Finding the Nature that is Right There The cheeping couldn’t be ignored. What kind of juvenile songbird was it? Precisely from where was it coming? The questions jumped from my awareness and into my curiosity. I had to go look.   A few years before, I never would have heard the cheeping. I certainly wouldn’t have been walking around this abandoned parking lot looking for it.   Finding Nature Right Where You Are   There are times in our lives when we don’t notice nature unless we happen to be...

(And How the Various Birds Feed There) "Jay! Quick! Can you please turn the car around?" We were driving down the Overseas Highway in the Florida Keys, Jay at the wheel and I looking out the window. We'd crossed over bridges and passed miles of mangrove bushes and roadside marshes, barely a bird in sight. Then through another curtain of mangroves I suddenly noticed flashes of white patches through the leaves. Jay did turn the car around and parked on the side of a quiet road. As I ventured...

A small portion of the Sandhill Cranes at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, Decatur, AL, 01.13.26 The Sandhill Cranes were calling me. Thousands of them were reported to be at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge in Decatur, Alabama, and I'd missed seeing them in their abundance last year. A deep longing within drew me to try again...and hopefully to see a few of the rare Whooping Cranes that had also been recorded. As we drove up to the national wildlife refuge, the corn fields on either side of...