Welcome to the Shaver’s Creek blog! The entries here are posted by staff, interns, and volunteers, and aim to keep you informed about the programs, updates, and natural history happenings here at the Creek. Enjoy!
Monday began with a morning meeting, heavy eyelids, and the prospect of a rainy week. As I walked through Silvi classroom, passing by the cushy chairs of the bird-feeder watching station, my eyes caught a glimpse of the colorful cover of a book I had never seen before, Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole…
Shaver’s Creek is putting the finishing touches on what has been the biggest renovation and expansion in its history, and with it has come lots of small adjustments. But it’s easy to point to one thing that has remained constant: people love birds, and they love supporting them. The Birding Cup is Shaver’s Creek’s annual…
I feel incredibly blessed to be working at a place that encourages me to take time to connect with nature every day. One of my favorite feelings in the world is that first big breath you take when you walk outside and the weather is spectacular. The second that fresh air hits my lungs, I…
With the next equinox just a month away from today, spring is beginning to make promises outside. The sun is setting later, the days are feeling warmer — like the 70 degrees we’re experiencing in central PA today — and the soundscape is getting a little more noisy. These longer days encourage change in the natural world around us,…
It’s midday, I’m standing on a long pier and the wind against my face is uncharacteristically warm for the middle of winter in New England. Gazing through my borrowed pair of binoculars, I watch several seemingly unidentifiable birds bob over the gentle waves. “Ah, it just dove. Looked like a Surf Scoter to me,” muttered…
At the end of every week of Outdoor School, we have a Community Meeting for the campers, during which a fictitious business person comes and draws a map of “improvements” for Camp Blue Diamond and Outdoor School. The camp as we know it gets decimated, which is upsetting for many campers. One way we help…
When I first arrived at Shaver’s Creek in early June, I was somewhat intimidated by the prospect of interning at nature center with so much history and such a strong community of naturalists. Thinking of ways I could contribute seemed a little daunting to me, especially because I did not have a background in wildlife…
Through June and July, we hear song birds call out to the dawn and the dusk, their beautiful melodies serving as an affirmation that summer has arrived. Summer for birds is a critical time for mating and nesting. Their calls to each other primarily serve the purpose of either attracting a mate or defending territory.…
After dusk on a warm summer night in July, a magical and mystic light begins to fill the sky. These lights are a blur and flash, filling the mind with cherished mid-summer memories. Many people across the United States are very familiar with this sight. They may even have caught this magical light in a…
Wood Turtle found along Shaver’s Creek. Photo by Carli Dinsmore Through the splintered pickets of an aged locust fence in the waning light of a mellow June day, a turtle emerges from a thicket of smartweed, lumbering towards the gravel shoulder of an unpaved forest road. She appears with a suddenness which belies her cumbersome form — the…