Our November Neighborhood

If March blows in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, then November in the South (this year at least), came in like a lamb and blew out like a lion.  We had both temperature spikes into the 80s as well as dips below freezing!  Our backyard birds disappeared with the early cold snaps, but somehow the ladybugs managed a mid-month raid. 

Our season-confused Purple Hearts

So, the HNS Outdoor Hour Challenge to observe and sketch what November looks like to us was a good fit, especially since we took it on one of the warmer days.  We set up our chairs in the front yard and observed the field across the street.  E also made note of our own Purple Heart plants which dropped at the first temperature dip but had a few perks with the surprise heat.

You know what I realized as I looked over their pages?  These nature studies have given me some nice mementos of how my kids write and think. 

Z is right.  It is "a nice place to live near."

I'm glad we took the time to do this when we did.  Today the lion is roaring and his breath is freezing!   We'll do our observing through the window panes today.
As a family, we want to try to attract some of the winter birds to our yard.  It is so lonely out there with our summer friends gone.  If you have any suggestions, please pass them on. 

See?  Pitiful.

A Natural Surprise

Not being much of a weed puller, I am rarely happy with the results.  This summer, however, what I might have pulled as a weed turned out to be a wonderful surprise.
We live in Alabama, mind you, where the "soil" is mostly red clay.  We can barely get the grass to grow in our back yard.  Weeds, though, seem to love it.  
At first, since the mystery weed started growing right beneath our hummingbird feeder, I thought the hummingbirds who sip there must have dropped something they picked up.  You know, literal birds and bees pollination going on.  
Within a few weeks, I realized this was no weed.  It was some kind of flower.  In fact, it reminded me of the pumpkin plant flower.

A few days later, my son decided the plant was no pumpkin, but a watermelon.

How in the world...?  Well, when the kids had their camp-outs in June they had watermelon.  Maybe someone dropped a seed?  Wait a minute!  I thought the seeds from those so-called seedless watermelons couldn't reproduce?  
It doesn't matter now.  There's a watermelon plant growing in our yard!  That will have to suffice because the melons are not thriving. We still love them no matter how they got here.
 

The Campout Weekend

Last weekend, the kids took turns camping out - in the backyard - in honor of the Great American Backyard Campout.  

When I first learned about this event, I thought it would be fun to do as a family.  Then I had the brilliant idea that it would be fun for the kids to do with their friends.  E had 2 of her friends over on Friday night; Z had 3 boys over the next night.  Looking back after a few days now, it was a good memory.  

The girls got to have their camp-out first on Friday night.  Here they are setting up the sun shade so they could eat outside.

A Camp-Out dinner.  I found some foam cup cozies on sale so each camper could mark her or his own drinks. 

Dinner in the shade.

The girls did a great job setting up the tent (mostly) on their own.

Unfortunately, by the time they were in the tent in the dark, one of them didn't want to stay outside all night, so they ended up sleeping inside after all. 

The boys had no problem staying outside (hallelujiah!).  Here they are watching some Looney Tunes before bed. 

What the girls put up, the boys must take down.  But hurry up!  It's going to rain soon.

Will we do this again?  Most definitely.  In fact, E wants to have one of her friends over again soon so they can actually sleep in the tent this time.  I'm excited for her because she will probably never want to GO camping anywhere else. 

I don't know about having two camp-outs in a row.  Yes, I do.  One at a time is certainly the way to go.   

A Surprise Nature Discovery

One afternoon, the kids were riding their bikes through a field with a big, messy puddle.  That was so much fun, they decided to try it again the next morning.  Only they found something more interesting than mud on their tires.  They found a frog.  According to my daughter, it was a mama frog with a baby on her back.  Hmm.  Never heard that one before.
Walking the dog while the kids rode, I was without my camera and I was wearing open toe sandals - not the ideal attire for this field.  

So, we went back later with the proper shoes, with my camera, and without the dog.  Although we did not find the frog this time, we did find out why she was there (and why my daughter thought she had a baby on her back) - eggs!  
We found a mass of eggs here - 

 And strings of eggs here -

We spotted some tadpoles, too, but they apparently become invisible when photographed.  

 I later read that the smaller male frogs will sit on the larger female ones and fertilize the eggs as she releases them.  The frogs, which I believe were toads, will often choose our kind of puddle because of the lack of natural predators that would exist in ponds.  
We were concerned that Mrs. Frog's puddle would dry up before her eggs would hatch and grow up.  After all, it could take up to twelve weeks for a tadpole to grow its legs and head onto land.  So far, so good.  In fact, we've had rain once  already since we found her, and we're expecting more today.  Whew.  

Here, birdie, birdie, birdie

Even though the weather here is more wintery than springy, there was enough Spring in the air to bring on the birds.  Sadly, for the past year and a half that we've lived in this house, our yard has been a cold spot for birds.  We tried bird feeders last year, but they remained full.  

This year we thought we'd try a bluebird house.  Since the good people at Lowe's had already made some, we bought one of theirs and a four by four to hang it on; we dug a hole in the yard and placed our new structure in the ground.

Based on our past experiences, we didn't expect much.  However, within two days we noticed a couple of bluebirds flying back and forth to their new home, obviously building a warm nest. 

We sat on the patio and watched them work. 

At times, I think they watched us back.

After a while, we heard the tell-tale tapping of a woodpecker.  Yes!  And there he is in the neighbor's tree.  We've heard them before, but this is the first time we've spotted one in action.  

I think this is a red-bellied woodpecker.

The same day we hung the bird house, we also hung a couple of bird feeders in another part of the yard.  From what we've read, bluebirds do not like much company.  

It seemed that these feeders were just as unpopular as previous feeders in our yard.  That is, until Mr. and Mrs. Bluebird moved in.  Alas, a few days after discovering our new tenants, we started to see some more birds at the feeders.

Chipping Sparrows? 

Have we finally found chickadees in Alabama? 

I love the way these friends cling to the bell.

In the middle of all our bird-watching, a chipmunk was sneaking into and out of our yard through a secret, under-fence passage, taking pieces of our yard with him.

It doesn't get much better than this. 

The Art of the Owl

Oh, how I've missed our nature studies.  With a change in our curriculum in January, I wanted to take some time to adjust to a few new things at a time.  Now that we are on a roll, I am ready to work some planned nature study back into our routine.  What a treat to spend the month with owls.
Yes, owls.  Barb at the Handbook of Nature Study actually had a month of bird study planned with just a week's focus on owls.  But I wanted to take our time with owls. 
I had no problem finding resources - from All About Alabama Birds and our Birds Fandex to Jim Arnosky's All About Owls and other library finds.  And then there's the wonderful Art Projects for Kids where I found ideas on owl art. 

E's night-time Great Horned Owl

Z's handsome Great Horned Owl

My squashed Great one

 Alas, the grande finale to our month was a real-live owl release.  On Sunday night (Feb 24th), the Auburn Forest Ecology Preserve and the Auburn Raptor Rehabilitation Center released an owl back into the forest.  Though one of the drawbacks of any owl study is that it is very difficult to ever observe an owl, the owl release was an amazing opportunity.  We drove nearly an hour to the Preserve, but it was well worth it.  Here is the very short video of the actual release.

I'm sorry that this video does not capture how amazing this event was.  The owl, a Barred Owl, actually did not fly very far at first.  He landed on a nearby branch and then gradually flew from branch to branch taking in his surroundings before finally flying off about 10 minutes after his release.  

We are not quite done with our owl adventure.  I bought owl pellets for us to dissect.  I have always wanted to do that.  I'm not much of a dissector, if you will, but this should be manageable since we won't be cutting into an animal.  Right?

Here he is turning his head to look around his new home.

Here he is almost ready to leave us for good. 

   

The ANT

Ants.  I don't like them, but I have to learn to live with them here in Alabama. 
Last month's nature study a la The Handbook of Nature Study blog pointed us to ants. 
Yes, we started with identifying their insect parts: head, thorax, abdomen, antennae. 
But I did not want to get out and explore the fire ants that abound around here.  It's just too risky.
I didn't know where these other ants were, if any of them survived the Fire Ant invasion of the 1930's.  After just a bit of research, I found out that other types of ants prefer undisturbed areas.  So off to find some non-fire ants. 

On a walking trail we saw some ant mounds ...

and some ant row homes. 

My camera skills are just too basic to actually capture the ant itself.  Even so, we didn't see very many.  Moreover, it was still very hot in September, and - well, we were ready to get out of the heat. 

SIGH.  Now what?  Well, nature gave us plenty of ant hills here in Lower Alabama, so ant hills it is.  At the very least, we compared their sizes.  

One thing's for sure:  Fire Ants sure know how to build a big house. 

Look at these things!

This one is up to Z's knees!  

Now that the weather is cooling off, these insects are moving their homes closer to the sidewalks which stay warm longer.  Now we have to be even more careful when we go outside looking for this month's subject:  trees.  
At least they don't bite. 

Critter Patrol

It wasn't on our nature study list.  
It wasn't convenient. 
But it was pretty cool.
Last Friday, I found what I think was a salamander in our yard.  It looked like a tiny snake at first.  In fact, a snake would have been a more likely find after the kids and I found a small corn snake in our garage last week!
But I much prefer finding this little guy.

 The closest description we could find was that of a three-striped salamander.  If anyone out there happens to know what it is, feel free to educate me.  
Now this next one is a little blurry, but it's the only one I have that shows his feet.  He wasn't exactly easy to pose.  

Unfortunately, Z was not home at the time, so I insisted we keep the guy in our handy dandy critter container until Z got home to see him.  That drove E a little crazy with worry for the little guy.  Three whole hours in captivity!  
Alas, we set him free in the same area we found him (or her; I don't know).  

Thanks for visiting!  Come back soon.  
(Now I'm going to read The Salamander Room with the kids.) 
 

A Black-Eyed Outdoor Hour

Ahh.  We are getting back on track with our Outdoor Hour Challenges this month.  I've been wanting to do this week's all summer, actually.  It's the Summer flower study of composite flowers - specifically, Black-Eyed Susans.  
Here in the deep South, these beauties have been in bloom for months.  So by now we find them waning.  

Even in their old age, we observed the 13 yellow ray flowers and the spiraling brown disc flowers (black eyes) that compose these composite flowers.  

The great part of this outdoor hour is that we got to share it with some new nature studiers.  (Is that a word?)  It's funny.  I am still new to the nature study culture myself.  And yet, I found myself sharing my love for it with another family.  
Then, kids being kids, they took to another challenge:  a big wall.

Here are some more pieces of our hour:

What in the world?

 I learned these are called Red Velvet Ants, that they are really wingless wasps which can inflict a painful sting!  Yikes!  

Ah, much better. 

What's more, today at Farm Class the kids were on a scavenger hunt.  You know what was on the list?  Composite Flowers!  And they knew just what to look for.  How great is that?