When Your Bird Isn’t Average: Challenges in Identification

In early October, my sister brought me dead bird she found in our yard. Despite having the bird “in hand” (I didn’t actually hold it) and recording it in my nature journal, I came away uncertain of the species. While I was convinced it was some kind of thrush, probably a hermit thrush, there were a few things that left me uncertain. The main point of confusion was its size. It was much too small.

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Nature Journal July: Success Despite Broken Rules

July has come and gone, and I learned a lot from my self-imposed nature journal challenge. While I failed to follow all the guidelines, I still feel like my month of nature journaling was a big success. Here are the rules I set for myself, and how well they worked for me.

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Being Flexible with Nature Journal Plans

This is the last week of my self-imposed nature journal challenge. For each of my sessions, I had ideas of what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. While I wound up with pages I consider successful, nothing went as planned. I learned a lot anyway, most of all that I need to be flexible.

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Overcoming My Unrecognized Nature Journaling Expectation

Last week, I admitted I was having trouble with my nature journaling project. This week, I think I have some insight as to why. I’ve been letting unrecognized expectations get in my way.

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Want to Be Happier? Talk to Strangers

I’ve been listening to a fascinating podcast called The Happiness Lab by Dr. Laurie Santos. She is a professor of Psychology at Yale University and a great story teller. Based on scientific findings, her show focuses on some of the more surprising and counter intuitive facts about happiness. We may think we know what will make us happy, but we are often wrong.

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