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…

.nobr br { display: none}It's still a long way to April, but it doesn't hurt to think ahead. We've got lots of seeds in the barn, waiting to be planted…

For years I have been using the early air photos taken by the Soil Conservation Service for planning restoration work at Pleasant Valley Conservancy. The first air photos for Dane…

I spent some time scouring my hard disk to find a summer photo that was taken at the same location as the great savanna burn photo from the last post…

Many remnant oak savannas are grazed or have been grazed in the past. As I have pointed out elsewhere, if the open-grown oaks are still present, these are prime candidates…