Nature Walk at Wood Lake Nature Center

Today was the first nature walk organized through my new Nature Group. We planned to meet up at the Wood Lake Nature Center. We didn't have a real good turnout. One mom was sick and one must have had something come up, so it was just me and the kids... but we had a great time enjoying nature anyways, and there was a ton of it to enjoy!

Here's Tyler doing a little pose for us at the beginning of our walk...

There were lots of birds and other animals out and about for us to enjoy today. This Mama Robin was busy building her nest...

Tyler thought it was silly that she was using pieces of plastic for her nest!

Meanwhile, Daddy Robin watched from a nearby fence...

These Red-Winged Blackbirds were all over the woods. They were really showing off for us... letting us get exceptionally close to them while they sang their songs for us.

The Waterfowl were out in pairs today as well. The Mallard Ducks...

The Canadian Geese. This one was eating...

This one was napping...

We saw a beautiful pair of Wood Ducks...

And this pair of Hooded Mergansers...

After our walk we spent a little time inside the Nature Center Building playing and learning.

We had a great time and saw some very cool things in nature today. Part of the Outdoor Hour Challenge Assignment #1 was to choose something from our walk that we want to learn more about. Tyler thought we should learn more about those friendly Red-Winged Blackbirds. So that is our mission for the next week or so. We will begin by reading about them in our Handbook of Nature Study and The Sibley Field Guide to Birds. I told Tyler that I think there are some songs about Blackbirds, so we will look some of those up online and have fun with that as well. We'll also take some time to sketch a picture of one in our Nature Journal. I think he chose a good animal to study!

We used this scavenger hunt sheet during our walk. It really helped us to use all of our senses out there! Some of the other things we saw and experienced...


Things we saw:

A tree with blossoms on it

A bird

A bird's nest

Something moving in the breeze

A Squirrel

A Chipmunk

A Downy Woodpecker


Things we heard:

The wind rustling the leaves

A bird chirping


Things we felt:

Something cool in the shade

Something smooth

Something rough

Something wet

A goose feather


Things we smelled:

The grass

Smoke (they were burning off some grass near the building)