Category: Nature
Nature from Within | Naturaleza por dentro
July 20, 2017By Eduardo Dueñas, Lead Environmental Educator | Para una versión en Español de este post, por favor ver aquí.
For as long as I can remember, I have always loved the scents, colors, and surprises of each day. I was a curious child who always liked to pick up rocks in the yard of my house to see what surprise awaited me underneath- a colorful beetle, a squirmy worm, or a family of ants. That same curiosity drove me to run outside everytime it rained to feel the rain and smell wet earth. I was the curious kid who would suck…
Red-tailed Hawks at the Franklin Institute: The Benjamin Franklin Parkway as Wildlife Habitat
July 13, 2017By guest contributor Christian Hunold, Associate Professor, Department of Politics, Drexel University
In the spring of 2012 I stumbled across a community of amateur naturalists who were drawn to Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway not by the museums or the cultural events, but by a pair of red-tailed hawks nesting on a second-story window ledge of the Franklin Institute. Grid Magazine had requested some pictures of the hawks, and so I spent one sunny afternoon in late May photographing the half-grown chicks huddled on the nest at the corner of 21st and Winter Street.
I recall feeling a little bored: where…
Naturalist’s Notebook: The Missing Sponge
July 11, 2017
By Andrew Kirkpatrick, Manager of Land Stewardship
If you take a walk along Smith Run, coming up Ravine Loop below Penn’s Native Acres, the hillsides where the beeches, oaks and maples grow show signs of distress. The structural roots of the trees are visible at the soil line when they should be tucked away cozily wrapped in the warm blanket of leaf litter and organic rich soil. Instead, because of exotic invasive earthworms, which can be observed by scraping away the thin layer of leaves on the ground, the roots are exposed and left to fend for themselves in all…
Citizen Science: at the Schuylkill Center and Beyond
June 22, 2017By Guest contributor Anna Forrester
Seven years ago, my partner and I became the enthusiastic owners of an abandoned farm in central Pennsylvania. The property included an early 20th century bank barn, complete with a resident colony of bats. Reports of white nose syndrome and its devastating effects on the area’s bat populations had recently begun appearing in the media and – though we hadn’t had any up-close, intimate experience with our bats -- we soon found ourselves working to help track the spread of the disease and the fate of our bats by participating in the Appalachian Bat Count…
Celebrating LGBTQ Environmental Leaders
June 16, 2017by Anna Lehr Mueser, Manager of Communications & Digital Strategy and Jenny Ryder, Communications Coordinator
There’s been plenty of discussion, and some research, about the overlap between LGBTQ people (and activists) and environmentally conscious people (and activists). So, today we’re talking especially about environmental leadership – about people from the LGBTQ community who have stood up to be leaders for climate justice, for environmental science, even the woman who gave modern American environmentalism its birth.
The people who worked to ban DDT and protect nesting birds, who helped establish the Environmental Protection Agency, who help communities find the resources to relocate before…
Introducing Fox Glen: a new chapter in land stewardship
May 10, 2017By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Where our Grey Fox Loop and Wind Dance Pond Trail meet, just uphill from our beloved 19th-century springhouse and its pond, is a section of our forest that has been overrun with invasive plants. But on May 20 we’re turning it around, planting over 200 new trees and shrubs to stabilize the land and reforest the area. We’re calling it Fox Glen.
I hope you’ll transform it with us. (more…)
Coyotes in Roxborough? Absolutely
March 21, 2017By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Early in my time here at the Schuylkill Center, a neighbor who lives close to our sweeping Upper Roxborough property gave me a call one day. It was not the phone conversation I expected.
“Mike,” he said with concern in his voice. “I spotted a coyote walking down my driveway the other night. “
“Wow,” I stupidly answered, “that’s great. I’m not sure anyone here has seen one yet.”
He wasn’t as excited as me. “What are you going to do about it?” he challenged.
Ah, of course. He’s worried about his dog, as I…
My Path to Nature Education
March 16, 2017By Nicole Brin, Sycamore Classroom Lead Teacher
Editor's Note: This post was originally published by Pennsylvania Land Trust Association for their series on conserved lands, like the Schuylkill Center, in communities around the state.
Rows of stuffed animals- bears, bunnies, dogs, lions- all lined up in the grass of my suburban Connecticut backyard as they got ready to start their school day. Their teacher, eight-year-old me, prepared to teach them all the things that I already knew in the wisdom of my few childhood years. I made attendance sheets, created lesson, and planned field trips to the garden behind our…
Book Review: The Hidden Life of a Toad
March 15, 2017By Claire Morgan, Volunteer Coordinator
Doug Wechsler’s children’s book The Hidden Life of a Toad (Charlesbridge, hardcover, 2017), released just this week, explores what happens in this mysterious process called metamorphosis - from eggs to tadpoles, tadpoles to toads. Amazing photos and descriptions walk you through this phenomenon day-by-day. Doug has witnessed the annual event of toad migration that takes place each spring at the Upper Roxborough Reservoir Preserve, across the street from the Schuylkill Center, where they spend the winter in the forest. Each year volunteers gather for Toad Detour, a citizen scientists program to help the toads to safety cross…
A Natural Way to Start the Day
March 10, 2017By Donna M. Struck, Director of Finance and Administration
In my eight and a half years as a staff member at the Center, I have seen a great deal of positive change. One of my favorite changes of recent past is the addition of what we call the “Hagy’s Mill Parking Lot.”
The lot’s primary purpose is to provide parking for visitors during times when the main entrance gate is locked, such as on Sundays when the Visitor Center is closed. One day soon after the lot was finished, my colleague, Anna Lehr Mueser, suggested that we could park our…
