The Raleigh Naturalist

June 29, 2008

Nature news around the town

Filed under: About & reflection, Greenways & Parks, Nature Lore, North Raleigh — Tags: — raleighnaturalist @ 10:57 pm

This post was originally published on May 18, 2008

The Wakefield Ecology Club

I made my first public appearance as The Raleigh Naturalist by presenting to the Ecology Club at Wakefield Middle School! I took my naturing vest, bursting with loupes, dissection kits, pocket guides and other paraphernalia. I took my naturing briefcase, more of a suitcase with topography maps, geology binder, park guides and my hand-built tree scrapbook. I also had my camera bag and hat. I gave a show and tell with all of that and talked to them about founding an Ecology Club at Enloe and also about my daughter Lily’s Envirothon work there (much more recently!).

This is my walking cabinet of nature resources. I am mostly done color coding the watersheds on the large map. The vest weighs 13 pounds.

The Wakefield Ecology Club was a great group of kids, led by Ms. Cindy Bowling, who invited me. They meet each week and perform recycling chores at Wakefield, plus try to learn more about their environment from guests. They knew lots of great stuff about conservation, invasive species, and native wildlife. We played a quiz game and I rewarded them with conservation goody packets put together by Lily last summer as a service project. All of the students showed excellent interest in the issues. The Wakefield MS campus is lovely. Below are some nature images from their campus.

These blackberries will taste good soon! Below is a rockfall with some really nifty “man-made conglomerate” – some nice high-iron stone encased in concrete.

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More Nature News

The News and Observer just teemed with good nature news this week. Durant Park has become a part of the Piedmont Birder’s Trail. Repairs have finally been completed on the section of Greenway between Capital Boulevard and Atlantic Avenue. This stretch of greenway was also featured in a “best greenways” survey by Joe Miller. Links below.

Piedmont Bird Trail

Middle Crabtree Greenway opens!

Favorite Greenways

Triangle Greenways Guide

 

Spring Forward – erase your nature deficit!

Filed under: About & reflection, Central Raleigh, Greenways & Parks — Tags: , , , — raleighnaturalist @ 9:37 pm

This post was originally published on March 23, 2008.

The equinox on Thursday and the warm weather have us all thinking about getting out into the dirt – right?  Maybe your kid doesn’t like to get out and garden with you.  Consider sending them to the Green River Preserve this summer.  This environmental camp for rising second through ninth graders, with expedition programs for all high schoolers, is located on several thousand acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  They have an outstanding program.  They also promote a book, Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv, which centers on a concept to consider: nature-deficit disorder, which can affect any of us if we’re not careful.  Plant those seeds, take that walk, mount that expedition!  Have a great one!

 The flowery driveway of a street that edges Fletcher Park. This time of year, it’s one of the prettiest sights in central Raleigh. You can glimpse the new construction on the right.  More about that below.

                              

The Fletcher water garden project is really moving along and needs more coverage. One of the primary functions of the water garden will be to capture, slow and filter the water from this drainage as it makes its way down to Pigeon House Creek, across the railroad tracks by Capital Boulevard.  There are plenty of other tributaries to that troubled creek that need help more than this heavily wooded glen, but it definitely will provide some much-needed quality control.  We will watch this project carefully, and use it as an entrance to the many issues surrounding Pigeon House Creek.

Greening Raleigh – a continuum to the past

Filed under: About & reflection — Tags: , , , — raleighnaturalist @ 8:07 pm

This post was originally published Jan. 30, 2008.

Blue-eyed Grass

Noam Chomsky gave a nice talk Sunday that made me proud and (like always) made me think. He stated that many important social movements in America had germs in the sixties, but became important and effective in the seventies – women’s rights, the environment…not a new observation, but it reminded me that this blog has its real beginnings at Enloe High School in 1970, when I founded an Ecology Club there. We sent our student body president to a Governors Task Force of the time, and she and I got interviewed on WPTF radio. Chomsky says generating the conversation in the public mind is the essential tool available to the left, so I felt I could claim an early start in the continuing process of raising awareness and pushing for policies that protect, preserve, and provide public access to natural areas and wildlife. My own awareness goes all the way back to 4th grade, when my teacher Thelma Jones taught us nature and farm lore, and graciously spent personal time on our private Science Club. She burned into my soul that it would be sacrilege to pick or destroy blue-eyed grass (pictured above) – my first knowledge of an endangered species or that such a thing could be.

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My “about” statements make it clear I am not an activist. But I hope this blog and its links are a positive force in the greening of Raleigh. Now there are really wonderful people doing much more direct work. Sue Sturgis is doing great work at the Southern Institute, Boylan Heights is still battling for Dix Hill, and most appropriate of all for this post – a local high school student is organizing and lobbying for Richland Creek! All of these and more are on my sidebar. More can be found at my Environmental Ed. links. (Teaching EE to high schoolers is my highest form of activism). Beauty is truth, said Keats, and even if the beauty is chaotic (see our Lady Banks below), there is always light to reach for. Let’s keep on reaching!

the Lady Banks rose that climbs our pecan trees

April 11, 2008

new draft ideas/old

Filed under: About & reflection — raleighnaturalist @ 12:12 am
This post is an artifact from when this site was the draft blog. Moved to this site on June 30, 2008.

                   

                

 

Nesting sites.  This draft blog is the place for nesting sites – a personal project with direct relevance to this public project.

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Art’s garlic.  And Brandon’s folks.  A garlic post for Pecans and Mistletoe! local sustainable farming.

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the cutting of trees for federal mandate/Progress Energy guidelines

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the green nature center building, the epa building, the architect,s headquarters being done by Frank Harmon. institutional green. Ravenscroft’s green initiatives, led by Burt’s Bees John Replogle.

January 19, 2008

Draft Ideas

Filed under: About & reflection — raleighnaturalist @ 12:27 am

This post is an artifact of when this blog was a parallel draft blog for Raleigh Nature at it’s original url. This url became the home site on June 29, 2008.

 

Initial welcome topics: 

1/1/08 Here at the draft blog (If YOU are here thank you so much for exploring my site) I will throw out some upcoming topics:  1) Yates Mill Pond – big topic with history, dam failure, park, tree walk, NCSU. (posted) 2) Pigeon House Creek and downtown wildlife, with a few nesting sites thrown in  3) Lions Park and its geological strike point  4) Hemlock Bluffs “exotica” portrait   5) Person Street’s history as “business US One” and the true spine of the city  6) Mordecai House, Raleigh farming history, and city springs, 7) Mills Across Raleigh: How did you think those roads got their name?  8) Where Have All the Pigeons Gone? –  including the Peanut Man Who Peddled Drugs out of his hot box and free city birth control for birds  9)  Raleigh’s growing hawk population: where some of the pigeons went and man, I love those big birds  10) Dix resolved? we will see.

More 1/18/08

Sustainable farming, heritage agriculture, local farm-food systems, urban food gardening.

invasive species and native expansions. kudzu, stilt-grass, hydrilla and coyotes. don’t start me on the pond-bred trout.

 Daily Coyote

Long leaf pine at Falls

 

 

January 11, 2008

Oh, my! Here we go – and hawks in Cameron Village!

Filed under: About & reflection, Central Raleigh, Nature Lore — Tags: , — raleighnaturalist @ 1:07 am

This first “normal” post is late –  my own natural history took a sudden gust last Saturday when the huge spread in the News & Observer began a cascade of calls, messages and e-mails about everything from binding family Bibles to studio tours.  Wonderful, but hairy – and all I want to do is get back to the red-tailed hawk family who has moved into Cameron Village.  These guys are swooping down to roost sometimes right beside the library and the one on the left below looks like a juvenile.  I’ll start a series of observations and let you know.  We see these guys all the time – whereas you need to get near some flowing water and real country to see the slightly smaller red-shouldered hawk.

 

 

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