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In 2016 I’m doing a 365 Nature project. Each day of the year I will post something here about nature. It may be any format, a photo, video, audio, sketch or entry from my nature journal. It could be a written piece. Each day I will connect to nature in some way and share it here by the end of that day. You can keep up-to-date by subscribing to the RSS feed or be notified by email. See all the 365 Nature posts.


After I posted yesterday I had another backyard experience; a Spring Azure butterfly showed up and started laying eggs on our Pacific Ninebark. I took a few photos of it and it was around for quite awhile so I had time to watch it closely. When I get a chance I’m going to go back and look at some of the flower buds to see if I can find any eggs and I’ll keep watching to see if I can find any caterpillars once they hatch.

As I watched the butterfly I found two paper wasp nests in my insect hotel in the cans which were only half full of materials. Both were fairly small, and in one I encountered the wasp sitting at the entrance to the can.

We continued watching the wrens bringing in nesting materials and at one point a Bald Eagle soared right over our house which reminded me of the Jane Goodall book, The Eagle & the Wren.

Our umbrella stand is made of stone and at the end of the day I think it must have been retaining the sun’s heat because I found many insects basking on it, including several dark colored spiders. I caught a quick glimpse of a red flying insect, but it flew off too quickly to get a look or photo.

Today I worked at the wetlands behind our house pulling blackberries, laurel and other invasive plants. While walking around off trail to pull the plants I got a look at many of the plants growing and we found False Lily of the Valley in large patches and what we think were Hedge Nettle. At the entrance we found Shooting Star, a plant I had not seen there before. There were Trillium blooming all around the park and I found patches where many solitary bees were gathering on plant leaves in the sun. I found a Black-capped Chickadee nest in a snag and we heard a Cooper’s Hawk frequently, and although I couldn’t find the nest, I’m certain there’s one somewhere in there.

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Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner is a naturalist, writer and artist based in Seattle. She is the author of THE NATURALIST AT HOME: Projects for Discovering the Hidden World Around Us and NATURE OBSCURA: A City’s Hidden Natural World from Mountaineers Books, a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and Pacific Northwest Book Awards. She writes articles about natural history and has bylines in Crosscut, Popular Science, National Wildlife Magazine and others. On the side she writes fiction.

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