Category: Nature
Summer is the season of meadows
June 26, 2014By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
To me, summer has always been the season of meadows. While in spring the light fills the forest, bringing flowers, ferns, and understory plants to life; by summer, the forest is a cool, dim respite, a darker, more peaceful place to escape the burning heat of the sun. So it is the meadow that seems to properly represent this season of blazing hot days: steaming humid afternoons, rain storms that blast out of the late afternoon and early evening to drench the world and leave things glistening and green. Meadows this time of…
Just how small is a toadlet?
June 9, 2014By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
Just what size are these tiny toad babies that make their way, by the thousands, from the Upper Roxborough Reservoir Preserve to the Schuylkill Center each June?
[gallery type="slideshow" ids="39142,39144,39143,39145,39146"]
Four sounds from early May
May 8, 2014By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
This week the forests and fields are alive with sounds, all manner of animals calling out and leafy trees rustling in the breeze. This is also the time of year when our Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic is brimming with baby animals of all sorts. So, here are four samples of what May sounds like at the Schuylkill Center.
Toads, singing in afternoon sunlight. A basin in this field fills with water most of the year, creating a nice habitat for toads and other amphibians. Around the field and basin are vines, grasses, and flowering trees.
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First blooming
April 9, 2014By Anna Lehr Mueser
I walk through the forest in the afternoon, listening to the rustle of a light breeze in the treetops and the distant hum of the city, reminding me that I am both immersed in the forest, and still in the city of Philadelphia. At this time of year, I love to watch the woods transform from their winter quiet to the stampede of color and growth that is springtime. This time last year, it seemed everything was blooming, but today, just the first green things, the first buds, the first butterflies, appear. The long winter has…
The Sixth Extinction, Book Review
April 3, 2014By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Book review for the Philadelphia Inquirer, a print version of this review appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday, March 30, 2014.
We inhabit an extraordinary planet overflowing with an abundance of life: massive coral reefs built by billions of tiny invertebrates, rain forests teeming with uncountable plants and animals, frogs and toads singing in vernal ponds, bats flitting over summer meadows.
But we also live at an extraordinary moment when all of the creatures named above, and millions more, might disappear in our lifetime. And while climate change gets all the attention as an environmental…
Baby Squirrels in November: Unusual Wildlife at the Clinic
March 27, 2014By Rick Schubert, Director of Rehabilitation, the Wildlife Clinic
Anyone who has worked on a farm in a temperate climate knows that winter is no time to take a break; wintertime is a race against the clock, reorganizing, repairing, cleaning, planning, and preparing for the upcoming busy season. Wildlife rehabilitation is no different. Although we take in injured adult wild animals 12 months a year, our business spikes in the spring, summer, and fall with the addition of orphaned and displaced neonates. Usually, winter is a slower time for wildlife patient intakes, but it’s a critical period to spend getting…
Vernal stirrings: Spring has come to our fields and forests
March 20, 2014By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
Today we mark the vernal equinox, the moment when winter, officially, becomes spring. Edith Holden, who, in 1906 published The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, notes that March was named “stormy month” by the Anglo-Saxons. Indeed, it has been a stormy March, with more to come, it seems.
But let’s take a moment now to feel glad that spring is truly on the way.
We see it in the small green things pushing up from dead leaves and in the many trays of transplants growing in our Native Plant Nursery; red maple…
What does the toad say?
February 24, 2014[gallery type="circle" ids="532,531,529"]
By Claire Morgan, Volunteer and Garden Coordinator, Gift Shop Manager
Pretty soon, we’ll be hearing a lot of what the toad says! In early to mid- March we will start to hear the sound of the American Toad, Bufo Americanus, with its high pitched trill calling for a mate, as they do each spring. Here in Roxborough, at the Schuylkill Center, we’ll be watching and listening during those early spring evenings. When the evening temperature rises to 50 degrees and the ground is moist, the American Toads start to make their journey out of the woods of…
How does your community see nature?
February 18, 2014These are just some of the many great photos submitted to the How Do You See Nature contest so far.[gallery type="circle" ids="505,517,513,508,516,507,509,518,511,512,504,522,523,524,525"]
There is still time to share yours! Send us a photo by February 27th. Details are here.
How do you see nature? Schuylkill Center photo contest 2014
February 6, 2014In celebration of the opening of Frost in the Environmental Art Gallery, the Schuylkill Center invites community members to send photos to our Winter 2014 Photo Contest.
Submit your winter photos by February 27!
More about Frost:
It is safe to say, this has been a winter of surprises, with temperatures plummeting well below what we usually expect for this region and snowfall far above. This cold is actually at the heart of our upcoming exhibition, Frost. We’re thrilled to welcome two Philadelphia artists to take on winter with a show that runs from February 15 – April 18. Amie…
