Nature of Delaware Blog

Story and photos by Ed Crew, Delaware Master Naturalist Trainee Winter weather can easily discourage you from getting outside and exploring nature. The wind, snow and ice can make it quite uncomfortable and even unsafe to hike the trails that are your favorites during the other seasons. Winter outings also require some planning and watching…

Ian Stewart Bird watchers throughout Delaware have had their eyes fixed on their feeders this fall as we are in the midst of an ‘irruption year’. This is a year when many of the finches that normally spend the winter far to our north flood south in large numbers in search of food, presumably because…

Ian Stewart “You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing – that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something…

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe’ These are the opening lines to The Jabberwocky, a poem about a mythical dreadful beast that appears in Lewis Carroll’s 1871 book ‘Through the Looking Glass, and what Alice found there’. The poem contains many bizarre words invented by the author and…

By Megan Kasprzak and Joe Sebastiani. Photos by Shannon Modla Megan and Shannon regularly look for birds at Ashland Nature Center, documenting what they find in eBird, and taking many great photographs.  On 8 June, they witnessed a rather extraordinary ornithological event.  Read on… Notes from Megan Kasprzak at Ashland Nature Center, Monday 8 June,…

Fair warning, this blog might make you itchy.. Everyone and their grandmother knows the age old adage “leaves of three let it be,” but does everyone know exactly which leaves of three? Working in the outdoor field for ten years, I have come across my fair share of poison ivy patches, vines, bushes, and carefully…