Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

Now with a strange title like that, you have to be wondering: "What on earth is this guy talking about?!" What I'm referring to is the intoxicating smell that wafts off of a bluegill sunfish after having played it from the water and into the hand. Fishing is filled with many interesting smells. They range from the neglected soft plastics slowly oozing into a indeterminate mass at the bottom of a tackle box to the powdery outside of trout "marshmallows" in their highlighter pinks and greens. It even extends to the often noxious baits used by catfish aficionados to beguile a large channel cat from the depths of a muddy river. There are so many natural smells to choose from as well. The pond I visited was located at Skaneateles Conservation Area just up the road from Marcellus. As I exited the car, the scent of honeysuckle and roses brimming with honeybees filled the air. The stick-in-your-nose smell of dried grass and soil drifted by as I started up ...

The sun is slowly rising over the nearby hills before I leave for work. Outside on the street, cars drive by regularly, but with little fanfare. In the spruces by our new apartment window, starlings jeer and chatter, while a squirrel hops towards a leafless tree, seeking shelter in its branches. As of this weekend, Alison and I will have been in our new apartment in Marcellus for about three weeks and we are loving every minute of it. The most noticeable feature of this small town is how quiet it is. Such quiet is palpable and greatly welcomed and calms our souls from the bustle and anarchy present along James Street. Clearly, we are well suited to the quiet small town life we were accustomed to back home in Massachusetts. Instead of hearing the wail of sirens and muffled arguments of neighbors, we now hear the gentle hum of a town clearly content with a comforting touch and small scale commerce. On weekends, the church bells ring at noon and six o' clock, while people walk and...

Sycamore in the Stony Brook I feel like every once in a while you can appreciate nature in small doses. Nature has become big and that's not just because it's marketing team got better (we can thank National Geographic for that certainly). People wanting to "experience" the great outdoors, buying organic food, life listing rare and unusual species, hunting locavores (as in locavores hunting for wild food, not Ted Nugent's third favorite thing to shoot from a helicopter), and many other grandiose and specific things. Taking a sip While it certainly feels amazing knowing just how maple sap rises due to temperature fluctuations or why amphibians can breathe through their skin, taking time to appreciate a moment of pure presence can impress upon someone all the more. Take for example Monarch butterflies ( Danaus plexippus ). You see them gliding along passageways of tarmac and concrete, flapping furiously along roadsides looking to refuel not at Micky D...

A flutter of wings caught my attention as I left Wegman's this morning. A Monarch butterfly ( Danaus plexippus ) flapping furiously in a southwesterly direction skimmed past my peripheral and into the bright morning sky. So small and under appreciated, yet this butterfly is simply doing what tradition has commanded it to do for thousands of years. What I've been missing the past few weeks has been an opportunity to escape the city to see the wild spread out and away like in a forest or a marsh. This is a silly idea of course, as nature doesn't simply exist solely "out there", but all around us. As one tuned into the natural world, I cannot help but notice the constant changes the world experiences day by day and season by season. With the autumn equinox having passed midweek and the prospect of leaves emblazoned against the branches that once funneled nutrients back and forth between sky and root, one can see clearly that change has arrived. As I've com...

There are a lot of interesting things people have chosen to write about in this world. Some focus on the politics and problems of the world at large, while others write about their pet hobbies and ideas. I have chosen to write about an obsession of mine which is as large and varied as the world it encompasses. Those of you that visit regularly (despite the slow updates) know that the subject this blog covers is all things nature.  But why nature?  It seems like a simple question, but really it can be answered in so many ways. I will never know what precisely perked my interest in nature to start with. Maybe it was the day I watched a blackbird play over the garden hedge in Wales as a young boy, or the first time I ran terrified from my fishing rod when I caught my first ever Bluegill ( Lepomis macrochirus ). Perhaps it was the first time I canoed with my family down the Sudbury River taking in the smell of the water, the Red-winged Blackbirds ( Agelaius phoenicus ...

Over the holidays I received three books that will hopefully spark my confidence in becoming more outdoor oriented and in tune with nature as this new year dawns. While I have always had an interest in the natural world and knew about certain wild foods like "sour grass", cattail roots, and pine needle tea, I'd never made a concerted effort to try and make it part of my life. Looking around at the world, we humans are causing a lot of problems. Global climate change, overfishing, and habitat destruction are just some of those problems and as a result, I've been thinking a lot about my role in the world and what skills and abilities I have to make it a better one if at all possible. I know one thing I'm good at is writing and expressing my love of nature and my interactions with it through this blog. Another thing I'm good at is teaching others about the natural world. When I was a teacher naturalist intern with Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association, my...

It's officially two days into 2014 and this snowstorm is terrifying! Well not really, but I can happily report my choice for bird of the year 2013, as well as, my resolutions (nature wise) for the year! This past year I failed to reach my goal of 350 species and only managed to reach 338, but that's still impressive for spending most of the year in New Jersey and having access to some of the birdiest areas in the country. I was graced with a few good rarities this year and with the Snowy Owl ( Bubo scandiacus ) invasion coming into full swing, it provided a nice finish to the year indeed. So many species to choose from, but ultimately Hedwig herself won me over! In case you didn't see, here are some photos of the immature bird that would become my bird of the year. Resolutions wise, I'm keen to begin practicing my outdoor teaching skills once more with my new job in Pennsylvania. As for my goals they are as follows: 1. Be creative. That can mean drawing, wri...