The March Hare: Winter '03
Issue 35

Footprints in the Snow * Hopper's Index * New Member Bio: Gare * Lying alone in plush tufts *
Adventures in Straw Bale Home Building * Nature Corner * New Member Bio: Tamar

Nature Corner

by Rachel Katz

These last few months I’ve been diving into a long term relationship with the birds and plants on Dancing Rabbit land. I have been spending less time saying “Hello, what is your name?” and more time asking “Why are you doing that?” And with a little explanatory help from professors and books, nature has been opening up to me. It’s been fun to get a deeper understanding of the patterns and to explore how to make our land better for all the plants and animals that live on it.

With the help of Truman State University professor Pete Goldman, I am setting up a route on the land that I will walk about once a month and census the birds. I will also seasonally census the plants. I hope to do this for many years and use the data to help us understand whether the restoration work we have been doing is actually improving the habitat for our avian cousins. Plus it’s a great excuse to take a walk.

But all this looking deep doesn’t mean I do not get to experience the simple joys of sharing the land with the flora and fauna. The owls have been especially present recently. Many nights we can hear the the screech owls’ whinny and the great horned owls calling to each other (“Who’s out tonight? Me too”). In fact, there is a screech owl who must enjoy our company because it has been hanging around on fence posts and low branches, despite curious humans and their flashlights.

We also got a visit from an extremely tolerant opossum. It decided to sleep a day away between the greenhouse glass and the shade tarp one Sunday. Well, Sundays we have meetings. Every time we had a break we all rushed over to check out the opossum. It would get woken up a little bit by our bustle and give a little yawn and stretch before it went back to sleep. I never thought an opossum could look so cute.
Now that the trees are bare, it is a good time to find all the bird nests that were hidden by the leaves this summer. I thought that I was an excellent nest detective, sneaking around and peaking in at the nearby eggs and newly hatched baby birds. But it turns out there was a great big robin nest right on the front lawn of the trailer that I never saw before!

I’ve been patiently waiting for the snow to fall. Tracking animals in the snow is one of my favorite activities. Sometimes I find it difficult to wait until the snow has stopped falling before suiting up and heading out with my track book in hand. It lets me be almost omniscient for the day and see all the invisible goings on happening around me.

Just because it’s cold doesn’t mean that things aren’t happening out there. The visibility in the winter is fabulous, and the spareness makes it easier to pick out the action. Get out there and see for yourself.

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Footprints in the Snow * Hopper's Index * New Member Bio: Gare * Lying alone in plush tufts * Adventures in Straw Building * Lady Builder * Nature Corner * New Member Bio: Tamar