The Sandhill Crane Wet Prairie has had a different history than our other planted prairies. It is not from a former ag field, but from a highly degraded wooded area.…

For the last ten years we have been doing the traditional Xmas bird count for the Audubon Society at Pleasant Valley Conservancy. It's an interesting exercise, and sometimes a challenge…

My earlier post described our year-end work pulling together all our species data for 2008. I have now had time to go through the data unit-by-unit. I was particularly interested…

I had to miss it, but Marci and Jim Hess ran our New Year's Day snowshoeing. There had been a bit of fresh snow, and it snowed some more during…

This photo is not of Pleasant Valley Conservancy but of my back yard, which may explain why I have not had any posts lately. The snow is beautiful but it…

Last year we had an "open house" at Pleasant Valley Conservancy on New Year's Day. It was successful (the snow was good!). We are hoping to make this an annual…

Since 2002 I have been keeping careful field notes of plant species, their locations, phenology, and any other characteristics of interest. At the end of each season, I have been…

A question has been raised about why we are trying to control native shrubs such as sumac and gray dogwood. Good question. I need to be reminded occasionally that our…

One of the problems of cutting wood in a natural area is keeping the ecosystem from getting disrupted. Clearing the East Basin resulted in lots of wood, mostly of firewood…

In my last post I discussed our current work eradicating sumac clones. These clones were all located while they still had brilliant red leaves, and were mapped with our Garmin…