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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.



Yesterday afternoon as we sat out in the front yard I watched the nesting robins come and go and a movement at the nest caught my eye. While the adult was there I noticed a small shape bobbing in the air. The chicks had hatched at last. The nest is incredibly difficult to see as it’s in the middle of a Camellia tree and the leaves block it from nearly every angle. I have not yet got any decent photos of it but with the chicks in there I tried again. It’s very dark because it’s not only inside the tree, but our large maple tree hangs over it as well, and the only way I could get any photos was with a flash. Fortunately the flash didn’t bother them, I think most either have their eyes still closed, or just opened. It did however, bother the adult so I won’t do that again while they’re there. The chicks look very young, mostly naked with white fluff on their heads, but it’s hard to see them. While I watched with my binoculars one adult returned and I could easily see three individual heads.

Today we took a walk to Pritchard Beach and the lawn was covered in goslings. There were about thirty individual Canada Geese goslings meandering and eating the grass with at least four pairs of adults. We sat down and they walked past us heading for the water, but they adults didn’t seem to get along and there were some disputes. I also heard a bird song I didn’t recognize near the water and I think it may have been a Warbling Vireo, but I’m really not sure because I only got a glimpse without my binoculars.

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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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