Celebrate summer blooms in bouquets! How many different kinds of flowers can you pick? How do they smell different? How does the bouquet look with different stem lengths and flower positions? (Only pick a flower when you see there are many others and never take more than half.)
Here’s a sampling of what’s flowering in northern VT now:
Display your bouquet inside and consider making them on a regular basis to track the changing blooms throughout the summer. You might want to record the timing of flowers in your bouquet to compare to future years, like the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium. Since 1903 Fairbanks volunteers have collected wildflowers to display at the Wildflower Table and kept a record of their first bloom date.
Wildflower Table at Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium
The bright yellow of an American Goldfinch, the happy “Hi sweetie” of a Black-capped Chickadee, the wild laugh of a Northern Flicker! One of the easiest ways to connect children with nature is through birdwatching. You don’t need special equipment, extensive knowledge, or a trip deep into the wilderness. Some of the most exciting birding adventures can happen right in your own neighborhood!
Why Birding is Great for Kids
Backyard birding offers children the opportunity to slow down, observe, and develop a deeper appreciation for the natural world. Children naturally enjoy searching for movement, identifying colors, and listening for different bird calls.
Birding also helps young explorers build a connection to nearby nature. As children begin to recognize familiar species, they gain confidence and their excitement grows. Suddenly, a walk to the mailbox becomes an opportunity to spot an American Robin collecting worms or a Blue Jay calling from the treetops.
Some Common Backyard Birds
Most folks recognize the red-breasted American Robin, the noisy Blue Jay, and the brilliant Northern Cardinal. Watch for the little fierce Red-throated Hummingbird visiting the flower garden. Listen, too, for the “chick-a-dee dee dee” call of the Black-capped Chickadee, the drumming of the Downy Woodpecker, and the hollow coo of the Mourning Dove. You may be surprised by how many birds children already know!
Interactive Birding Activities
Go on a Bird Scavenger Hunt – Challenge children to find birds with specific colors, beaks, behaviors, or songs. Can children spot birds with thick beaks? Thin beaks? A bird hopping? A bird carrying nesting materials? A bird singing their own name?
Start a Bird Journal –Provide children with a notebook where they can draw birds, write observations, or tally how many different species they see.
Listen for Bird Songs –Close your eyes and listen. How many different bird sounds can you hear? Bird calls are often easier to notice than the birds themselves! The Merlin app is a great resource for identifying bird songs.
Building a Lifelong Connection to Nature
Birding teaches children that nature is all around them. By taking a few moments each day to observe birds, families can create meaningful outdoor experiences and foster a sense of wonder that lasts a lifetime.
Heather has loved fireflies, also known as lightning bugs, since childhood when her dad told her stories about a lightning bug named Larry who sang a little song.
Fireflies are neither flies nor true bugs. Rather, they are beetles, but their name is accurate in describing their ability to produce light. While not all of the around 2,000 firefly species worldwide flash, all firefly larvae (aka glowworms) display bioluminescence. Fireflies likely evolved the ability to light up as a way to ward off predators, but now they mostly use their “lightning” to find mates. Each firefly species has a unique light pattern. Generally the males fly and display their specific flashes, while females on the ground respond with the matching pattern. Although some female fireflies, “femmes fatales,” prey on male fireflies of a different genus by copying their light signals.
How do fireflies make light? They have a special organ in their abdomens that combines the chemical luciferin, luciferases enzymes, and oxygen to produce light. This “lantern” organ contains lots of air tubes and reflector cells, and the firefly can regulate the amount of air coming in through the air tubes. Fireflies are extremely efficient—somewhere between 90-96% of their chemical energy is converted to visible light.
Warm June evenings bring the bright and brief firefly season. The next few weeks is the time for adult firefly observations. Just before dark, can you see them emerging from their daytime hideouts? Can you notice different flash patterns? How about creating your own flashlight firefly language?
What are these small pineapple-looking structures at the end of white pine branches?
White pine male cones are opening and releasing pollen! While these clusters of male cones are roughly pineapple-shaped, the word “pineapple” was first used in 14th century English to describe female pine cones (medieval botanists often used “apple” to refer to any unfamiliar fruit). Then “pineapple” was used by European explorers in the 1600s as they thought the tropical fruit resembled a large pine cone.
White pines bear male and female cones on the same tree. Male cones have papery scales that open to disperse loads of light yellow pollen to the wind. You may see it on the edges of puddles or covering your windshield.
White pine male cones are only around in late spring/early summer, while female cones develop over two summers. After the pollen is dispersed, look below white pine trees for a carpet of shed male cones.
“Hilloway, holloway, willowy wee, let’s make the teacher a honeybee!”
Four Winds Nature Program students at Barstow Memorial School in Chittenden, VT recently explored honeybees and other pollinators. They learned about honeybee anatomy by dressing up their teachers – complete with a head, fuzzy thorax, and abdomen; four wings; two antenna; six legs with pollen baskets, pollen combs, and brushes; compound eyes for excellent flower-spying and simple eyes for seeing in the dark hive; a long proboscis for sipping nectar; a honey stomach to carry nectar back to the hive; wax glands; and a stinger.
Students practiced being pollinators by using cotton swabs to gently gather and transfer pollen among dandelions, some wondering if they brought pollen from one species of flower to another, would they create fun new hybrids to find next year?
Students had the most fun practicing the “waggle dance” used in honeybee hives to communicate the location of distant flowers. They took turns gathering “flowers” of different colors and bringing them back to their “hive” then letting their fellow foraging “bees” know how far away and in what direction the flower patches were located. Many agreed with Nellie-Bee from the puppet show, exclaiming, “Being a bee is hard work! We just want to eat honey!”
Upon watching a bumblebee buzzing among the dandelions, the students discussed our very important native pollinators. “I understand how honeybees fly”, said one student, “but how do big ol’ bumbles do that?!”
Honeybees (an introduced species brought to North America by settlers from Europe in the 1600’s for honey and to pollinate crops) are just one of many pollinators. Keep an eye out for some of the around 400 native bee species in the Northeast!
Tricolored Bumble Bee sipping dandelion nectar – learn more about identifying bumblebees in Vermont Center for Ecostudies’ Guide to the Bumble Bees of New England
Faces are all around us if we begin to look for them. Humans brains perceive familiar patterns (often faces) on random stimuli – a phenomenon known as pareidolia. This inclination to recognize patterns and apply meaning likely served as a survival mechanism, enabling people to quickly identify threats.
As you look around outside, what faces do you see? What stories do these faces have to tell?
As we’re entering black fly season – approximately between mother’s day and father’s day in northern New England – consider reasons to appreciate them.
-Black flies are a sign of good water quality. Female black flies lay their eggs in running water. When the eggs hatch, the larvae, which look like wormy bowling pins because of their bulbous rear ends, attach themselves to submerged stones and branches and filter the bacteria, algae, and organic matter with hairy fan-like mouth parts. Most black fly species will not tolerate pollution.
GlacierNPS, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
-Black flies are an important part of the food web. Larvae and adults serve as food for fish (including trout), birds (notably nesting northern ducks), insects, and bats.
-Of the 40 species of black flies in Vermont, only 4 or 5 bite humans, most species feed on birds or other animals. Only female flies seek to bite warm-blooded animals with their serrated, scissor-like jaws. They need a blood meal to lay viable eggs. Males do not even have mouth parts that can bite; they only sip nectar.
To protect yourself from black fly bites, wear light-colored clothing that does not have buttons (the flies can crawl in through the spaces between the buttons), tuck your shirt into your pants, wear a second layer, and perhaps a head net. Black flies are most active during the day—especially on cloudy, still, humid days—and do not like to go indoors.
Celebrate black flies at the annual Blackfly Festival in Adamant, Vermont on June 6th!
F.L. Washburn, Edith Reed, others, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Jack-in-the-Pulpit is unfurling! Named for the resemblance to a preacher in a canopied pulpit, “Jack” is a spadix (a spike with many small flowers) and “the pulpit” is a spathe (a modified leaf bract that surrounds the spadix).
Jack-in-the-Pulpit bears male flowers for the first year or two, then the sex of “Jack’s” flowers depends on the amount of fall food accumulated in the corm (underground food storage organ). With ample food, a female plant, usually with two leaves, arises in the spring. With less food, a male plant, usually with one leaf, emerges. If the corm is starved, only a leaf develops.
Take a peek inside the “pulpit” to confirm the sex of Jack-in-the-Pulpit. Male plants have stubby purple projections with stamens dusted in yellow pollen. Female plants have a cluster of small green berries, which will mature into brilliant red fruits in late summer.
Male Jack-in-the-Pulpit left (Laval University, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons) and female Jack-in-the-Pulpit right (Homer D. House, New York State Botanist. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” – Troilus and Cressida, William Shakespeare
Tomorrow is Poem in Your Pocket Day! This celebration of literacy and culture originated in 2002 in New York City and has expanded across the United States. On this day, during National Poetry Month, you’re encouraged to select a poem, carry it on a slip of paper in your pocket, and share it with others throughout the day.
Other ways to share a poem include: reading a poem aloud to family and friends, or to the animals and plants outside your door; adding a poem to your email footer or posting one on social media; printing a poem and illustrating the blank space.
Here are a few of our favorite nature poems. Which poem will you select for Poem in Your Pocket Day? Share it with us in the comments!
Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by.
– Who Has Seen the Wind, Christina Rossetti
A haiku from a Four Winds naturalist educator:
Single black cricket Loves singing, dancing, night life Seeks music lover
A haiku from a Four Winds volunteer:
trapeze artists and tightrope walkers furry tailed in a steel gray sky
Dear Oak, I am round and ready. Bursting with hope, crammed with possibilities. I know I must drop and sleep and sprout and grow. So Slow! But then, Oak, I’ll stretch up my arms, strong and true. I’ll be your friend, the one who rises up beside you. Love, Acorn – Dear Acorn (Love, Oak) Letter Poems to Friends by Joyce Sidman
Today is the 56th anniversary of a worldwide movement in support of this beautiful blue planet. One way to celebrate Earth Day is to go for a “be free-ing” spring ephemeral walk.
Now is the special time between snow pack melt and canopy closure when spring ephemeral flowers bloom. The plants produced compact leaves, stems, and flower buds within their bulbs this past fall. So with the soil temperature and light cues of early spring, the ephemerals are ready to burst through the leaf litter. This rapid growth can cause emerging leaves and flowers to get choked in decaying leaves.
When you notice this, gently remove the old leaves and let the spring ephemerals be free – a small gesture of care and connection in celebration of Earth Day.
