bad for the mouse, or happy that the hawk got to eat? Maybe both.
This article is part of Madison Audubon’s Spring/Summer 2022 Newsletter. Read the full newsletter here!
Photo by Carolyn Byers / Madison Audubon
