The outdoor hour challenge #2

Our Nature Study has been quite eventful this week. I have already blogged about our run in with the formosan termites. The plague has passed through thankfully. We started our journals this week and notated what we 1. heard, 2. saw, and 3. felt.

Z's discovery this week was.

1. I heard birds
2. I saw dragonflies and grasshoppers. If you look closely in the photo below you will see grasshoppers. After some googling we believe they are Eastern Lubber grasshoppers. They were all over a specific part of the yard. We have seen them before, but have never captured them on film.


3. I felt the sun, popsicle juice, and grass. Okay the popsicle juice dripping on his sandals was brought into the environment, but it is what he felt. (BOYS!)

Our greatest nature discovery of the week, however, took place just this morning. Z found a feather just off the driveway. A measurement shows it is almost twelve inches long.

We assumed it was an owl feather, as I know we have an owl that lives in our woods. I have conversed with it before, which was a real hoot (No pun intended). A couple of weeks ago I took the dog out at dark and I saw the owl briefly. It must have been sitting in a branch right above it as it swooped down and glided away in the dark. The wingspan was huge!
So, again, after more googling we determined it is a feather from a Great Horned Owl.
Click on the name for more information. It was quite the find this morning, even still has some dirt on the feather. We plan on cleaning up the feather and making it a part of our nature collection. I can't wait to see what else nature may deposit at our door. We have done minimal follow-up for our studies of last week. We did discover a crawfish hole is called a burrow and that our magnolia trees are finally blooming.