Last year when I wrote about the Northwest Flower and Garden Show I talked a lot about how the gardens didn’t feature wildlife habitat, but could have easily done so and I featured specific examples. I also expressed hope that a nature organization would partner on a display garden. This year, my hope was realized [...]
The 2nd annual backyard habitat tour in Shoreline, an area just north of Seattle, was dubbed ‘Where Our Wild Things Are‘ and presented six, certified yards. Shoreline is a Certified Community Wildlife Habitat through the National Wildlife Federation. The gardens ranged from just begun to established and featured highlights such as urban farming, accessibility and integrated family [...]
Today marks the beginning of National Pollinator Week, a good time to think about pollinators. Many posts from The Metropolitan Field Guide have focused on pollinators, so to begin Pollinator Week, here is a roundup of the posts. Once you learn about pollinators, visit Pollinator Design and Butterfly and Moth Design for many resources to learn how to [...]
The 11th annual Tukwila Backyard Wildlife Festival took place last weekend in Tukwila, Washington. Tukwila has the distinction of being the first community in the state of Washington, and only the fourth in the nation, to become certified by the National Wildlife Federation as Community Wildlife Habitat. In addition to yards, all of Tukwila’s schools were [...]
Last weekend was the large Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle. Running for four days, the show’s theme this year was Once Upon A Time…spectacular gardens with stories to tell. The show consisted of a large show garden area with over 20 individual gardens, a container garden display with over a dozen displays and [...]
Interesting Nature Extreme Insects by Richard Jones:: Featured on the Guardian website, this slideshow highlights a few images from a new book of extreme insects. News School of the Year Awards:: From the Big Wildlife Garden in the U.K. is a list of regional winners of the first Big Wildlife Garden School of the Year [...]
If you don’t follow on Facebook or Twitter then you probably miss some of the interesting tidbits I post there. So that you don’t miss out I’m going to start posting ‘Foragings’ periodically, which will be some of those interesting tidbits. So without further ado…. News Articles New York’s Urban Jungle Grows Wild as It [...]
I finished reading How Birds Migrate by Paul Kerlinger just ahead of International Migratory Bird Day which is coming up on May 8th. Migration is an important topic for the urban environment as many cities have an enormous impact on bird migration and many cities, including Portland and Seattle, lay in a major flyway, which [...]
If you happen to be in New York or visiting soon, be sure to check out Safari 7 which will be running from April 19-24. This is an amazing project that is centered on the number 7 line and has a self-guided wildlife tour through New York City. From their website: Safari 7 is a [...]
If you’re in the Portland area, consider checking out their upcoming event: Ecoroof Portland which will be March 12-13. There will be a vendor fair and many talks including some keynote speakers of great interest. Among the topics of discussion include: Introduction to Ecoroofs in Portland, Ecoroof Research and Monitoring, Portland’s Shift to a Sustainable [...]