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Winter Wednesday- Mammals and Hibernation

Winter Wednesday
Week 9 Winter Mammals
1. Read chapter nine in Discover Nature in Winter. Mammals in general tend to be shy of humans. In the winter, it is even more difficult to observe mammals. The chapter suggests looking for signs of mammals instead like tracks and scat. Highlight ideas for your family to try this week while you are outdoors and looking for mammals.

2. Our family is going to review the chart showing different animal tracks on page 182 and 183. We might try sketching some of the tracks into our nature journal as a reference for future outdoor time. In our area, we often come across animal scat as we hike and we are going to familiarize ourselves with the various kinds of scat by studying the illustrations in this chapter.

For families wanting to participate that do not have the Discover Winter in Nature book, I will list a few simple nature study ideas that you can try with your family.

  • 1. Keep a record of animal tracks you have observed in the snow or mud. Record your findings in your nature journal along with a drawing, the date, the weather, the time of day, and the type of animal if you have identified it at this time.
  • 2. Compare a dog’s and a cat’s footprints in the snow or mud.
  • 3. Research an animal that hibernates and record what you learn in your nature notebook. You can also sketch your animal and what its tracks look like.

Here is a link that will help you out with animal tracks:
Animal Tracks at Beartracker
I think this is a fantastic online resource for nature study!

 

You might want to pull your copy of Fun With Nature out and read over the chapter titled: “Rabbits, Squirrels, and Chipmunks” and also “Tracks, Scats, and Signs”. I know a lot of us have this terrific resource on our shelves and we are not using it as much as we should.

Winter Wednesday Button

Ultimate Ebook Library @handbookofnaturestudy

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Evergreens: Not All are Pine Trees


The moon from last week….

So here is my biggest revelation of the week: Not all evergreens that I see in the winter are pines….some are firs. 🙂 Both pines and firs are conifers (cone-bearing) but you can tell them apart by looking at the way the needles grow. Pines have bundles of needles and firs don’t.

That is my very unscientific description and understanding. It is good enough for me right now to recognize that I shouldn’t call all evergreens “pine trees” or even all cone-bearing trees “pine trees”. Sometimes it takes me a long time to catch on to things.

We noticed that there were some branches strewn across our hiking trail this week. Here is the first one.

We think it is White Fir.

Here is the second one that we observed on the trail. There was quite a bit of it in small branches all over one section of the trail.

We think this one is the Douglas Fir.

On another note, we have some fun stuff going on at our nature shelf.

We were surprised this morning to observe that the forsythia branches and the twig from our tree study have all started to show signs of blossoming. We brought them inside last week to “force” them to grow earlier than they would outdoors. If you want to try it, here are some instructions:
Forcing Forsythia (or other woody plants like p. willows)

Here is the first of the forsythia blooms.

Here is an attempt to take a photo of the complete branch showing the blossoms that are bursting out this morning in the morning sunshine.

Here is the sweet gum twig.

Isn’t that the coolest thing ever? How amazing and beautiful this twig is as it starts to bud out with the leaves…I assume these will be the leaves. I will keep you posted.

What a great week it is shaping up to be for nature study! These sorts of impromptu studies are the best. We had the field guides out and the magnifying lens at hand to observe the details. We are now deciding that we want to make a bigger space for all our nature collections. I will share what we come up with in the weeks to come.

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Mammals on an Afternnon Drive…Birds Too

We decided to go for a long drive today to enjoy the very warm spring-like day. I was driving and observing as we went along that there were quite a few dead skunks along the road, more than usual. I started counting.

Here is our official count:

  • 7 skunks
  • 3 rabbits
  • 2 squirrels
  • 1 possum
  • 1 raccoon

All dead alongside the road.

Are there usually that many mammals to count? I have never noticed that many before but maybe my mind was just thinking about mammals since it is our focus right now.

We saw lots of cattle and horses on this drive as well….very much alive and enjoying the sunny day. Happy cows come from California…or so they say.

As the afternoon sun was fading, the deer started to be seen alongside the road. I was busy driving but my husband and son counted seven deer….one really big buck. In the past, both my husband and I have hit deer with our cars….actually, he has done it twice.

My husband told me today that his friend’s daughter not so long ago hit a bear on the road that we were driving on. I slowed down after that.

Just as a note to myself about the birds we identified today as we drove along and then hiked a little along the river:

  • Six red tail hawks and one other hawk that I couldn’t identify.
  • Two turkey vultures.
  • Vast amounts of snow geese…too many to number.
  • Canadian geese as well.
  • We also saw one gorgeous great blue heron in a dead tree alongside the Feather River.
  • Several gulls….white and gray.
  • Red winged blackbirds by the dozens.
  • Two flocks of crows in the trees.
  • White egrets in the trees.

Great day for nature study.

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Wednesday Walk in the Snow: Beavers and Jays

Winter Wednesday-Week 2 Snow

We haven’t had much snowfall in our area since last week so our plans to complete the snow melting measurement activity are on hold for the moment. We did observe something that the book talks about on page 28 and 29, Snow Melt and Trees.

“During the day, the tree absorbs heat from the sun. The tree radiates heat and melts the snow.”

You can see in these photos how this looks out in the woods.

Here is another photo that shows the melted snow very clearly. Right after we took this photo we saw a coyote over beyond the trees. He was hurrying past on his way to somewhere else….we did not see him again all day.


On my the right sidebar of my blog I have a photo of my summer hiking boots….now here are my winter hiking boots. These are so very comfortable and warm. Don’t they look like brand new? They are two years old! I just love LL Bean. ( I just looked up on the LL Bean website and I can’t find these particular boots there anymore….just in case you were going to ask.)

The snow was just right for snow boots. I was really glad we did not need the snowshoes today because they are a lot of work and I wanted to just relax. Next time I am going to bring them along because there is an area that I wanted to explore but the snow was just too deep. I stepped of the trail and sunk down to about mid-calf.

We stayed on the trail….isn’t this a welcoming little entrance to this part of the wilderness? (Don’t tell Brittney…this is where we saw the bear last fall.)


Several people emailed me about the beaver dam in the header of the blog. Yes, it is a real beaver dam that is along one of our regular hiking trails. I promised a few more photos to go along with the beaver story. The photo above is a good example of what a tree looks like that a beaver has worked on. This particular tree is pretty far from the creek so I’m not sure why they chose it but it is still sitting in the woods. You can tell how big a beaver is by how far up the tree he was working.


You can see if you look closely or click the photo to enlarge it that the rangers have come through and protected some of the tree trunks with wire to prevent the beavers from falling the trees. There are quite a few trees that look as if the beaver got started and then the rangers wrapped up the trunks to keep the tree intact.


The turn around spot on this hike was this beach. This is the beach we spend hours and hours at during the summer and fall. This is a favorite with locals so there are lots of tracks and paw prints in the snow. There were a few mallard ducks hanging around today as well as a very chattery squirrel. More on the squirrels in another post soon.

One more friend from our walk this time.

Mr. Steller’s jay is a glorious blue and even more striking against the winter’s gray. They have to be some of the most loud and squawky birds you can ever imagine but they are so pretty when they hold still for a photo. Click the link above and scroll down to where you can listen to the call of the Steller’s jay….squawk indeed.

That was our Winter Wednesday this week. We are going to make sure to remember to actually do the activities we planned from chapter two when it snows here next….maybe soon.

Winter Wednesday Button

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Winter Snow Hike: Joyful Refreshment

There is much to be said for a walk in the woods in the snow….no trails to follow and no one else to distract you. The crunch, crunch, crunch of the snow under your feet and the bite in the air that reminds you that it is winter. I know these woods well but something about the whiteness or the stillness captures me and draws me to go deeper and farther and find something new each time. You know by the tracks that someone has been there before you….human types and mammal types and probably some rodents too. That is okay since all they left behind are some prints and dents in the snow and you can choose to follow or you can choose to meander. We did a little of both.

We were alert to the many different kinds of tracks in the snow and it was fun trying to guess who they belonged to. It didn’t really matter if we were correct or not because it was fun to imagine who the creatures were and what they were up to. Tracks inspired talk of bears, foxes, rabbits, mice, coyotes, and beavers. It is a fun game to play as you walk through the snowy woods.

This was the most surprising find of the day…a beaver dam in the creek. We have seen evidence of a beaver here before with trees gnawed on and sometimes even a tree cut down but this dam was magnificent. Be sure to click the image to get a better look. You can really see it clearly now that the leaves are gone from the trees and bushes. This is almost the same spot that we saw a bear last fall when the salmon were spawning in this creek.

Have you ever seen something so colorful as this lichen? It really stands out against all the winter drab. Just beautiful.

I never fail to look up as we hike along and this was what I was given for the effort, a brilliant blue sky with fast moving clouds overhead. The trees were perfectly silhouetted as you looked across the horizon.

We had our eyes out for interesting things to discover and here are some little cones we found hanging on a bush.


Reflections have a way of creating a different dimension to a landscape. The stillness of the water made me feel peaceful and I took a few moments to say a little prayer of thanks to the one who created all these wonderful things for us to enjoy. What a gift…what a gift to enjoy as a family.

I told you on this afternoon we had the place to ourselves but there had been others before us. This area leads down to the lake but right through an eagle habitat and we decided to steer clear…are the eagles still here or do they migrate? I know, so many questions to answer. These tracks are probably all covered over by now since a storm blew in overnight.

This short video shows the creek where it is moving fast over the rocks. There were birds wading around in the water above this spot but we saw no real signs of life right here on the bridge.

Just so you know it wasn’t all peaceful and idyllic on this walk, one last photo of what happens when a teenage son nails his dad with a big snowball….a little of what my family affectionately calls “snow tussling“.

Boys will be boys. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Climbing Trees-No Weather to Speak Of

Still no “weather” to report from our house. The windows and doors are still wide open and the sky is clear. We have forecasts of some rain maybe this week so we are going to wait until then to take a weather study.

In the meantime, the boys and their father decided today was the day to climb a tree. We have one really big tree in our yard that is fairly easy to climb because the limbs are close together and there are so many of them. They took a ladder to get started but then climbed up from there.

This was the first time that I have noticed cones on the ground under this tree.


I grabbed the tree identification book and here is what we came up with.


Here is what we used to identify the tree….leaflet and cone.


It looks as if we have a Giant Sequoia in our backyard, right next to our deck.


This is my best attempt to take a complete photo of the tree showing our deck at the bottom. It is a really tall tree.

“The seed cones are 4-7 cm long and mature in 18-20 months, though they typically remain green and closed for up to 20 years; each cone has 30-50 spirally arranged scales, with several seeds on each scale giving an average of 230 seeds per cone.” and “Young trees start to bear cones at the age of 12 years.”
Wikipedia on the Sequoia

So what started out as tree climbing ended up with identifying our very own Giant Sequoia in our backyard. It was growing here when we moved in 21 years ago and I assume it was planted by the previous owner. It does provide great shade on our deck during the hot summer afternoons and the birds and our backyard squirrel like to use it for protection.

This tree has been hit by lightning once a long time ago in a really big storm. It sounded like something exploded in our backyard during the thunder storm and we went outside to see what it was and we saw a long black line on the trunk of the tree and it was smoking at the base. It was very memorable.

What an afternoon.

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More Reptiles to Identify: Arizona Style

I am still struggling with my disgust of reptiles. Lizards are becoming a bit more palatable but as far as snakes go, I’m still struggling.

Good thing for me that we saw mostly lizards on our trip to Arizona.

On pages 210 to 213 of the Handbook of Nature Study there are many lizards and their descriptions listed. I think on page 213 that number 7 looks surprisingly like the lizards we saw in the photo below.

I did recognize this reptile but only was able to capture his hind end as he scurried under a rock. He was definitely some kind of iguana.

These two photos were taken while we were at the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum. They had an enclosure where they used to have a bear but the bear has since been retired to a more comfortable place on the grounds. The enclosure did have these interesting, if not rather large, reptiles inhabiting it.

Climbing up the rocks

This guy was also at the museum and was making his way across the riparian habitat.

Now for something pretty to look at. I can only take reptiles for so long and then I need something colorful and beautiful to enjoy.

Close up of the spines

Are you proud of me? We are still working on identifying the reptiles for their nature journals but we are learning a lot along the way.

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American Hover Fly


This insect was hovering over the sweet alyssum in the pot on my back deck. I just happened to catch him hovering and eating the nectar. I have been fascinated with his hovering and had always suspected he was some sort of bee. After doing some research online, I discovered in fact that he is an American Hover Fly or Metasyrphus americanus. Adults eat nectar but the larva preys on other insects such as aphids.

On page 10 in The Handbook to Nature Study, under the heading of “The Uses of Scientific Names”, it says, “Disquieting problems relative to scientific nomenclature always confront the teacher of nature-study. My own practice has been to use the popular names of species, except in cases where confusion might ensue, and to use the scientific names for anatomical parts. However, this matter is of little importance if the teacher bears in mind that the purpose of nature-study is to know the subject under observation and to learn the name incidentally.”

So we now have a new purpose to our nature study: To know the subject under observation and not necessarily to name it. I am assuming the author means to not necessarily know its scientific name. I am no longer satisfied to just observe, I want to identify what I am looking at. Nature study has aroused in me a great curiosity to know more deeply the creation around me. Now I have a new friend, the American Hover Fly.