The Audubon Community Nature Center has been working to take care of and train their newer non-releasable birds. The Audubon’s most famous non-releasable b
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JEFF TOME
Photos by Jeff Tome
Every forest has its own wildflowers. These Virginia Bluebells prefer wet forests.
Wildflowers explode across the forest floor like a slow moving fireworks show. It starts with a trickle of hepatica, then bursts with thousands of pink and white Spring Beauties blooming en masse. Then, bright yellow Trout Lilies bloom in bursts scattered through the forest. Trilliums appear after that, forming masses of white and maroon. The forest changes week by week each May as wildflowers burst out in full color, then disappear while another flower bursts out.
The flowers don’t really disappear. Many of these perennials are probably older than I am and grow from the same root each year. Their flowers disappear, but the plants linger for weeks or months as they create seeds to spread their little plant babies about the forest. Later, they die back completely and leave their space open for a new flower to fill later in the season.
Giant rocks make for the best playgrounds.
Every Friday for the last few weeks, a couple of the kids attending ACNC’s Outdoor Classroom program have spent part of the afternoon hike collecting rocks. Audubon sits on a wetland and as such does not have an overabundance of large rocks, so the rocks they find are mostly those that have been put down with gravel or the occasional smaller one found on the trail. Most people walk right over them without a second thought, but these seemingly uninteresting rocks are immensely important to the kids who find them.
A little sparkle, a hint of pink or an entirely smooth rock is magnified by their interest and connection with this rock because they have made the choice to claim it as their own. It is now their rock that they put time and energy into choosing, picking or digging up and carrying with them. At the end of the day, many of these rocks are left behind for others to discover and a couple are brought home to add to their rock collec
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