Tagged blog carnivals
Blog Carnival Love: I and the Bird (and the Great Blue Heron)
I love birds. They are an important part of my daily life: I listen for robins and towhees when I wake up on Spring mornings. I watch for night hawks at dusk in the summer. Juncos nitter and nest in my strawberries and thyme. The sweep of raven’s wings overhead seems to follow me year-round.
Birds also keep my gardens alive and interesting (thank you to all the birds whose purple poops have borne new volunteers to my flower beds). Wherever I live or travel, I discover new birds whose calls and silhouettes are inseparable from my favorite memories.
Today I’d like to draw your attention to one of the longest-living blog carnivals, which celebrates the ornithological: I and the Bird. Blog readers and writers alike share a true friend in blog carnivals. These online periodicals consist of collections of links to many different articles, photos, videos, podcasts, and other online media, all of which illuminate a single, special topic (such as trees, plants, or invertebrates).
If you enjoy the company of feathered friends and have a few hours to spare this summer, Mike of 10,000 Birds welcomes you to volunteer as a host for a future issue. You don’t have to be a birder or keep a birding blog in order to participate – just a desire to look up, listen, and share what you learn.
Even if you don’t have time to volunteer, you can help keep I and the Bird alive and soaring with three easy steps:
1) blog about birds
2) send in the link
3) spread the word
In this spirit I share the following images of the Great blue heron (Ardea herodias) at Big Beef and Seabeck Bay, as seen last Wednesday. I might have a diligent amateur’s success with tree photography, but I’m hopeless when it comes to birds (or anything else that doesn’t stand perfectly still for a photo shoot). Luckily for me, these herons were hunting for breakfast, and were not planning to move until the perfect catch swam by.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to sport a great, sweeping beard like this one?
Or to have the endurance to stand still for hours in the chill water beneath these mountains, waiting for lunch?
And herons aren’t the only birds dining in the estuaries…
Click here to read the latest issue of I and the Bird: “A few of my favorite wings” now online at Madras Ramblings, or submit your links today for the upcoming issue to be hosted at Twin Cities Naturalist.
Mike over at the Pacific Northwest Slugyard has some nice photos of nesting Great blue herons.
Looking for more bird resources? Check out the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the annual Great Backyard Birdcount, and the National Audubon Society.
Know a better (or more interesting) resource? Tell us in the comments.
And remember – blog birds, send in the link, spread the word – I and the Bird!
Celebrate Plants with Botanical Blog Carnivals
Summer Moonset Among Alders (Alnus rubra)
Join in the green festivities online with two lush blog carnivals:
The Festival of the Trees
First, high thee hence to The Organic Writer blog where Yvonne Osborne has prepared an inspiring forest-garden for every wanderer at The Festival of the Trees 49: Favorite Trees.
Happy Birthday, Festival of the Trees! Since July 2006 the Festival of the Trees has been celebrating all things arboreal online with the participants and hosts from around the world.
Join us for Issue #50: Trees Through a Child’s Eyes, hosted by Roberta Gibson at the Growing with Science Blog.
Roberta asks that we consider submitting child-friendly posts. Ideas include sharing bark rubbings, children’s drawings of trees and leaves, ideas for or photographs of tree houses, nature journals with tree themes, photos from a favorite walk through the woods, science experiment ideas, etc. If you want some serious inspiration, she suggests you take a look at Rachel Carson’s book THE SENSE OF WONDER.
You can read details about issue #50 here, and the easy submission information is included below:
Host: Growing With Science Blog
Deadline: July 29
Email to: growingwithscience [at] gmail [dot] com – or use the contact form
Theme: Trees through a child’s eyes
Important! Put “Festival of the Trees” in the subject line of your email
Berry Go Round
To begin, enjoy issue #29 of Berry Go Round at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, which brings us “11 blog posts about plants that you really must read.”
This July Berry Go Round issue #30 visits Brainripples and opens its garden gates to intersections of arts and sciences throughout the plant kingdom.
Berry Go Round is a celebration of all things botanical, which encourages lively discussions about plants, their natural history, life cycle, growth habit and other related topics. I’m asking participants to expand this discussion to apply concrete botanical information to your personal interactions with plants, and allow yourselves to be inspired, to create, and to share.
Scientists and laypeople alike are encouraged to investigate not only the physiological and ecological aspects of a plant, but also a plant’s relationship to you, people, culture, place, art, dreams, and beyond.
Host: Brainripples
Deadline: July 28
Email to: trees [at] brainripples [dot] com (or use the BGR submission options here)
Themes: Stretch yourself – incorporate botanical observations with artistic reflections
Important! Put “Berry Go Round” in the subject line of your email
Recap: What’s a Blog Carnival?
If you’re still scratching your head, and you want to participate, here’s a little help…
Botanical Blog Carnival Participation in four easy steps:
Step 1: Blog about plants, trees, and all things botanical (or create other content/media, and share it online)
Step 2: Send us the link (see above for each blog carnival’s submission information)
Step 3: Spread the word (tell your friends)
Step 4: Enjoy!
Blog carnivals are published on a regular schedule, usually at a different Host blog for each issue. The Festival of the Trees and Berry Go Round are each published once per month. To find additional Nature Blog Carnivals, visit the Nature Blog Network.
Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) and Butterfly
Berry Go Round is coming to Brainripples
Garden Strawberry, Genus Fragaria
Host: Brainripples
Deadline: July 28
Email to: trees [at] brainripples [dot] com (or use the BGR submission options here)
Themes: Stretch yourself – incorporate botanical observations with artistic reflections
Important! Put “Berry Go Round” in the subject line of your email
This July Issue #30 of the Berry Go Round blog carnival visits the Brainripples blog to celebrate all things green and growing (and fruiting).
Berry Go Round is a celebration of the plant world from a botanical perspective. What does that mean? For Berry Go Round, we want to know the juicy details about the plants you share with us – scientific name, growth habits, ecology, even cultural significance.
For Issue #30 (incidentally one of my favorite numbers), I’d like to invite all my garden-blogging, art-blogging, and tree-blogging friends to participate and share a little something extra from their usual backyard blogging fare.
Stretch yourself a little:
1) Pick a plant in your garden, or your local park, or your favorite walk of trail.
2) Look at where the plant is growing, what it’s growing with, and how it looks different right now compared with how it grows during other seasons.
3) Try to find the plant in an identification book, learn a little about its natural history and cultural significance.
4) Share your findings at your blog or website, and send me the link at trees [at] brainripples [dot] com
You don’t have you be a super-smarty-pants scientist to have fun with Berry Go Round. Gather a little info about a plant, and compose it with a song or a poem or a sketch. For example, my haiku for the banana slug:
Ariolimax columbianus poetess
sentences congeal in sticky opalescence
while she explores the shady sweetness
Even parents with kids at home for summer can use this event as a great excuse to get outside and put those kids to work learning about the plants, big and small, which quietly contribute to our lives.
And yes, to those brilliant researchers among us, I want to hear ALL the juiciness from your latest field work, your ongoing data analyses, and your newly identified flora. Tell us all, and with all the detail. I welcome your insights and look forward to sharing your discoveries here at Brainripples.
Now, go forth, and learn much about the plants of the world!