Category: Conservation
Wild Turkeys: The Truth Behind the Bird
November 26, 2013By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
On Thursday, Americans of all shapes, sizes and colors gather around tables overflowing with colorful cornucopias of food. And whether that table includes cranberry sauce or couscous, tortellini or tortillas, the centerpiece of the meal is likely that quintessential American bird, the turkey.
Consider that turkey, one of our biggest natural neighbors. Likely one of your holiday plates includes an image of the tom turkey, chest all puffed out, strutting its stuff. That's not how turkeys appear in November. Sleeker, thinner, turkeys are now forming winter single-sex flocks, a tom and its brothers joining a…
A Silent Fall: Vanishing Monarchs
October 3, 2013[caption id="attachment_364" align="alignleft" width="329"] A Monarch dries its wings after emerging from its chrysalis in our front garden. (Schuylkill Center, 2013)[/caption]
By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
The new fall season brings a chain of wonderful events: trees turning color, birds migrating south, goldenrod fields bursting in bloom. But one of my favorite fall phenomena is sadly and strangely absent this year.
There are almost no Monarch butterflies afoot these days. All summer, I’ve seen only three at the Schuylkill Center. And my compatriots at other centers like Bowman’s Hill in New Hope and Peace Valley in Doylestown report the same…
A ‘Grate’ Day: Steel & The Schuylkill Center
August 2, 2011Last week, I got to do something few people are given the opportunity to do. I got to see the guts of a steel plant up close and personal! Our friends at ArcelorMittal provided us with a guided tour of the international corporation's Conshohocken facility - just down river from our own organization. I was there with two similarly giddy co-workers, our Director of Land & Facilities and his Assistant, to pick up a custom machined well cover from the plant’s fabrication shop.
What in the world, you ask, does ArcelorMittal and the international steel industry have to do with the Schuylkill Center? As it turns…
