It’s the fall seed harvest time of the year. Most days, after spending time in the prairie harvesting native plant seeds that we will sow this winter, I emerge covered in a multitude of seeds of various shapes and sizes. And if I am covered in seeds, I’m thinking that perhaps the bison grazing the…
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I love smelling flowers. I’m sure there are oodles and oodles of articles and scientific journals describing in great detail the smell of this flower, the fragrance of that flower, and all the chemical compounds that go into making those aromas. But there is a limit to what words can do. Sometimes…
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My ninety-year-old neighbor used to tell me that he was going out fishing… not catching, but fishing. It’s about the experience, he’d tell me. And that is how it is with me and birding… it’s about the experience. Attempting to see some birds—sometimes being able to watch and identify them, and…
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December and January are ‘a visiting time’ – a time to escape the chill of winter and explore new spaces in far-away places, or to travel to see friends and family in old familiar haunts and catch up on the year that was. It’s also a visiting time for sparrows, and my grandfather always told me that…
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October is loud and raucous on the Kankakee Sands prairie. It can also be dark and ominous. In the early morning, you can hear them long before you see them. Off in the distance is a lone tree or perhaps a small cluster of trees. Their branches beginning to tremble. Growing ever louder, a…
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On this chilly May morning, I’m bundling up for a pre-dawn excursion. With binoculars round my neck and bird book in hand, I meet up with other Kankakee Sands staff and volunteers for our annual Kankakee Sands Bird Survey in the bison pasture. We are looking and listening for all the birds that…
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Well, shucks, try as I might, I have not yet been successful in seeing a northern shrike at Kankakee Sands. Even though more than 450 beautiful bird species have been documented in Indiana over the years, this winter, I had my sights set on just one—the clever northern shrike. Classified as a…
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Twenty-five years ago, Kankakee Sands wasn’t. It wasn’t a prairie, it wasn’t home for a herd of 100+ bison, it wasn’t managed with fire, and it wasn’t visited by families and friends. It simply wasn’t. But today, it is! This very December marks the 25 th year that the Indiana Chapter of The Nature…
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Without a doubt, September is the month of the monarch. I am loving all the monarch photos that people are posting to social media and sending to me via text and email. The photos of the brightly colored, seemingly perfect monarchs are stunning. With their bold and bright, orange and black wings…
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Nature isn’t always what it seems —a chatty little grasshopper sparrow taught me that. For the first ten or so years that I worked at the Kankakee Sands Nursery, I was always looking down, either at the native plants that I was planting into the soil or at the seeds that I was harvesting for our…
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