Birch Run Nature Club

04/22/2026

Happy Earth Day! 🌎

Today is Earth Day!

Since 1970, Earth Day has been observed around the globe every spring as a day to raise environmental awareness and involve citizens and communities in creating a cleaner, healthier world. Whether it’s planting native species, fishing responsibly, or helping at public lands or your own backyard, every effort adds up. There are also plenty of ways to get outside and enjoy nature! Wildlife watching, hiking or biking a nearby trail, or heading out onto the water in a boat, canoe, or kayak are just a few ways to experience the great outdoors and appreciate Earth. What are some ways you’re planning on helping wildlife or connecting with nature this Earth Day?

Photo Credit: J. Woolcock

04/04/2026

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Be a Vernal Pool Patroller! Join staff as we hike to and gather data on a few vernal pools at For-Mar Nature Preserve to look for fairy shrimp, salamanders, wood frogs, their eggs, and more.

The hike will be hilly and off-trail. Dress for wet conditions. Open to new and returning patrollers.

Suggested for ages 12 and up.
An adult must accompany children
Cost: Free

Pre-registration required by 4/10/26
Register here: https://geneseecountyparks.org/calendar/ #/events/9m5k2R9kuD/instances/gUT3xWXCAw/

03/28/2026

A killdeer chick hatches feathered, eyes open, and running within hours. She feeds herself by the end of her first day and never returns to the nest.

A squirrel kit hatches naked, blind, ears sealed shut. She can't walk. She can't regulate her own temperature. Her eyes won't open for a month. She won't leave the nest for two months.

Both were born this week. Both are in your neighborhood. They represent two completely different strategies for starting life — and almost every baby animal in your yard falls somewhere on the spectrum between them.

Precocial species — killdeer, ducklings, turkeys — arrive ready. Feathered, mobile, feeding themselves within hours. The mother's job is protection and navigation, not feeding. The investment went into the egg. A larger, richer egg produces a more developed chick.

Altricial species — robins, squirrels, raccoons — arrive helpless. Naked, blind, completely dependent. The mother's job is everything — warmth, food, protection — for weeks. The investment comes after hatching, not before.

Then there's the opossum — born the size of a honeybee, barely formed, crawling to the pouch to finish developing attached to a ni**le for two months. A strategy so different it doesn't fit neatly on either end of the spectrum.

The cottontail splits the difference — born helpless but independent in three weeks. The fastest mammal-to-independence timeline in your yard.

🐾 What this means when you find a baby animal:

- A killdeer or duckling alone and moving is normal — it was designed to be on its own from day one. Leave it unless it's visibly injured
- A baby robin or squirrel on the ground and not moving needs its nest. It wasn't built to be independent yet
- A cottontail the size of a tennis ball with eyes open and ears up is already independent — even though it looks too small
- The strategy tells you the response. Feathered and running means leave it. Naked and still means help it back to the nest or call a rehabilitator

Nature doesn't have one plan for starting life. It has several, and they're all running in your yard right now 🌿

03/28/2026

Your yard has a weather station. Right now, at least four species in your backyard are detecting an incoming storm before any forecast reaches your phone.

The Orb Weaver Spider is the barometer. She builds a new web every morning. But on the morning before a storm, she either builds a shorter web with reinforced anchor threads or skips construction entirely. Falling atmospheric pressure appears to change the tension in her silk — she reads the atmosphere through her own building material. If your garden spider has no web up by mid-morning on a day that looks clear, rain is likely coming.

The Black Garden Ant is the pressure gauge. On a normal day, ant traffic flows steadily between nest and food sources in clean predictable lines. In the hours before a storm, workers move faster, trails compress toward the nest entrance, and they begin sealing tunnel openings with loose soil. They appear to detect pressure drops through their antennae. A sealed ant mound on a sunny afternoon is one of the more reliable backyard rain predictions you can find.

The Gray Tree Frog is the humidity sensor. He calls on warm spring evenings regardless of weather. But in the hours before rain, his calling rate increases dramatically. Rising humidity means standing water is forming — puddles, filled ditches, overflowing gutters — and standing water means breeding habitat. He's not celebrating the rain. He's advertising to females that new egg-laying sites are about to appear. The louder the chorus, the closer the rain.

The American Goldfinch is the wind reader. On a normal day, goldfinches feed casually at thistle feeders, visiting on and off through the afternoon. Before a storm, they feed intensely and continuously — sometimes staying on the feeder far longer than usual. Sustained flight in high wind costs a tiny bird enormous energy, so she stocks up while the air is still calm. A feeder crowded with goldfinches on a clear afternoon means they already know what's coming.

These four systems operate on different instruments — silk tension, pressure sensing, skin humidity, wind resistance — but they all converge on the same forecast. When the spider skips her web, the ants seal the mound, the frogs get loud, and the finches won't leave the feeder, a storm is likely hours away.

🌿 How to read the station:

- Check the garden spider's web by mid-morning. Full web with normal spacing means stable conditions. Short web or no web means something shifted overnight

- Watch any visible ant trail on a warm afternoon. If traffic suddenly reverses toward the nest and workers start piling soil at the entrance, they've registered a change

- Listen for tree frogs after sunset. Normal calling is steady and spaced. Pre-storm calling is loud, fast, overlapping, and almost continuous — the difference is obvious once you hear it

- Notice how long goldfinches stay at your feeder. A normal visit is a few minutes. Extended continuous feeding on a calm clear afternoon often precedes a weather change

Your yard already has the forecast. Step outside and read it 🌿

03/28/2026

If there's a fox den near your property, the kits are about three weeks old right now. And this is the week things start to change at the entrance.

Their eyes opened recently — shifting from the blue-gray they were born with toward the amber they'll carry as adults. They're walking inside the den, though walking is generous — front legs work, back legs follow a beat behind, and they topple constantly.

They're vocalizing for the first time. Tiny squeaks, whines, and sounds that are somewhere between a puppy bark and a bird chirp. The den is getting louder. If you're within earshot of the entrance at dusk, you might hear them for the first time this week.

The female is tearing solid food into pieces for them now — the male brings prey to the entrance and she carries it inside. The kits are learning to chew with needle-sharp milk teeth that are just emerging.

And sometime this week or next, the boldest kit will crawl up the entrance tunnel and push its nose past the opening for the first time. First exposure to outdoor air, outdoor scent, full daylight. It pulls back almost immediately. Overwhelmed.

It'll do this again the next day. And the day after. Each time it stays a few seconds longer. Within a couple of weeks, a face appears at the entrance. Then two. Then all of them, jostling at the opening, staring at a world they've never seen.

By six to eight weeks they're outside, playing in front of the den in the early evening. That's the moment most people first realize a fox family has been living nearby all along.

The parents are thin right now. The female is producing milk for a full litter while hunting to maintain her own weight. The male is spending more time near the entrance during the day — not inside, but close, watching. Both are doing the hardest work of their year.

🦊 If you think there's a fox den near you:

- Watch from a long distance — binoculars from a hundred feet or more. Don't approach the entrance. The female will relocate the entire litter if she feels the den is compromised, and moving kits one at a time between dens is risky for all of them

- Dusk is the best viewing time. The male often sits near the entrance at sunset and the kits are most active in low light

- Don't leave food near the den. Don't try to see the kits by approaching the entrance. They'll come to you — in about two more weeks the faces start appearing on their own

- If a kit appears at the entrance while you're watching, sit completely still. Breathe slowly. It's the most cautious animal you'll observe this spring — and one of the most rewarding

- Keep dogs leashed near known den sites through May. A dog investigating the entrance triggers relocation and the stress on a nursing female with young kits is significant

One nose at the entrance. One second of outdoor air. Then it pulled back. That's how it starts 🌿

03/28/2026

The fireflies aren't gone. They're underground. And they're glowing right now where nobody can see them.

Every firefly you chased last July started life as a larva in the soil of your yard. Right now — late March — those larvae are in the top 4 inches of dirt, actively hunting, actively glowing, and 10 weeks away from becoming the flying lights you remember.

The underground phase:
→ Firefly eggs were laid on the soil surface last August. They hatched in 3-4 weeks.
→ The larvae — called glowworms — burrowed into the top few inches of soil and began hunting immediately
→ They eat slugs, snails, earthworms, and other soft-bodied invertebrates — injecting them with a paralyzing enzyme and dissolving them from the inside
→ They glow. Not to attract mates (that's the adult's job). The larval glow is a warning: "I taste terrible. Don't eat me." The bioluminescence chemical is toxic to most predators.
→ They've been underground since September — 7 months of darkness, hunting, growing, glowing where nobody can see

The chemistry:
→ The glow is produced by luciferin reacting with luciferase enzyme in the presence of oxygen and ATP
→ It's the most efficient light production in nature — 98% of the energy becomes light, 2% becomes heat. A lightbulb is 10% light, 90% heat. The firefly is 49x more efficient.
→ The color varies by species: yellow-green, orange, and even blue
→ Larvae glow continuously when disturbed. Adults flash in species-specific patterns for mating.

What happens in the next 10 weeks:
→ Week 1-4 (now): Larvae feed intensively as soil warms. Growth accelerates.
→ Week 5-7 (late April): Larvae pupate in small soil chambers. No movement. Transformation.
→ Week 8 (mid-May): Adults emerge from soil after dark. Wings unfold.
→ Week 9-10 (late May-early June): First flashes appear over your lawn at dusk. The season begins.

What your lawn is doing to them:
→ Lawn pesticides kill firefly larvae on contact — they live in the top 4 inches where chemicals concentrate
→ Broadleaf herbicides kill the ground cover that shelters the slugs and snails larvae eat — removing the food chain from below
→ Leaf removal strips the moisture layer larvae need to survive winter
→ Artificial light at night disrupts adult mating signals — they can't see each other's flashes against the glow

Every firefly you see in June survived 10 months underground in your soil.
They're there right now. Glowing in the dirt. Waiting.

Don't spray. Don't rake. Don't light. And in 10 weeks, they show up.

03/15/2026

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Every egg color in your neighborhood means something. None of them are random.

The robin's blue isn't decoration. The pigment comes from breaking down blood cells in the mother's body — and brighter blue means a healthier mother with a stronger immune system. Males respond to egg color. Brighter eggs get more food deliveries to the nest. The blue also shields the embryo from UV light and has protective properties on the shell surface. The color is a broadcast of her condition.

The chickadee's white makes sense for a different reason. Cavity nesters lay white or pale eggs because the eggs are hidden inside a dark hole. Camouflage is unnecessary. White may actually help the parent locate the eggs in near-total darkness.

The killdeer's speckled tan is the opposite strategy. Ground nesters lay heavily speckled eggs that match the surrounding surface — gravel, soil, dried grass. A killdeer egg on a gravel lot is nearly invisible from a few feet away. The pattern evolved to be indistinguishable from whatever the bird nests on.

The pigment is applied in the shell gland during the final hours before laying. She can't choose the color. Her body chemistry determines it. A bright clutch early in the season sometimes fades in later clutches as the mother's resources deplete.

The more exposed the nest, the more camouflaged the egg. The more hidden the nest, the paler the shell. Color matches risk.

🐦 What to notice at your nest boxes this spring:

- Note the egg color each clutch if you monitor a box — shifts in color intensity between first and second broods can reflect the mother's condition across the season
- White eggs inside a cavity are normal. White eggs on the ground usually mean an egg was pushed from a nest or dumped by a cowbird
- If you find a ground nest with speckled eggs in gravel or mulch, mark the area and give it wide clearance — the camouflage only works if nobody steps on what they can't see
- Bluebird eggs range from pale to bright blue. The variation is real and reflects individual differences in the mother's health at the time of laying

Every color is information. The nest is telling you something about the bird that built it 🌿

03/15/2026

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Found a nest in your yard and don't know whose it is? Location plus material plus egg color tells you the species.

🐦 In a dense hedge or shrub, two to eight feet up:

- Twigs and grass cup, eggs pale greenish with brown speckles — cardinal
- Twigs and grass cup, eggs pale blue with brown spots — mockingbird
- Grass and bark cup, eggs blue-green with brown spots — catbird

🐦 In a tree fork, five to fifteen feet up:

- Mud and grass cup with fine grass lining, eggs bright blue with no spots — robin
- Bulky twig platform visible from below, two white eggs — mourning dove

🐦 Hanging from a branch tip, fifteen to thirty feet up:

- Woven pouch of plant fibers, string, and bark, eggs pale gray with dark streaks — Baltimore oriole

🐦 In a nest box or cavity:

- Fine grass cup, four to five pale blue eggs — eastern bluebird
- Moss, fur, and plant fiber, six to eight white eggs with reddish dots — chickadee
- Feathers and grass, four to five white eggs — tree swallow

🐦 On a human structure — grill, mailbox, wreath, light fixture:

- Bulky dome of sticks and leaves with a side entrance — Carolina wren
- Compact grass cup, four to five blue-white eggs with specks — house finch
- Messy cup of grass and debris, four to five greenish-white eggs with brown spots — house sparrow

🐦 On the ground:

- Shallow depression in gravel or dirt, four speckled tan eggs nearly invisible — killdeer
- Fur-lined bowl in lawn covered with a grass plug — eastern cottontail
- Grass cup in tall vegetation, three to five eggs with brown streaks — song sparrow

🐦 On a platform or ledge:

- Mud shelf against a wall under an overhang — eastern phoebe
- Mud half-cup on a beam or rafter — barn swallow

🌿 Quick rules:

- Bright blue eggs with no markings — robin. The most recognizable egg in any eastern yard
- Eggs visible through the nest from below — mourning dove. The flimsiest construction you'll find
- Enclosed dome with a side entrance in a strange location — Carolina wren
- Any nest with mud in the structure — robin, phoebe, or barn swallow
- White eggs in a dark cavity — chickadee, bluebird, or tree swallow

Between now and August, this covers most of what you'll find 🌿

02/17/2026

02/13/2026

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