November World in the Rocky Mountains

Today, we went for a nature walk with camera in hand to document our November World. We took a hike up the hill behind our house looking at the colors and also following some deer tracks. At this time the predominant colors are brown, green, straw, blue, and a little white. It will not be long before our entire landscape is covered in white. Usually, by this time it is already blanketed in snow. We are not complaining though. It is nice to be able to hike these trails this late in November wearing tennis shoes.

Big Sagebrush 

Artemisia tridentata

Ice and snow on the trail. 

The Continental Divide, in the distance, covered in snow.

Rainbow Trout- Outdoor Hour Challenge- July

Rocky Mountain Wildflowers- Outdoor Hour Challenge June 2013

This months Handbook of Nature Study Newsletter was Wildflowers and Weeds. Living in a new place makes our nature study feel new. We are accustomed to seeing "old friends" when we go out to look at wildflowers and most everything we see is totally unfamiliar! We did find one "old friend" on our wildflower outings- the Indian paintbrush. Purple was the most predominant flower color. We found all the colors, on the Wildflower Color Hunt bookmark from the June newsletter, except light pink. Here is a look at what we found.

 Rocky Mountain Phlox Phlox multiflora

 Yellow Pea Thermopsis rhombifolia

 Unknown

 Vase Flower Clematis hirsutissima

 Subalpine Larkspur Delphinium barbeyi

 Lupine

Indian Paintbrush

Arrowleaf balsamroot Balsamorhiza sagittata

Dusky Beardtongue Penstemon whippleanus 

 Unknown

 Prickly Rose Rosa acicularis

Unknown 

Lupines and Arrowleaf Balsamroot

These were all found very near our home. We still have some work to do on identifying a few flowers. Along with looking at our local flowers, we did take a drive up to Rocky Mountain National Park and saw some very low lying flowers at the Alpine Tundra visitor center. I thought that we got a picture, but have been disappointed that I have not been able to find it. The wind was blowing so hard up there and the temperature was rather chilly, so it is possible that I didn't get a photo. Next time I will be sure to take a picture to share these amazing wildflowers that are able to survive in such a climate.

Outdoor Hour Challenge- Birds!

I love birds! They are easy to attract and usually they are not too hard to identify. We first started watching birds as a family about 6 years ago. We simply hung a feeder where we could see it from our kitchen table. At that time we lived in the middle of a large city and we didn't get a great variety of birds, but we did have an occasional surprise. One day we came home to find an american kestrel trying to steal a baby bird from its nest, and another time we had a pair of monk parakeets land on our fence!

Later we moved to an area in rural Texas and discovered many more birds to our delight. Our favorite was the painted bunting, which was always exciting to see.

Just this past November we moved to Colorado and we have a whole new host of birds to learn. It has been very enjoyable to hear the boys call out, "Look, a new bird!"  So far we have identified a stellar jay, common redpolls, black-billed magpies, mountain chickadees, black capped chickadees, gray crowned rosy finches, and bald eagles. We do have a couple that we haven't identified yet.


Black Billed Magpie



Inspiration Corner

This month for the Outdoor Hour Challenge, I set up a little area with some of our bird books just to give us a reminder of what we are focusing on. My youngest really loves to read, Bird Talk over and over again. We have had the most success in bird watching right in our backyard. We are attracting mostly redpolls and chickadees. Many days we do have a huge flock of gray crowned rosy finches that fly in all at once and then rush off just as quickly.



Gray Crowned Rosy Finches



Last week I thought we would take a trail walk and listen for birds and see if we could see any that were not frequenting our feeder. But to our surprise we didn't see or hear one single bird!! The only thing we heard was crunching snow.



We did find tracks in the snow that we are going to have to identify.



What are these?



 Bald Eagles





A few days later, to our delight, we saw two bald eagles in a tree as we were driving down the highway. We pulled over and I tried to get a picture with my phone. The pictures are not so great, but at least we got a good enough shot that we can copy it into our journals if we want.



Speaking of journals, here is a sample from one of the boys who enjoys drawing birds.



 The boys keep a life list in the Kids Bird Log that Barb mentioned on her blog, Handbook of Nature Study, and I keep my own list in my nature journal. Birdwatching is something everyone in the family can enjoy and it is something you can do wherever you are. We are looking forward to spring to see what new feathered friends we can attract to our feeder.

Rock Study- Outdoor Hour Challenge

We have at least a foot of snow on the ground so we weren't able to go for a rock walk. But having four boys we have a substanial rock collection. So the boys loved hauling out treasure chests of rocks. We mainly sorted the rocks and enjoyed handling and admiring them. I have never been that interested in rocks, but after doing some reading and especially after looking through the January newsletter, I was inspired. I am really looking forward to taking a rock walk when the snow is gone. Also, I found a website that told where to look for rocks in our area. We also checked out Rocks, Rocks, Rocks. My youngest two really liked this book and were excited when we found that we had an igneous rock in our collection that looked just like the one in the book. So, even though we weren't able to get out to look for rocks this challenge has inspired us and we will certainly be coming back to this in the days ahead.

Nature Journals- Autumn 2010 OHC #1

Although we haven't posted in ages, we have still been out enjoying nature. I just have had trouble finding time to take pictures and post about it. I think it probably has something to do with keeping up with our almost 2 year old.

This week my mother was here and that freed me up to take some pictures of the boys drawing in their nature journals. This challenge was supposed to be done in our backyard, but since my mom was here we decided to take it to the Japanese Gardens! I only wish my backyard looked like this!

First we walked around (well the boys actually ran and jumped, but I walked). Then we found a great place to sit and draw.

My only instructions were for them to find something beautiful to draw. While the three older boys drew, my mother and the baby fed the fish...and I took pictures!

Once the boys got going, they did multiple drawings.

It is never too soon to start a Nature Journal. We have used many different types of journals. My favorite is a medium sized journal with watercolor paper (above), but we have used all sizes and all kinds of papers. For little ones it is nice to have one with not too many pages, so they don't feel overwhelmed and they quickly have a full book.

I let the journal be truly theirs, meaning I don't try to control it. We have ones with upside down pages and sometimes something like a rocket slips into them, but mostly they are filled with wonderful pictures and great memories.