The Naturalist Notebook

“Almost everything concrete we know about wild birds we know from banding them.”  — Scott Weidensaul This past February I had the privilege to travel to Honduras for twelve days with ten enthusiastic birdwatchers on a birding for conservation tour. With a tally of over three hundred species on the trip, it’s hard to think…

You hear it all the time, whether you’re aware of it or not: the fantastic music extravaganza that is nature’s sound! It’s not played by any traditional orchestra or symphony, but rather by many different living and non-living things. This concert is much like real life theme music. Just like how certain songs play in…

Two years ago this summer, I was one of eighteen lucky college students invited to attend a three month internship on idyllic Bald Head Island, North Carolina. I anxiously packed my life into a suitcase and carry-on, never having lived outside my parents’ home in southeast Michigan. I boarded my planes hoping for an exciting…

“Sometimes I think that maybe we are just stories. Like we may as well just be words on a page, because we’re only what we’ve done and what we are going to do.” ― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily One of the many quirks of a Shaver’s Creek internship is the responsibility and privilege of…

For nearly 50 years, the bluebird populations across North America saw a major decline. Once as common as a robin, the bluebird became so rare that many people assumed its extinction was inevitable. Male and female bluebirds The drastic decreases in population were due to a number of factors. The first cause was the reduction…

27 teams comprising 127 birders made for a record-breaking 27th year of the Birding Cup! This year, donations to Shaver’s Creek’s only annual fundraiser will go toward the cutting and milling of local woods for use in Shaver’s Creek’s upcoming building project. (Much of the wood was already removed to support American Woodcock habitat, and…

In the 27th year of Birding Cup, 27 teams (a record number!) will set out to find the most species of birds in 24 hours as possible. The teams will visit a variety of habitats: early successional forest, meadows, creeks, and marshes, to name a few. They’ll train their binoculars and scopes on birds both…

It is that time of the year again! Birds are singing, flower buds are starting to form, the days are getting longer and warmer, and amphibians are on the move. Each spring, as the snow melts and the temperatures begin to rise, frogs, toads, newts, and salamanders awake from their hibernation state and migrate to…

I was looking for a story. Really anything that spoke to me. I was looking for inspiration. I took a walk. I meditated on it. I even went through my home library of the “classics” that I’ll frequent on an odd day or whim. I was looking for a name. Well, something to take on…

You find yourself on the outskirts of town. Turn onto Huffmanville Road, just across the street from the Rutter’s gas station, and follow it for a couple miles. Along the tree line and over the farmland, houses and cars become more and more sporadic. Eventually, you’ll come to a small bridge. Out this far there…