On a recent Nature Walk I went wandering off the path and found this wonderful moss covered pine tree trunk. I imagine that it must have fallen some time ago. Did it make a noise? Who’s to say! What I can say is that it is quite lovely and I always find moss to be such a calming plant. Don’t you?
This month’s calendars and tablet/smartphone wallpapers (and more!) are available for free in the Download Gallery.
The Nature Walk Project, Entry No. 001, Vol. 2
In some areas nature is so prevalent and that it’s practically spoon-fed to you. In other areas you have to seek it out…bend down, look up, look past, and generally ignore foot after foot of concrete. But once you start looking for it, you’ll find that it’s always there, sometimes in the smallest of ways, but it is there.
Please feel free to download this month’s calendar page for your personal use as a printed wall calendar or electronically as the desktop background on your computer.
very time I head out on one of my nature walks, I can’t help but be enamored with the beauty that nature has to offer. All too often that beauty is fleeting, as lovely plants and habitats change with the seasons and never look exactly the same twice. I find myself so hypnotized by this fleeting beauty that I will take photo after photo trying to capture just the right angle so I can look back and remember where I was standing, what it felt like and the colors of that moment. While this is a lovely way to remember the places I’ve been, it often results in an abundance of photos. So I’ve decided to turn at least one of my nature walk photos into a calendar page each month. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for reading and virtually joining me on all of my nature walks.
This month’s calendar page features brilliantly colored, pink seed pods on a Maple tree that grows near my home. I hope you have a wonderful November!
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This is it! A year in the making! I’ve been walking around the same lake, once a month for a year, documenting the seasonal changes, the animals and the plants. Last night I took my final picture of this lovely, little lake path. Below is a photo compilation of the wooden bridge that crosses the lake. The photos start in October 2011 and ended last night, the last day of October 2012.
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Regular Nature Walk posts will return next month with the unveiling of the results of my yearlong photography project. In the meantime, please enjoy the photos and this recounting of my recent adventures in the Christopher B. Smith Preserve located in Naples, Florida, USA.
I recently had the opportunity to go on a tour of the Christopher B. Smith Preserve located in Naples, Florida, USA. The preserve is owned and managed by The Conservancy of Southwest Florida, an organization that works to preserve the natural habitats of southwest Florida. The preserve is “an eight-acre endangered upland and scrub habitat” and “is home to native plants and wildlife including the gopher tortoise, a threatened species in Florida” (Conservancy).
Ian Bartoszek, a biologist for The Conservancy and a friend of mine, lead the afternoon tour. As we carefully stepped through the fence and into the preserve the first thing I noticed was that the ground is made up of fine, white sugar sand. It is a soft sand compared to the type often found along the beaches of the Atlantic and it is pure white. The sandy ground made the scrub habitat feel so different from the areas of asphalt and manicured lawns that surround it. The white ground, a leftover seabed from millions of years ago, made this area feel like I was stepping into another world and into another time. Covering most of the sand was a light-green species of lichen, Foliose Ground Lichen (Parmotrema spp). As we walked through the preserve Ian asked all of us to stick to the paths, so as not to disturb this ancient species.
Looking around I noticed that The Conservancy had installed small wildlife cameras attached to the base of a few trees. The motion activated cameras are able to capture animal activity that people wouldn’t normal get to see and the biologists are able to study these photos and share them with visitors of The Conservancy.
Also dominating the landscape are the beautiful purple flowers of the Chapman’s Blazing Star plant, also known as Chapman’s Gayfeather (Liatris chapmanii). These pretty flowers are typically a pretty purple color but every now and then, a white one will bloom. Among the sea of purple we found two of these white blooms very near each other. It felt like something special to see these rare flowers. Ian told us that seedpods from 
established plants like these could be harvested by conservation groups and used in other habitat reclamation projects. The use of these seeds is typical when reestablishing an area that may have had the natural scrub habitat devastated by logging, land clearing and other development.
As we walked through the scrub we could hear a gopher tortoise or two shuffling through the palms and undergrowth. The tortoises were camouflaged in the thick growth and I wasn’t able to snap a photo of them on this trip. However, I was able to get a few photos of the entrances to their underground homes, which I put into the slideshow below. In addition to the threatened gopher tortoise, Ian told us that there is a very diverse group of animal and plant species (about 250 of them), from tiny spiders and amphibians to bobcats and coyotes, which live in this protected habitat.
We also found this amazing beehive that covered a good portion of a palm tree. I was lucky enough to have a good zoom on my camera and didn’t need to get to close too these amazing, buzzing pollinators in order to get a good picture (also in the slideshow below).
The preserve is part of The Conservancy of Southwest Florida’s new Nature Center. The center is currently being upgraded and when it is complete it will be open to the public later this year. Ian was able to give our group a quick tour of the progress so far, along with a visit to some of their animal residents, which I included in the slide show below.
I had a wonderful time on my nature walk and can’t wait to come back soon. If you’re going to be in Florida, be sure to stop by The Conservancy’s Nature Center and get a tour of this unique area of Florida. Thank you to our guide, Ian Bartoszek, for showing us around and teaching us about the importance of preserving natural habitats.
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[slideshow]
Not sure what I’m talking about? Catch up on the 30×30 Challenge here.
Another great week outside! This project is fun because it reminds me to look around and really enjoy everything that I’m seeing when I go for my mini-Nature Walks. I’ll continue to post this week’s 30×30 photos on Twitter and Facebook.
Where you able to get outside much in the last couple of days? Does it make you feel happier?
Location: Orlando, Florida, United States from 10:30am-11:30am
Weather: Sunny, windy and very low humidity, 75°F – High: 86°F Low: 73°F
Catch up on The Nature Walk Project: Month 1: October, Month 2: November, Month 3: December, Month 4: January, Month 5: February, Month 6: March, Month 7: April, Month 8: May
It’s officially hurricane season in Florida and there is no shortage of wind or rain. During a typical Florida summer we get a rain shower every afternoon, for about 20 minutes and nearly at the same time everyday. As I walk around the lake today, the wind is strong and constant. A downpour last night left everything very damp with a wonderfully earthy aroma coming from every direction, as the sun heats up the damp ground. I can’t actually photograph the wind for you, just the objects that it blows around, like the pages of my notebook above. I took this short video with my camera to give you a sense of the breeze as it whips through the cypress trees that grow along the lake. About 6 seconds in you can see one of the many birds that lives here, flitting from one tree to the other. I hope you’re enjoying the weather and nature where you are! This is June.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvHeEN69kuM]
Location: Orlando, Florida, United States from 10:30am-11:30am
Weather: Sunny and slightly overcast, 70°F – High: 76°F Low: 63°F
Catch up on The Nature Walk Project: Month 1: October, Month 2: November, Month 3: December, Month 4: January, Month 5: February, Month 6: March, Month 7: April
Spring continues to bloom around the lake. Every time I visit this bit of nature I see more and more signs of life. The birds are more active, the tall grasses that line the pathways are bursting out of the ground and have begun to drape over the walkway. The fresh, bright green growth on the cypress trees is already filling in and beginning to darken. For months now, I have visited this lake and marveled at the different types of animals that live in and around it. It turns out, that even after 8 months, there is still something new to discover. During my recent walk, I saw a family of otters making their way along the edge of the lake to the island in the middle and I was able to snap a couple of pictures as they bobbed in and out of the water. This family of otters and all of the other little bits of life and nature that I saw are in the slideshow below…this is May.
[slideshow]
Location: Orlando, Florida, United States from 10:30am-11:30am Weather: Sunny and windy, 77°F – High: 86°F Low: 63°F
Catch up on The Nature Walk Project: Month 1: October, Month 2: November, Month 3: December, Month 4: January, Month 5: February, Month 6: March
It’s April and Spring is official, even though the weather in Florida has felt like spring since late February, but that’s why so many of us love it here. It was a warm winter so there wasn’t ever a time where the landscape looked completely baron, but what little did turn brown and die, is now coming back in pretty shades of light green.
The animals are busier than they have been. I saw the first bunny of the season and with Easter a week away, it seems like perfect timing. This little bird stopped to cool off along the edge of the lake, it was fun to watch him splash around.
Location: Orlando, Florida, United States from 5:00pm-6:00pm Weather: Sunny and windy, 84°F – High: 85°F Low: 68°F
Catch up on The Nature Walk Project: Month 1: October, Month 2: November, Month 3: December, Month 4: January, Month 5: February
I spent last month looking down, taking photos of the water’s edge and all of the tiny bits of nature that live along it. Today, I looked up…
Seasons By The Bird
Every month when I visit and write about this lake and my walk along the crushed shell trail, I almost always mention the unbelievable amount of bird song that you can hear. It comes from every direction, birds of every size are tucked and nestled among the branches, completely unseen as they call and sing to each other. As winter continues to thin the branches of some trees, I can catch glimpses of these birds and get a sense of the vast variety of birds that call this little bit of nature, home.
It was this sense of home that got me thinking about these birds and the seasons. I was born up north in Pennsylvania. We got “real” winters up there, with lots of snow and ice. It was toward the end of winter, when you had just about had your fill of cold weather and runny noses, that a sign of spring would appear. The first birds of the new season, the robins, would return to our woods and you knew that spring wasn’t far behind. Next we’d start to see the blue jays coming back, followed by the cardinals that would streak across the landscape in brilliant blazes of red.
Now that I live down south in Florida, the arrival of blue jays and cardinals mean something different here, they mean winter is on its way. This is the place the birds would come to when they disappeared from our wintery Pennsylvania woods. As I sit here listening to the birds, I catch glimpses of blue jays flying between the trees and I realize that it’s when the blue jays leave, that I now know spring is on its way. So this month I pay tribute to the original “snow birds” and I’ve created a slide show full of the tree tops and the many birds that live above and below them, even if only for a short season.
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[slideshow]