Meadowlark

We have been following a calendar of daily nature activities that I found at the blog Holy Experience. For my introductory post please click here.

Today's nature calendar task:

It's time for the Meadowlark.

We looked up the Meadowlark in our bird field guide and talked briefly about the fact that they probably live in a meadow. The next time we read the Burgess Bird book I will pick the chapter that has the Meadowlark. I'm not familiar with this bird, it's not one I have seen often.

Updates on past nature tasks:

Feb 28th: Who will see the first robin? We saw our first robin on March 4th. The kids are still very excited every time we see one. This shot is from our walk today.

March 2nd: Grow a clump of moss in a soup plate. Our moss is growing happily. I knew moss would need a lot of water. I watered it and watered it, but it didn't seem any happier than the moss that was still on the ground in the backyard. Finally it dawned on me that what the moss wanted was humidity. So I covered it with a glass bowl, and now it is starting to grow better. A mini terrarium on my table. I suspect that soon we will have lots of these "projects" around our house.

March 5th: Garden shrubs will bloom quickly indoors in water now. Here are our forsythia branches. Aren't they beautiful! The kids were surprised when the buds opened and yellow flowers appeared. They were expecting leaves. Our 'signs of spring' board from March 3rd is in the background.

March 8th: Get books on attracting birds. We did an internet search. One idea we found was to create a brush pile. All I had on hand was the dead stalks from my flowers that I hadn't trimmed over the winter. It looks a bit like a sloppy beaver or muskrat has moved into our yard. When I start pruning our shrubs I'll build a better brush pile. I suspect the gardening magazines will not be knocking on my door any time soon.

March 13th: Make a home for a bluebird. My husband built me a fabulous bird home and mounted it on the tree in our backyard. Now we just have to wait for a bluebird to move in.

As you can see, we have been having lots of nature fun. This nature calendar has been a wonderful tool. Most of the tasks do not take much time to complete, and it has generated a lot of excitement. We have been doing the tasks for a month now, and we are starting to develop quite a collection of projects to observe. I hope you'll join us in our nature calendar adventure!