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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.

June is also 30 Days Wild and I’m participating again this year.


It’s been awhile since our Robin chicks fledged and I have seen the fledglings around, but I have read Robins will sometimes have a second or even third brood in a year. Yesterday and today I noticed a pair of Robins pillaging dried grasses from our backyard. They’re not nesting in our yard and I don’t know if it’s the same pair that raised chicks in our yard, but they’re nesting somewhere nearby. After they gather materials they fly down the alley. Our yard must be an enticing place to gather nest materials because next door is a Serviceberry tree full of berries. This time of the year it’s always full of Robins gorging on the fruit and it must be handy to have somewhere to go for food and nesting materials. I planted a Serviceberry in our backyard this year and while it’ll be some time before it produces fruit, it’s one of the best trees to plant for birds in the Pacific Northwest.

The Robin’s frequently perch on our fence to preen and I like to watch their bird yoga poses as they keep their feathers in good condition. Today I got some shots of one of the Robins preening.

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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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