It’s that time of year again! Wildflower season is upon us and it may just be the topic that your children will really enjoy as you take your summer nature walks. Who can help but notice the colors of summer when they start to bloom? Every habitat has something to offer before the season passes.
Use the ideas in the link below to take a closer look at a few of your wildflowers of summer. After you make some observations, you can create a nature journal page for each flower. Keep your study simple and fun this summer and you’ll be sure to make some fond wildflower memories for your children.
You’ll also find a complete list of wildflower nature study lessons (for every flower in the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock) here on this link.
In addition, you can use any of the three Outdoor Hour Challenge wildflower ebooks to learn more about wildflowers not included in the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock.
You may also be interested in reading this entry that features wildflowers and nature study:
I decided to observe the first day of summer by taking a tour of our yard to look for interesting things to note. First of all, the temperatures have been cool again…really cool at 33 degrees when I get up in the morning. I haven’t lost any of our plants yet to the cold temperatures so I’m hoping they will continue to grow.
Our transplanted sunflowers are looking good in their new box. I think we may have over planted but my husband just can’t bear to thin the seedlings. I’m dreaming of the colorful flowers to come. The only thing to be concerned about are the deer that may somehow get inside our fence and eat the flowers like they’re at a salad bar. It’s happened before!
I don’t think I have mentioned that the sunflowers we are growing come from Renee’s Garden. I have once again received some complimentary seeds from them to use in my garden.
We’re blessed with an abundance and variety of wildflowers in our yard this year. Partly because we have kept the deer out and mostly because I convinced my husband to let a few areas just grow wildly. This has revealed a number of plants we didn’t know we had growing along the edges like the penstemon, the goosefoot violets, and the salsify.
Along with the increase in flowers, there are many more insects to observe. Right now there’s an insect that is rolling itself up in our aspen tree leaves.
We have ground squirrels that are burrowing into our landscaping berms. They are trying to tunnel their way over to the birdfeeder. Our dogs then take the opportunity to dig the tunnels out and chase the squirrels away. This is a problem because they unearth so many of our newly planted flowers in the process. I’m trying to resolve this problem without harming any flora or fauna.
Chickadee
The babies are all hatching in our nests and nesting boxes. There have been a few casualties along the way but I think for the most part the birds are thriving and it has been a successful year of supporting the birds in our habitat.
On a more serious note, we almost had a tragedy involving our puppy and mushrooms growing in our yard. We didn’t realize we had any mushrooms until I started looking carefully when Sierra started acting strangely. She was stumbling around, very agitated, and drooling. I found the mushroom near where she had dug up a small tree stump in our backyard. We rushed her to the vet’s and they were able to get her stabilized with fluids and oxygen. They tried to induce vomiting but were not successful. But, in the end, after a long and scary night, she came out the other side and seems to be recovering. We were very relieved that we caught it in time to get her help and that she’s a strong, healthy puppy.
PLEASE check your yard for mushrooms. Doing more research on this topic, I’ve learned that mushrooms are a common cause of poisoning for dogs. You can bet I will be mighty vigilant from now on and pluck any mushrooms up and throw them away as soon as I see them.
We’re looking out over the next couple months with anticipation for all the summer things we want to do while the weather is warm.
What did you do for the first day of summer?
Here’s a link to the original challenge for many ideas and printables to use as part of your early summer weather study: Outdoor Hour Challenge – Summer Weather
In complete honesty, I’ve spent every available minute this month outdoors enjoying the beauty and unexpected variety of life that seems to have been drawn to our yard. It’s very true that if you create a natural space that provides shelter, food, and water, the living creatures will come to visit.
Birds – over 20 kinds!
Insects – mostly bees, butterflies, mosquitoes, snakeflies, gnats, and ants
The effort to create an inviting environment for nature to come to us has been worth every minute and achy muscle. We’re excited to see what the rest of the summer brings to us!
Here are some nature highlights from our month.
We started the month off with a family paddle down the Little Deschutes River. The sky was amazing! It doesn’t get much better than this when you’re out for a smooth water ride: the wildflowers were blooming, the birds were visible (including about a hundred cliff swallows), and the river all to ourselves.
Everywhere I looked this month I spotted a colorful wildflower. I’m keeping a list in my nature journal of all the flowers we see and it’s getting rather long. My favorite flower of the month is the wild blue iris. The meadow behind our house came alive with irises for about a week. They stand just above the grass so it looks like a sea of lavender-purple.
As I have shared here before, we don’t live in a place that is highly favorable for growing a traditional vegetable garden. Instead, I’ve opted to grow fast germinating flowers and some potted herbs. Everything is starting to really shoot up with our warmer weather and I’m anxious to see how they fare over the next few months.
We’ve been busy transplanting native plants to our newly created garden berms. Each time I find a good candidate, I try to observe the growing conditions so that I can put the transplant where it has a good chance of taking hold. I’ve moved lupine, salsify, violets, columbine, and grasses. It’s all a great experiment to see what does well and what we can move in the future.
I’ve observed so many pollinators this month in our garden! Mostly bees, but also butterflies have come to land on our flowers. This is a great success for us because we’re thinking a lot about the design of the different areas of our yard to be more pollinator friendly.
On that note, here’s an image of our freshly sprouted wildflower garden that we seeded a few weeks ago. We’re taking a gamble that we can get these plants established before the fall frosts come. If we are successful, this should reseed itself each year.
Let me set the record straight. I am not a fisherman. But, I am married to one. This month the season opened on our river behind our house and we were out there several evenings walking and fishing. We had all the boys with us on one of those nights and that was the night my husband caught THE biggest rainbow trout we have ever seen. Look at my hubby’s face…joy! In the spirit of fair play, he released this big daddy back into the river to live a little longer. This is why I love him so very much….he knows the nature lover in me admired that fish’s beauty and freedom more than I would have a few delicious bites of trout.
Now for a couple of pages from my nature journal.
There are so many wildflowers growing on our property this year after the rains of May and early June.
I could call this the “super bird list” since it has so many birds and the addition of a new bird to add to our life list.
I’ve been eager to spot a porcupine in the habitat behind our house but have been unsuccessful so far. But, we have seen two dead porcupines on the road near our house. I stopped to look at one of them up close since he wasn’t run over but just bumped. This was a first for me to see a real porcupine this intimately and to see the quills and the fur. My admiration grew for porcupines after learning about their unique features and then having the opportunity to see one in real life. This is how advanced preparation is beneficial!
Are you eager to see the new year plan for the Outdoor Hour challenge for 2019-2020? I’m going to be posting a blog entry soon that outlines the plans for the next two years. If you subscribe to my blog, you won’t miss it!
Use the discount code SUMMER5 for $5 off an Ultimate Naturalist Membership. This will give you access to all of the ebooks, newsletter, and printables available only to members. Your membership is good for one year from the time of purchase. Don’t wait until September to purchase your membership!
I’ve been posting on my Instagram account (outdoorhourchallenge) the monthly list of birds we observe from our window and in our backyard. But, it appears I haven’t really talked about our bird visitors for some time here on the blog. So in conjunction with or instead of the Baltimore oriole nature study from last week, I’ll be sharing some of our bird stories and the list too!
As you can see from the list, we had a huge variety of birds visit during the month of May.
Birds that Visit the Feeders
Northern flicker
House finches – They are seen in the feeder but also on the lawn as they eat the puffs of dandelion seeds that get left behind by the mower.
California scrub jays
Red-winged blackbirds
Pygmy nuthatches
Mountain chickadees – We have two nesting boxes with chickadee nests. I saw a mama bird fly out of the box, land on the sidewalk, pick up some ants, and then fly back up to the nest. What a good mama!
Yellow-headed blackbirds – I’ve learned the sort of mechanical sound of these colorful birds that will sit high up in our pine trees. They visit the feeder occasionally. Here’s a link to what they sound like: All About Birds.
Evening grosbeaks
Western bluebirds – We have a nesting box full of bluebirds in our yard!
Black-headed grosbeaks
Hairy woodpeckers
Steller’s jays
Western tanager – This is a new bird to our list! It’s such a beautiful and colorful bird that appeared one morning. Then, by afternoon, we had 5 males and 2 females at our feeders. I haven’t seen them in a few weeks so I guess they have moved on.
Rufous hummingbirds – They seem to have come and gone. I anticipate that they’ll return again soon.
Birds that Eat under the Feeders
Mourning doves
Brewer’s blackbirds
American robins – We have a nest up on our bbq shed. The mama very dutifully sits on the nest day after day. I looked it up and incubation is 12-14 days so she must be getting close to hatching the babies.
White-crowned sparrows
Dark-eyed juncos
California quail
Birds that Fly By
Tree swallows – There is a swallow nest in one of our nesting boxes. I love watching the swallows fly and dive and swoop in my yard as they eat mosquitoes! I wish they would eat them all!
Osprey
Snipe
Canada goose
Mallard ducks – There’s a duck family with about a dozen babies on the pond behind our house. There is nothing sweeter than a little duckling.
Common raven
Turkey vultures
Great blue herons – We observed three herons flying behind our house a few nights ago. That’s a record number of heron being seen all at one time.
Cooper’s hawk – He is a fierce predator and we’ve seen him chasing birds from our feeder several times. He is fast and flies so agilely.
Is your family looking for a resource to use to learn more about your backyard birds? You should take a look at my Learning About Birds ebook that is available to both Ultimate and Journey level members here on the Handbook of Nature Study.
Here are the specifics:
This 65 page digital ebook has 8 challenges and supplemental activities that will help you learn more about your local birds using the Handbook of Nature Study as well as the book, Backyard Birds. (See the Amazon.com store for the bird related resources.)
There are 6 notebooking pages included in the ebook. Two of these are general bird study pages that can be printed multiple times to meet your family’s needs.
Full color photos of every bird included in the ebook.
Additional information on birdfeeders, bird seed, nature table ideas, life lists, field guide help, and online identification.
There is enough material in this ebook to provide 8 weeks of bird study or more depending on how long you take to complete each challenge. Every challenge has more than one bird – see list of birds included below.
The ebook contains a chart that links every bird discussed in the Handbook of Nature Study (the book) to a challenge here on the website. This chart will help you find the bird challenges found in other OHC ebooks as well as the corresponding notebooking pages (if available).
Note: If you’re on the west coast, look for the Bullock’s oriole for your study instead. Information and a link are in the original challenge in the archive post linked below.
The Baltimore oriole is a gorgeous bird! I’ve never seen one in person, but someday I hope to see one during my travels. This is one reason we can study birds or other nature topics we don’t expect to find in our local area. Gathering facts and knowledge ahead of time prepares us for the time we stumble upon something new or unexpected.
Click the link below to see the original challenge in the archives or if you’re a member here on the Handbook of Nature Study, you can open the Summer Nature Study Continues ebook (linked below) for the lesson, the notebook pages, and the images.
Both the bird and the nest would make awesome subjects for a nature journal page. This challenge can also be all about differences in bird nests using the links in the original challenge.
If you want to purchase the Summer Nature Study Continues ebook so you can follow along with all the notebooking pages, coloring pages, and subject images, you can join the Ultimate or Journey Membership Levels. See the Join Us page for complete information. Also, you can view the Summer Nature Study Continues – New Ebookannouncement page for more details.
Use the discount code SUMMER5 for $5 off your Ultimate Naturalist Library membership and you’ll have access to the Summer Nature Study Continues ebook and the Brook and Stream Nature Study notebook page along with 20 other ebooks and many, many more printables!
The Outdoor Hour Challenge for caddisflies is a great opportunity to take a creek walk. Make sure to watch the video linked above to get an idea of what to look for while you’re exploring your creek. You’ll also want to make sure to keep your eyes out for water striders too, since they may be much easier for your children to spot on the surface of the water.
Use the archive link below to get prepared for your Outdoor Hour time and then enjoy a day at the creek!
Members here on the Handbook of Nature Study may wish to print out the Brook and Stream Nature Study notebook page in the printables library. This activity would be a great complement to your caddisfly/creek day.
If you want to purchase the Summer Nature Study Continues ebook so you can follow along with all the notebooking pages, coloring pages, and subject images, you can join the Ultimate or Journey Membership Levels. See the Join Us page for complete information. Also, you can view the Summer Nature Study Continues – New Ebookannouncement page for more details.
Use the discount code SUMMER5 for $5 off your Ultimate Naturalist Library membership and you will have access to the Summer Nature Study Continues ebook and the Brook and Stream Nature Study notebook page along with 20 other ebooks and many, many more printables!
Summer nature study can be as easy and casual as you need it to be! There are no rules to completing the Outdoor Hour Challenges and if you want to pick and choose a few of the nature study topics from the archives, feel free to jump around to areas of interest in your family.
Make sure to mark your summer calendar with one or two of the year long study summer season ideas below!
Now available in the Ultimate and Journey level memberships:
Watermelon Nature Study and First Day of Summer Notebooking Pages
Watermelon Nature Study Notebook Page: Use this page along with a fun afternoon of eating watermelon to make close observations of the inside of a watermelon. Look for the seeds, the rind, coloration of the outer skin. This is a perfect hot summer afternoon activity.
First Day of Summer Notebook Page: It is coming up fast! Plan a first day of summer nature study session to make some observations and then sketch a few things you find of interest.
(See the end of this post for more information on how you can become a member.)
Note: If you have any subjects you would like me to create nature notebook pages for, please let me know in a comment here on the blog or in an email: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com
Print a complete list of printables available in the Ultimate and Journey level memberships by clicking the button above.
Use the discount code NATURE5 for $5 off an Ultimate Naturalist Library membership!
This week we’re starting to work through the Nature Study Continues – Summer! I invite you to join us for a fantastic series of nature study plans with the Outdoor Hour Challenge.
Now that it’s spring, it is so exciting to be starting off the series with a colorful garden flower.
“We call it bachelor’s button; but in Europe it is called the cornflower, and under this name it found its way into literature….Their tubes flare open like trumpets, and they are indeed color trumpets heralding to the insect world that there is nectar for the probing and pollen for exchange.”
Handbook of Nature Study
Use the suggestions in the Handbook of Nature Study linked below to take a look at some garden flowers this week. If you have access to the bachelor’s button, learn more in depth about the composite flower using Lesson 131 in the Handbook of Nature Study.
If you want to purchase the Summer Nature Study Continues ebook so you can follow along with all the notebooking pages, coloring pages, and subject images, you can join the Ultimate or Journey Membership Levels.
We had a tease of spring before the cold temperatures crept back in and the rains came pouring down. My friend keeps track of the rainfall numbers and we’re on track for a record breaking year as far as inches of rain. Here in Central Oregon we have a fairly dry climate, some call it the High Desert because of the low rainfall and dry air. You wouldn’t think so right now with the water standing in our yard and the rivers running very high. I’m dreaming of the long, warm summer days.
In the meantime, we jump outside when the sun is out and work on the garden and get out to observe all the amazing things we have in our area.
Here are some nature highlights from our month.
We have two pairs of tree swallows nesting in our yard again this year. We’ve observed them going in and out of the boxes early in the morning and then later they take off to swoop and dive out over the river. They sometimes come back to sit on the fence in the sunshine. They are such graceful and pretty birds and I’m so pleased they are nesting here again.
There’s also a nest up on the back of our bbq house. I noted some dried grasses on the ground behind the shed and wondered where they came from. On investigating it further, I looked up to see a big nest up on the top of the wall. The kind of bird has yet to be determined.
What a fantastic surprise to look outside the other day and see the colorful Western tanager at our bird feeder! There ended up being five males and two females that were enjoying the suet feeder.
We braved the weather to get in a hike at Smith Rock State Park on a weekday afternoon. It’s a very popular place on the weekends, so my aim was to get there on a day and time when we wouldn’t have so many other people on the trail. Success!
There were so many wildflowers to see along the trail and there were lots of birds too! My favorite flower of the day was most definitely the arrowleaf balsamroot that was growing along the ridge of the canyon. There was quite a display of color!
Now for a couple of pages from my nature journal.
I attempted to draw a scene from the hike. The water coming over the dam from the lake and the resulting rainbow in the spray was one of my favorite moments to capture as a reminder of this day with my daughter on the American River in California.
My son was out hiking behind our house in the evening and he spotted a slow moving animal in the distance. As he got closer, he first thought it was a beaver but when it climbed a tree he realized it was in fact a porcupine! I still haven’t seen it, even though I’ve been trying to keep my eyes open for it when we’re out in the evenings. This page is the result of my research in the hope that I will soon spy my very own porcupine.
I’m still playing catch up in my nature journal so hopefully I’ll have a few more pages next month to share. In the meantime, if you want to look at the page on my website with hundreds of nature journal ideas, please feel free to use them as inspiration.
There are many, many nature journal ideas included in the archives of the Handbook of Nature Study newsletters. If you have any level of membership, make sure to download the newsletter index to make finding a topic easy.
