Pink Lady's Slipper

Finds

Today we sited a lot of new "stuff" since starting our journaling.  Some I wasn't so excited to see, some I definitely WAS excited to see.  Here's the list:

bluebird

ginger 

scorpion

black king snake

black widow spider 

pink lady's slippers

And from yesterday:

eastern turkey

Purple Finch

The 6-year-old son drew this.  The Mommy is sorta, kinda proud. 

We have a pair of nesting purple finches in a jasmine vine in the flower bed.  Every year they try to build a nest as close to our front porch as possible.  They usually try building on the top of the columns under our porch, and that never goes well, as we are in and out the door constantly which makes the birds really nervous.  This year they moved a little ways away from the front door, which suits all of us much better.

Intro To Nature Journaling

Today (April 19) was our first "official" day of nature journaling.  Prior to today, I feel like we've been dabbling in it, with aimless stabbing taking place.  But today, we jumped in, with a much more pointed direction and plan for consistency in what we'll be doing.  I'm pretty excited about this adventure.

Following Clare Walker Leslie's suggestion in her book, Nature Connection, we went outside for about 25 minutes this morning, simply listing the nature that we saw.  We will be doing this daily for one week.

Here's what we came up with:

Birds
Cardinal (male)
Crow
Blue Jay
Mourning Dove
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Purple Finch
Phoebe or Flycatcher (not sure, although leaning towards phoebe due to tail movement)
(4/20) Determined that it was indeed an Eastern Phoebe!
           Mockingbird
(4/21) Canada Goose
           Pileated Woodpecker (heard it only)
(4/23) Scarlet Tanager!  (Dear Son spotted it high up in the thickly-leafed trees, and yelled, "Cardinal!"  I               was about to congratulate him on the good find and identification when I realized it did not have the crest on its head, and it was even more vivid red than the cardinal, if that is even possible.  Then I saw his dark red-black wings and said, "We've got a good find."  :)

Insects
Crane Fly
Leaches Millipede  (I do not like these!)
Orchard Orbweaver (a beautiful green spider with a red-spotted belly, guarding a perfect web)
Six-Spotted Green Tiger (fluorescent green beetle)
Earthworm
Carpenter Bee
(4/20) Red-Spotted Purple Butterfly?
           Ladybug
(4/25) Aphids
          Ants
          Assassin Bug

Trees
Peach
Dogwood
Redbud
Ornamental Cherry
Tuliptree
Shagbark Hickory
(4/20) White Oak
           Long Leaf Pine?

Wildflowers
May Apple
Trillium
(4/20) Trillium
           Larger Blue Flag Iris
           Wisteria
           Forsythia
           Common Buttercup
(4/23)  Lyre-Leaf Sage

Reptiles/Amphibians
Rough Green Snake
Worm Snake (Both of these are currently captured and in containers on our front porch, thanks to Dear Son.)
(4/21) Ring Snake
           Brown Water Snake

Weeds/Grasses/Other Plants
Clover
Violet
Honeysuckle
Poison Ivy
Common Fleabane
"Lemon Leaf" according to kids, but don't know it's real name yet
Various Mosses
Wild Grape Vine
(4/20) Virginia Creeper

Cultivated Plants
Rosemary
Weigela (ending blooming season)
Clematis (deep purple, currently blooming)
Lilac (starting to bloom)
Star Jasmine
Pink Knockout Rose (blooming)
Snowball Bush (ending blooming)
Lavender

Fungus/Lichen
"mushrooms" on a dead, downed tree

Animals
Groundhog
Squirrel

As the week progresses, I will add to this list.  I'm thinking the following days will be more difficult, as we're quickly knocking out things that we know, and will now be identifying everything from our Field Guides or pictures on the web.    I cannot help but think about how our knowledge is about to greatly expand here very quickly!

(4/20 update) Today was a lot harder!  Yesterday we knocked out a lot of things that we knew without having to look them up.  Today we had to use the field guides for nearly everything, and even then were unable to identify probably half of what we saw.  Dear Daughter has no sense whatsoever about how to use a field guide, and I'm not much better off.  She did at least try, and when I opened the page to where the oaks were, she was able to figure out which one it was.  Dear Son likes to look at the pictures and learn all the details before he ever finds the actual live specimen.  When he finds a specimen, he can go straight to it in the book and then asks me to read what it says.  We will all learn a lot doing this!

(4/21 update) We spent the day at our "second home", which is a retreat center about 45 minutes from our house.  We were there with a large group, so didn't really go hunting anything down.  I sat on a large rock at the edge of the creek and watched the kids play in the water for awhile.  My son came up to me, and suddenly exclaimed "SNAKE!"  I jumped up, saw the snake curled up two feet from where I had been, and went and got my husband and the field guide.  Another man came along and caught the snake by the tail, got bit, and hoped it wasn't poisonous.  Ahhh!!!  That was the second snake.  As the day progressed, Dear Son found at least four other snakes, was given a salamander of some sort, and went on several other great hunts that turned up various other critters.  It was a good day.

(4/23 update)  What a chilly, windy day!  At only in the 50's, after having spring days already that felt more like summer, we bundled up in our winter jackets.  The unusual winds had the trees in our thick woods bending and swaying.  The leaves fluttered their silver underneaths into the bright sunshine.  It really was a beautiful day to wade into the woods!  We always wear our tall garden boots, as poison ivy is thick already.  Dear Son had his flashlight, looking into the rocky crevasses for snakes (none found, for once!), and I sported binoculars, the likes of which I have to really get any good at using.  My naked eye seems to prove more accurate at this point, but I do like to try out the "spectacles".  . . .  This wandering in the woods is so good for my soul.  I'm SO glad we're doing this!  I picked several different maple leaves that maybe one day I'll be able to identify.  For now, I did a rubber stamping of them in my nature journal, to refer back to later. I also picked one flower that I didn't know, brought it inside, and painted it.  (You can see that in the above post.)  It was an enjoyable time.

(4/25)  Yesterday was too cold for me.  ;)  (It was actually beautiful, but cool in the morning when we would have been outside.  So I copped out, and instead of nature journaling, we watched the live webcam from Cornell University's site of the red-tailed hawk.  Today was gorgeous, and found us back outside.  I've decided I need to invest in more than just children's field guides, as more than half of what we have around here is not in our books.  I can't identify much anymore.  So it will be leaf prints in our journal, waiting for later I.D.  

Lyre-Leaf Sage

I didn't know what this was when I picked it.  I brought it inside because it is surprisingly chilly and windy outside, and I drew it with pen then painted quickly with water color.  And then I figured out what it was.  :)

Scroll down to the next post to see what our finds for today were in the week-long journaling hunt we're doing in our woods.  Great find!

Identification

As you can see, the identification process is . . . stumping me.  If you know what any of the following are, I'd love to hear the answer!

#1.  This looks like some parasitic something, growing on the leaves of a tree in the woods. 

#2.  This one just makes me itch.  What's the caterpillar??? 

#3.  I think this is some kind of maple.  It is a sapling, so the bark isn't very helpful at this point. 

#4.  What kind of bee is on this common buttercup flower?

#5.  This pinecone was at the base of the tree you can see in the background.  I think it's a long leaf pine, but not sure.  The needles are probably 8 inches long, clustered at the end of the branch.

#6.  I think this is some kind of pea, but not sure.  

#7.  Boxelder beetle???  Otherwise, no idea.

Thanks for any expertise in identifying our finds for today!

Carpenter Bee

Today was gorgeous!  After eating lunch, my family and I took our camping cots out onto the front lawn to take a snooze, enjoy the sunshine and the beauty of just BEING outside, and to nature journal.  I recently got a set of watercolor "pats".  (I don't know really what they're called.  They're little squares, cakes? in a pan.  Dry.)  I also finally was able to watch a video on how you actually USE watercolors, and discovered that, viola!  You use mostly WATER, and very little paint.  Huh.  So after, arming myself with this helpful bit of information, I decided to give it a go.  

Drawing proved to be intimidating to me.  I have drawn a lot from looking at pictures, and I have drawn a bit here and there in nature, real-life.  But it's been STILL life.  For some reason, I got hooked on the idea of trying to draw a bee today, though, as I was observing them in my weigela shrub a few feet from where I lay on my cot.  So I spent a good deal of time just watching them before putting pencil to paper, and comparing what I saw with my Field Guide pictures.  Then I started in, frequently consulting both sources.  The bees were not at ALL cooperative with me, moving constantly.  I was determined to do this drawing live, though, and not from a photograph or the Field Guide.  So I watched and watched these guys.  While watching, I learned something interesting, too.  --  I always thought the bees went inside the flower to retrieve the nectar.  But these guys were stabbing their ??tongue?? through the flower's flesh and sipping the nectar out!  Novel!  When you're this big, I guess that's the only way to go!  

Anyway, with the help of my Field Guide, I identified these guys as Carpenter Bees, and not simply a bumble bee, as I had thought.

Oh, the things one learns when they sit still and observe!  I'm so glad I'm doing this!

My nature journal is small, maybe 8x8.  And it's just drawing paper, not intended for watercolor.  So I've got some wrinklage going on.  But I decided that for my first nature journal, I will keep this for learning and then get an appropriate one after this one is filled up.  This helps to keep me motivated, because I really want a big, nice one.  :)

By the way, I am HOOKED on these watercolors!  I had SO much fun doing this entry!  Next time I would not put the leaf coming out of the bee's back, but, this is all in the name of having fun while learning.

Beginnings

I have been a nature journaling wannabe for several years now.  I've slowly been collecting tools, reading books,  stalking blogs, and occasionally drawing something I see.  I have been aching to put more time into this, as I love learning about nature, and just spending time outside.  Sadly, I've felt like I needed an excuse to be outside.  Finally, though, excuses aside, I am making a concerted effort to take  --  make  --  that time, knowing that the rewards for myself and my kids will be huge!

So!  Off we go!  This blog will chronicle my journal entries, as well as my kids' on occasion.