LEARN ABOUT CREATURES
(IN OUR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS)
this project is called LOCAL BIOLOGY (until we think of something better)
Tiny Field Guides
Our plans for the summer
There are a few of us who decided that we really will make some tiny field guides for our own neighborhoods. Subjects so far include: birds, ants, trees, bees, bike sound mapping.
We are going to try sharing these with the people in our neighborhood. We will let you know how it goes.
If you want to get involved, it's easy. Pick something you want to learn about, and make a little guide. Share it with us and we will be happy to give you some feedback.
What is a Tiny Field Guide?
Tiny Field Guides are little books made from 1 piece of printer paper. The paper is folded & cut to make 8 little pages — a front, back, and 6 pages for descriptions and observations.
Through this website, we can upload our guides, and digitize the content in the guides. This will make the content of the guides searchable through the internet. This means people in our neighborhoods might find our little guides!
(we will make a picture of this for you!)
Some of us are aware the frogs are incredibly threatened right now (see why). Also, 2008 was the "Year of the Frog," in which many aquariums & zoos did active work to increase knowledge about the situation of frogs.
Save the Frogs Day is April 28th, and the website for this new holiday has suggestions about how you can help educate others about frogs.
These are some things we can do on this website:
- Create tiny field guides about frogs in your neighborhood to share with others
- Add 'Natural Events' to localbiology. All you have to do is lookup frog lifecycle information and add that to our public calendar.
- Attend or 'do' a frog-related learning event (on or in frog mating season.) For example, some Minneapolitans will be going frog monitoring again, as we did last year. But this time we're doing sound recordings.
- Post frog-related monitoring volunteer opportunities
I think I saw two cedar waxwings in a tree this morning. But I was on BART so it was hard to get a good look. Has anyone else in the Bay Area seen or heard them yet this season?
Flickr photo by cobalt123
A few weeks ago I noticed that the giant spiders in my yard had moved on... but they're back! Some spiders are back, anyway. They're the same species, but maybe not the same individuals. I wonder if they're just maturing at different times? Are there waves of spider generations?
This afternoon we saw an Oak Titmouse chasing a Chestnut-backed Chickadee off a branch. It made a ton of noise and actually pecked the Chickadee with its beak. Once the Chickadee left, the Titmouse stayed on the branch and ate bugs. I wonder if they're always this territorial? I'll have to consult some bird books to find out.
Berkeley spans from the San Francisco Bay on the west to the foothills at the east. 102,000 people share this habitat with a diverse array of mammals, birds, and insects. Since so many people have lush gardens, Berkeley is a great place to be a bee. And the many street trees make songbirds very happy. Deer, raccoons, opossums, and skunks take advantage of yards, parks, and creeks.
Like most of Northern California, we have two seasons: wet (winter and spring) and dry (summer and fall).
While I love my new house, I do miss something from my old one: the Finch Family. For the last four years, we watched a family of House Finches raise their babies in the yards surrounding our apartment. They splashed in our birdbath, and perched on our clothesline. They foraged in the neighbors' trees. They sang beautiful songs. And they teased the cats by hopping around in our windowboxes.
So now we live in North Berkeley, where there are a lot more trees and gardens, and I've noticed that while there are a few House Finches in the neighborhood, they are far outnumbered by Goldfinches. Why? I'm going to find out.
© 2009 Local Biology, a social business
A social business is owned by the people who directly benefit, and need its existence. We all benefit from the earth, and knowing about the earth, therefore, the earth owns Local Biology and we are simply noticing her, and how she created us.
It is by being a social business today that we can reach out to all people who want to understand the world they live in - the science, the spirit, the changing planet. We can reach around walls built by schools and other educational institutions, television, media, science, religion, language and country.
We know that we love and care about our Earth and in this we unite as this 'social business,' the business being that we are all working together to bring this knowledge together on this website and to other real projects in our towns — working with our own communities and, especially, friends.
Local Biology by Local Biology is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.localbiology.org.
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