Today was the first day in months that I have been able to get to the top of the ridge. The last week of sunny (although cold) weather was responsible…

Some of the south- and west-facing woods are essentially snow-free, and are starting to show patches of green. Everything that I have seen has been bad, nonnatives that are probably…

I'm gradually learning the intricacies of ArcGIS, and I have now used the new 2010 Dane County air photo as a basis for creating a new management map of Pleasant…

I finally found time to put together a summary of the tree database we finished a few weeks ago. Thanks again to Heisley and (especially) Amanda for their hard winter…

The days are starting to get longer and there are tiny glimpses of spring in the air. On a south-facing lawn I saw bits of green grass sticking out. This…

Almost any prairie or savanna restoration project ends up creating lots of brush piles. One or two piles might be left as wildlife habitat, but if you have a lot…

Now that we have finished the tree database, it is possible to start making interesting queries using GIS. The topic today is big trees, those greater than 30 inches in…

In an earlier post I described some of the information we had obtained about Hill's oak (Quercus ellipsoidalis, also called Northern Pin Oak). Now that we have completed the tree…

In 2007 we started creating a database of all the trees at Pleasant Valley Conservancy that were larger than 10 inches in diameter. Each tree received a permanent numbered marker…

We put up two kestrel nest boxes in 2008 and since then have been successful with the one closest to the cabin. It has been a delight to watch the…