where natural history meets art
We hope you are enjoying the turning of the year, by light and by calendar. We often find winter refreshing, an opportunity for useful reflection and a chance to plan and prepare.
Can’t do that all day though, so we turn to our feeders and see who else is here. In December, that included… Continue reading “Through the Window: December 2018”
October is great, because it’s the month of the Big Sit!. That’s a day when we sit around with Team Loonatics and look for birds. They do all the hard work: cooking, listing, watching, identifying. We host them and are happy. Their list of birds this year doesn’t quite match our viewing window list (below), since we can’t always see from inside what they see from outside. It’s great to see and hear them all.
Some of the more northerly species are returning! Continue reading “Through the Window: October 2018”
Let’s get ready to… MIGRATE! Every body is stocking up, either because they’re getting ready to launch themselves south or preparing for winter. Who’s getting ready? These birds! Continue reading “Through the Window: September 2018”
A warm and muggy month! Good for raising nestlings? Thanks to the sharp and patient eyes of one of our interns, we saw a few birds that are rarely spotted in our feeder area (although they can be heard in the nearby forest canopy on some of our bird walks).
Early birders continued their weekly walks this month. It’s such fun to go out with them or hear their stories afterward; each month is different. Those lists are generally recorded over on eBird. From the windows, we stick with the more well-recognized feeder and forest edge birds. Even here, there are often stories to be discovered. Continue reading “Through the Window: June 2018”
Holy mackerel, May is intense! Not to detract from our month-long-we-all-add-to-it Viewing Window list, but did you get to see the eBird lists too, from what has been seen and heard here? Did you see or hear some of the rich migrations? Enjoyed the predictions on Birdcast? What a month!
OK, back to our corner of Vermont: Continue reading “Through the Window: May 2018”
It’s April! Forget showers (there was a good bit of snow). And flowers? Pshaw, not yet. But birds! Bird list expansion (compared to last month, that is). Huzzah! Continue reading “Through the Window: April 2018”
Spring is … not yet happening. March birds included the classic winter species… :
We particularly loved seeing grouse in the crabapple this month—one day, we saw five! We also were pleased to host a delightful number of people for the Great Backyard Bird Count.
Birds noticed this month at our feeders and just nearby: Continue reading “Through the Window: February 2018”
From polar vortex to thaw to bare ground to new snow and back again. Nice bit of roller coastering weather!
Thank goodness for adaptations.