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Nature

Spring Is Just Ducky

If you’re new to identifying birds, you might want to begin with waterfowl. They are large, conspicuously marked in breeding plumage, and relatively easy to spot. Though songbird migration peaks in May, early spring is a great time to learn ducks and other waterfowl. Binoculars and a field guide are the essential tools. To find waterfowl, visit lakes, ponds, flooded meadows, and rivers, especially near dams. Sometimes even roadside ditches attract a surprising array of visitors. These are the habitats ducks frequent as they head north in spring. First, watch how a duck behaves ...

Mother Nature’s Clean Up Crew

They are big. They are ugly. They grunt and hiss and dine on the most disgusting fare, but without them, our world would be a lot less enjoyable. Hail to the vultures and their trashy ways. Vultures are scavenging birds of prey, who play a fundamental role in the food chain. There are ...

The Unexpected Visitor

When I think about animals that I see during the winter, there are a lot of animals I think of — deer, chickadees, Red Foxes, even squirrels. The one animal I never think of? Opossums. For some reason the thought of seeing a little opossum waddling through the snow with its naked little ...

Vernal Pools Are Essential To Amphibians

If late winter cabin fever has you down, wander the woods in search of vernal pools - small bodies of water that collect in depressions in the ground. Melting snow and late winter rains fill these shallow depressions, which can be as small as a plastic swimming pool or as large as an acre. But they must be shallow, and they must, at some point in late spring or summer, dry up completely. Vernal pools are about to explode with life. As days get longer and daytime temperatures flirt with the 50s (just about when we set our clocks to spring forward an hour), aquatic invertebrates that ...

Snow Creates Perfect Tracks

For a few nights, the coyotes had been howling and yipping close to the house. We’d even heard foxes barking much closer than usual. One morning, after the evening snow had created perfect tracking conditions, we wandered down to see what we could find. First, a lone coyote’s tracks ...

The Sky Dance Of Woodcock

One of the best of nature’s predictable shows begins in March — the dance of the woodcock. The exact time and place is difficult to know, but it’s a great harbinger of spring. Unless heavy rain or snow interferes, woodcock rarely miss a performance. I first observed the woodcock dance in 1981. When a colleague at Oklahoma State University offered to lead an evening field trip for the local Audubon Society, I signed up. We arrived at a large old field just before sunset and hunkered down. Jack Barclay had been capturing and banding American woodcock for years, so I had high ...