Nature of Delaware Blog

By Ian Stewart The buzz around this year’s Native Plant Sale is building to fever pitch! Our plant sale comes at the perfect time as we have finally emerged from the frigid gloom of an unusually long cold winter to find colorful wildflowers emerging all across the state. These ‘spring ephemerals’ are so-named because they…

  By Kristen Travers Snowy, icy days can make us thankful for the salt applied to make our roads safer yet road salt has a less safe side for our waterways. When ice and snow melt, the salt goes with it, washing into our streams and groundwater. As with people, streams are healthier on a…

Ian Stewart The global Great Backyard Bird Count took place from February 16th to the 19th and was a huge success. Despite its misleading name, participants counted every bird they saw no matter how far they were from home, with more than 6,000 bird species recorded across the world from over 160,000 checklists! Delaware Nature Society played…

By Joe Sebastiani, Ashland Nature Center Manager Now that the Philadelphia Eagles have won the Super Bowl, local fans now have to find something else to do for the remainder of winter.  How about participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count!  Ashland and Abbott’s Mill Nature Centers will join birders from all over the world…

By Ian Stewart Delaware Nature Society has over 200 nest boxes spread around the properties we own or help manage which we installed to provide nest sites for a variety of birds. Every summer these boxes are monitored by a team of volunteers who track over 100 nesting attempts by 5-6 bird species (and we…

Ian Stewart Sparrows are a mystery to most non-birders (and many birders too!) and it’s not hard to see why. The great majority of them are small, brown streaky birds that at this time of year are usually just glimpsed as they disappear into a tangle of undergrowth, so much so that sparrow sightings often…