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Earth Day and Mirth Day

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Earth Day is many things to many people but it has been and always will be a political event. While Gaylord Nelson and others created the day to celebrate the natural beauty and vitality of Earth and the steps then undertaken to protect it, another purpose was to mobilize the political will to take more decisive action to protect our environment and natural resources.

With the changed climate severely damaging our earth a bit more every day, we encounter lots of earnest advice to change our ways—for example, stopping or severely reducing our use of fossil fuels, meat, air travel, automobiles. I won't argue with those admonitions but joy is sometimes better motivation than duty.

Photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren

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Conservation Congress needs your voice

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PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE consider participating in the on-line Wisconsin Conservation Congress Spring Hearing and Elections. They begin (tonight!) at 7:00pm on Monday, April 12 and end at 6:59pm on Thursday, April 15, 2021. Visit this website to access the questions and submit your feedback.

Photo by Carolyn Byers

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A terrible idea.

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The WDNR Southwest Savanna Draft Master Plan released March 18, 2021, reports the DNR's recommendations and options for managing DNR lands in the part of southwest Wisconsin historically dominated by prairies and savannas. It includes all or parts of Lafayette, Grant, Iowa, Green, and Dane Counties. Much of the plan documents the importance of the prairies and savannas and emphasizes the need to preserve or restore those habitats which have declined dramatically for many decades.

Photo courtesy of WDNR

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Joining the Bird Names for Birds movement

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Birds are awesome. Some of the people they’re named for aren’t.

Birds should have their own descriptive names. And as of March 26, 2021, Madison Audubon joins 10 other organizations rallying behind the Bird Names for Birds movement, which pushes for birds with honorific names (like Henslow’s Sparrow and Cooper’s Hawk) to be renamed with names that describe the bird.

Madison Audubon is now an official supporter of Bird Names for Birds!

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A Year of Birds and Beginnings

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This week's post is a celebratory one, as the blog is approaching its very own bird-iversary. One year ago this week—on March 30th to be exact—this blog came to life with our very first entry, titled Look to the Birds.

And that's what we've done. Every week for fifty-two weeks. We've looked to the birds.

In an unprecedented year filled with uncertainty, fear, and loss, birds have been my solace. I hope you can say the same. Join me in this week's post to look back on our shared year of birds and beginnings, of adventures and growth, of mis-IDs and birding blunders, to see just how far we've come.

Photo by Caitlyn Schuchhardt