Discovering Nature at the Local Nature Center

 Dear Friends,

Our local Nature Center was holding a Birding Day last Saturday, and we decided that would be a great field trip for our family. Of course there were the normal assortment of reptiles and playing areas,

 

But the highlights were watching bird banding demonstrations, and a video presentation by a Mr. Timothy Barksdale of Birdman Productions You can watch some of his videos here. 

 The only downside of the presentation was when a titmouse opened up a gash in our lovely presenter's finger. She said that titmice were the most aggressive of all the birds that they band. :)

Here she is showing a recently-caught Downy Woodpecker, who didn't peck her.

 
 

As we were leaving to go home, Mr. Graham remarked that he thought working at a Nature Center would be my ideal job (other than homemaking, of course). He's not far off the mark! Playing with snakes and birds, and teaching others to love the wildlife around them would be a very rewarding way to spend the day.

Here's wishing you many homely adventures today,

Marqueta

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"A love for the soil and all the pursuits of outdoor life is one of the healthful signs in a people. Our broad and diversified land affords abundant opportunity for the gratification of every rural taste, and those who form such tastes will never complain that life is losing its zest. Other pleasures pall with time and are satiated. We outgrow them. But every spring is a new revelation, every summer a fresh, original chapter of experience, and every autumn a fruition of hopes as well as of seeds and buds. Nothing can conduce more to happiness and prosperity than multitudes of rural homes. In such abodes you will not find Socialists, Nihilists, and other hare-brained reformers who seek to improve the world by ignoring nature and common-sense. Possession of the soil makes a man conservative, while he, at the same time, is conserved."  ~Edward P. Roe, Nature's Serial Story, 1884