CANCELLED February Bird Monitoring Walk

Northern Cardinal female. ©2011 Laura Waterhouse

This event has been cancelled. Hope to see you next month!

Join our monthly monitoring walk to record birds at the Museum’s trails, forest, and meadow. Learn something new, share what you know, or both!

All birders —current, experienced, newbie and would-be— welcome! Most fun for adults, older children.

Please bring your own binoculars and dress for the weather. We recommend bringing tick repellent (in most seasons) and a water bottle.

Max: 12 people

Outdoors

If the walk fills, we’ll have a waitlist; we also offer these bird monitoring walks the last Saturday of every month.

(Photo: Female Northern Cardinal. Used by permission of the photographer.)

Through the Window: December 2023

Wood carving of a Northern Cardinal by Bob Spear. The bird is perched on a bare, slightly branched log. Its body faces the viewer, but it is looking to the viewer's right. The carving is outside (for the photograph), and bare fall trees and leaf-covered ground can be seen in the background.
Northern Cardinal (male); wood carving by Bob Spear

December was a bit wet this year. We were fine (still watching how the streams flow around and under our various bridges, of course). People seemed to be enjoying staying in Gale’s Retreat, and we certainly have enjoyed our walks in the woods to check on it before and after the guests.

One heavy wet snowfall  took out more main branches from the crabapple tree. We’ll see how the Ruffed Grouse adapt to that.

December Bird List

Continue reading “Through the Window: December 2023”

January Bird Monitoring Walk

Black-capped Chickadee and Dark-eyed Junco in winter. The Chickadee is perched on a half-fallen dried goldenrod stem on the left; the Junco is underneath he stem on the right. There are some forsythia stems in the background and snow covers the ground. Digiscoped iPhone photo by K. Talmage and used by permission.

Join our monthly monitoring walk to record birds at the Museum’s trails, forest, and meadow. Learn something new, share what you know, or both!

All birders —current, experienced, newbie and would-be— welcome! Most fun for adults, older children.

Please bring your own binoculars and dress for the weather. We recommend bringing tick repellent (seasonally) and a water bottle.

Max: 12 people
Free, suggested donation $10

Register for Walk

We are trying a new way to register with a local provider; registration links should open in a new tab/window.

Outdoors

If the walk fills, we’ll have a waitlist; we also offer these bird monitoring walks the last Saturday of every month.

Photo of Black-capped Chickadee and Junco in winter. Photographed at the Museum by Museum staff.

Through the Window: November 2023

Ruffed Grouse in leafless crabapple tree.
Ruffed Grouse in leafless crabapple tree.

November is often pretty quiet; we get wrapped up in the Race, with working indoors with our Annual Appeal, with staff getting some breaks for holidays. The birds don’t care!

It’s an amusing treat to watch the Ruffed Grouse reach for each small decorative crabapple fruit, dried and frozen though they may be.

November Bird List

Continue reading “Through the Window: November 2023”

Results for Race Around Birds 2023

Congratulations to the walkers, runners, supporters, and volunteers of the 2023 Race Around Birds!

Three runners coming uphill toward the viewer. They are on a gravel trail rising from a creek, with evergreens and other trees behind them and to their left and right. Other tall, autumn-dried plants are on the sides of the trails.We continued our tradition of offering both “virtual (self-timed)” racing option and “in-person race day” option. People could run or walk, as they chose. We are pretty impressed!

Like last year, we had 31 people register, 10 of whom chose the “self-timed” option (not all of them submitted their times to us; that’s fine too). Two people ran both self-timed and on race day; 4 people registered for race day but did not run that day (they may have run earlier?).

We did combine the results in the table below. The official results are those from Race Day, November 4th (R). Italics denote self-timed runners (V). Continue reading “Results for Race Around Birds 2023”