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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.


The photos above are a few insects I’ve found in our backyard over the last week. The shiny green one is a cuckoo wasp, as I learned from contacts on Twitter. The lady beetle is a Western Blood-red Lady Beetle.

On Thursday night I attended Seattle Audubon’s Centennial member meeting and the featured speakers were Craig and Joy Johnson, local bird watchers. Craig is a videographer, artist and photographer while Joy is a writer. They have written a couple of children’s books which we have, Harry the Woodpecker’s Search for a Home and The Amazing Hummingbird Story of Red Rufous as well as four photographic books about birds in the Pacific Northwest. They are a very talented duo.

The Audubon event included a screening of their video, Backyard Birds Habitat that they filmed almost entirely in their backyard on Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound. Craig has managed to capture a wide range of bird species as well as some interesting behavior. The row of Bushtit fledglings lined up on a branch brought an audible ‘aw’ from the audience viewing the video.

Their website contains a number of interesting bird videos, below are a couple, including those Bushtits, and a video of a crow dispute.

Bushtit Fledglings from Craig & Joy Johnson on Vimeo.

Corvid Quarrel from Craig & Joy Johnson on Vimeo.

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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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