Happy birding and please help Milly and her Bird-a-Thon team by visiting her fundraising page here.
Like Warblers, there are a lot of species of Sparrows who call Massachusetts home.
Sparrows are beautiful and charismatic, but some species can be very difficult to differentiate from one another. Milly is quite fond of Chipping Sparrows because they love the Museum of American Bird Art, and she can easily tell them apart from other Sparrows.
Chipping Sparrows are known for their pulsing 1 note trilling song and the rufous crown on top of the male’s head. Keep a look this spring and summer, from backyards to woods these little energetic sparrows are widespread across our state.
Happy birding and please help Milly and her Bird-a-Thon team by visiting her fundraising page here.
This blog post corresponds with a program for children and their caregivers by the Museum of American Bird Art at Mass Audubon about Thinking Like a Scientist, Bird Nesting, Searching for Signs of Spring, and making art by creating a bluebird and nest box out of household and common art materials.
Nature Story Time: Have You Heard the Nesting Bird
Eastern Bluebird Singing
What are Nests Made of? From Nature on PBS
NATURE NUGGETS brings science and animals from NATURE on PBS to kids and their caregivers. Use the activities below to create active learning and engagement opportunities with your child.
To engineer a butterfly habitat, you need to think about and create a list of what a butterfly needs to survive during it’s entire life cycle as an (i) egg, (ii) caterpillar, (iii) chrysalis, and (iv) butterfly. The following are a few things to think about when engineering a butterfly habitat.
Food
Host plants for caterpillars
Nectar
Water
Places to shelter or hide
After thinking about how to create a butterfly habitat, design your habitat to contain everything a butterfly needs and draw it on a piece of paper. After drawing your butterfly habitat, if you have a couple of pots for plants, a garden, or another area you could modify, you could engineer your own butterfly habitat.
To attract black swallowtail butterflies, you can plant parsley in your garden.
How to Create a Nature Journal
Get outdoors and record your nature observations in your very own nature journal. You can make one with materials you have at home!
Barry Van Dusen’s Sketchbook Page of a Painted Lady Butterfly
“On one liatris plant, I count eight Monarch butterflies – a phenomenal concentration of these handsome migratory insects, whose populations have been down in recent years. There’s just time enough to do some sketches before I leave to catch the ferry at Vineyard Haven.”
Look for Wood anemone on your woodland walks. The pure white flowers on 4-8 inch stalks above the whorl of leaves makes this an easy wildflower to spot in the spring. The scalloped leaves are divided in 3 to 5 leaflets.
The delicate flowers sway easily even in a soft breeze. This trait gives the plant its Latin name Anemone meaning windflower. The second part of the Latin name is quinquefolia, translating as five leaves.
The root of Wood anemone is horizontal, with many flowers and leaves growing from a common root system. Because of this root system wood anemone can form a carpet of plants.
Julianne Mehegan at Arches NP
Our guest blogger, Julianne Mehegan, is a wonderful friend of MABA, a birder and a naturalist.
It’s time for the second set of trail cam scavenger hunt videos! If you missed our first, post, here’s the link. This time, we have footage from the vernal pool, the meadow, and out in the forest. Got your list ready? See what you can find!
Vernal Pool Mysteries
Is that Milly making mischief of one type or another?
Support our Bird-A-Thon and Support Our Work at the Museum
Bird-a-Thon is an annual state-wide fundraising and birding event for Mass Audubon that began in 1983. Each spring birders from all over the state raise money to protect the nature of Massachusetts and count as many bird species as they can during a 24-hour period in mid-May. During this challenging time, all the money raised will go directly to supporting our work at the Museum of American Bird Art at Mass Audubon.
Weather Radar showing Bird Migration over the Florida Keys from February 17, 2020
The Yellow and Green hues represent bird migration being picked up on weather radar.
Annual nocturnal migration patterns from 1995 to 2018
Annual nocturnal migration phenology measured by weather surveillance radar from 1995 to 2018. Measures show the aggregate behavior of hundreds of species.
Hi everybody, each week I (Sean Kent – MABA’s education and camp director) deliver a live online illustrated lecture called Nature Notes for the residents of Orchard Cove in Canton. I love nature and am infinitely curious with what is going on natural world. I am an educator, naturalist, accomplished landscape and wildlife photographer, and field biologist with expertise in native bee biology, species interactions, and ecology in general.
This post contains additional resources that correspond with the lecture, but might also be of interest to readers of Taking Flight in addition to the residents of Orchard Cove. Please contact me ([email protected]) if you or your organization/residence might be interested in live online illustrated lectures, including lectures on The Secret Life of Backyard Birds and Native Bees and other Pollinators. Be well and safe.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be starting an exciting new activity for kids, families, and all our readers here on the Taking Flight blog: a trail camera scavenger hunt! Every few days, we’ll post videos from cameras around our sanctuary. You’ll get to see cool, close-up views of animals that you might not get to see in person. We might even see some videos of animals that only come out at night! The cameras will be by the vernal pool, our bird feeders, and other places around the sanctuary. Watch closely to find out how many of these things you can see!
Glowing eye
A splash
An owl
A wood duck
A shaking branch
A reptile
A groundhog
A perching bird
A raccoon
A squirrel
A deer
A mallard
A frog
A flying bird
A fox
Here’s the first set of videos:
Wait for it…
Vernal Pool Mystery
Oh dear…what’s in that tree???
What other cool animals do you think will show up? Check the blog often to find out!
One of the first flowers you’ll notice on your spring walks in the woods is the tiny Goldthread. The small, three-part leaf of Goldthread hugs the ground. The delicate white flower blooms about three inches above the leaf on a delicate stem. Coptis trifolia is the Latin name for Goldthread. Coptis comes from the Greek word “to cut”, a reference to the divided leaf. Trifolia means “having three leaves”.
The common name Goldthread is derived from the color of the root. Scratch down below the leaf to uncover the yellow root. This is a small section of root I pulled up and placed on a rock for a better photo.
Julianne Mehegan at Arches NP
Our guest blogger, Julianne Mehegan, is a wonderful friend of MABA, a birder and a naturalist.
Each year, Tree Swallows migrate back to the Museum and take up residence in the field by the parking lot and in the meadow behind the Museum. In April and May, the Tree Swallow expend their energy competing for nesting sites at our nest boxes. Enjoy this photo essay of two tree swallows and their aerial acrobatics and competition.
Videographer: Larry Arbanas. This video is archived at the Cornell Lab’s Macaulay Library, ML466291.
Feathers: Birds of Paradise
The Vogelkop Superb Bird-of-Paradise. From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
In the tropical forests of New Guinea, one male is dedicated to making an unforgettable first impression. From BBC Earth
Hi everybody, each week I (Sean Kent – MABA’s education and camp director) deliver a live online illustrated lecture called Nature Notes for the residents of Orchard Cove in Canton. I love nature and am infinitely curious with what is going on natural world. I am an educator, naturalist, accomplished landscape and wildlife photographer, and field biologist with expertise in native bee biology, species interactions, and ecology in general.
This post contains additional resources that correspond with the lecture, but might also be of interest to readers of Taking Flight in addition to the residents of Orchard Cove. Please contact me ([email protected]) if you or your organization/residence might be interested in live online illustrated lectures, including lectures on The Secret Life of Backyard Birds and Native Bees and other Pollinators. Be well and safe.
