Two sure signs of spring here today. The first came when I got out of my car this morning and started across the parking lot towards the barn. Birds were chirping away when I heard…
Our new naturalist, Jenny Rupp was part of the crew that tapped our first maple trees of the season this past Saturday. She is anxious for her first syruping season! What a marvelous winter it…
We’ve been getting lots of calls from people wondering how this unusually warm winter is going to affect their trees and plants. Will we have sap for maple syrup? What if my trees bud and…
Our Education Facilitator and Naturalist, Jan Aiels, helped with a prairie burn last week. Here are some of her thoughts: It was a perfect fall day. Prairie grasses were bowing to a gentle west breeze…
photo by Sheri Albrecht It gets pretty busy around the Nature Center in the fall as our lush prairie flowers and grasses turn to seed. It wasn’t always that way. When we began our prairie…
A Cedar Rapids resident brought us these spectacular photos taken in her yard of a young red-tailed hawk. She brought them to us for identification, thinking the hawk was too large to be a red-tail…
If you’re visiting the Nature Center or driving along Otis Road in the next couple of days, don’t be alarmed to see bulldozers working in Bena Field. With funding from a Green Communities grant through…
The Nature Center welcomes Erica Zito as our new Registrar! Erica starts today but she’s no stranger to us. Her husband, Joe, is known around here as “the bug guy” and leads many of our “Bug…