Seasons South and North

Leaving the City Life

 

Yesterday, a blackbird, disoriented from the feeding station dangling out side the kitchen window, flew into our third-floor flat in the centre of Paris. It flitted frantically for a few minutes, mildly disturbing the two lazy cats, who did not budge, and found its way out the window again.

For too long, desperately feeble moments such as those have been my only connection to nature, and that is finally about to change. All going according to plan, come September, I shall be leaving Paris and moving a bit south to a house (shown above) in the countryside, where I hope to dedicate all of my time to research, writing, and illustration. This summer will be hectic and blogging will, I am afraid, be erratic. Once I am settled, however, I plan to launch many new programmes and themes here.

Thank you for your patience.

Free Download - Observing Nature in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

 

This blog, Seasons South and North, celebrates its second birthday this month. By way of thanks to my readers, I have gathered together into one document all of the past year's monthly nature comparisons between two places in the southern and northern hemispheres. Please feel free to download it:

Download Observing Nature in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

 

Enjoy the outdoors!

 

©2011 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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Small Hopes

 

 

The the cold gathers around us,  adding an undeniably gorgeous crispness to the gilded monuments of Paris. I have days of liking it, and curling up with a good book and a hot cup of tea, and I have days of missing Paraná, where it is now late spring and beginning to be quite hot. 

The jacaranda will have finished blooming, as will have the yellow ipê, but the tiger's claw and the golden medallion trees, with their red-orange  and their yellow blossoms will be in floods of colour. As I read with incredible sadness that even the little house sparrow is disappearing in Europe's cities, I recall how much I delighted in Paraná at the abundant flocks of parakeets that would sweep and dive overhead as if a large scarf made of green birds were being spread and twirled above the trees. Their screeches always made me laugh and the children in the library run to the window to see. 

We arranged to go to the countryside last weekend. It is a long drive, and we always arrive too late and too tired to be happy that we are there.  The house was cold, as usual, and we had to rush about finding electric fires, and building and lighting a fire in the grate, checking for dead bats and mice, all the first arrival chores. In the morning, it is always nicer, the house warmer. Saturday morning was cold but sunny, and the woods were golden with about half the leaves still on the trees.

There were sparrows, to be sure, and great tits and blue tits. I feed them all when I am there. How long will they endure? My worry for nature extends even to the countryside for, the summer before last, there were no bees in all of France. It felt like the beginning of the end. There was no fruit in the shops, farmers had none on their trees or in their gardens. The many lavenders in our garden are bee magnets that usually fill the air with bees of all sorts, but there were none. Locals talked of nothing else. No one, not even the ninety-five year old granny on the farm across the dale, could recall a year of no bees. In all of my years of concern about global warming, pollution and the underlying cause of it all - overpopulation, I had only ever been angry. That summer was the first time I was frightened.

It was warm enough on Saturday afternoon for me to go about in jeans and a light shirt. I was on a ladder, tying the strands of climbing roses when I heard the most remarkable clatter above. I looked up and saw what must have been fifty or sixty storks in a scrambley flight south. They flew high and called to one another with an odd sound and they were many! In the 1970s, this bird was down to so few couples that extinction was a serious possibility, and it is back from the brink, not in plenitude, surely, but not so near disappearance as it once was. It was so beautiful and so hopeful, that very simple little event of nature, that I rejoiced. It will not be easy to save this planet's life forms, but there is reason for hope.

©2011 Anne Morddel

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How Eden Was Lost

 

January is high summer in the Atlantic Rainforest. The temperature roves above 35°C and the humidity is at least 80%. The forest is dense with life, a swirling, panting, solid mass of life, so sensual that one feels one could lean back, even fall, and not touch the ground but be cushioned by the millions of plants and creatures there. The air is hotter and even heavier deep within the forest, were no wind reaches. There may be a gap, near a natural pond, and there the fierce sunlight streaks down to the water in vivid, glistening beams. Butterflies are at their most numerous, ant hills at their highest, birds and monkeys at their loudest, tempests at their wildest. Nature is exultant at this season.

When I lived and traveled in South America, it seemed the right time to read Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, since so much of what he described was what I was seeing around me. In that book I found a passage that I think best gives the sense of the abundance of the life of the Atlantic Rainforest, as seen from the ship off the coast:

"…vast numbers of butterflies, in bands or flocks of countless myriads, extended as far as the eye could range. Even by the aid of a telescope it was not possible to see a space free from butterflies. The seamen cried out "it was snowing butterflies," and such in fact was the appearance.”

The coast of Brazil runs more than five thousand kilometers. Along all of that incredible length was once the Atlantic Rainforest, in its entirety more than one million square kilometers. Today, 95% of that vast forest has been destroyed, burned to make grazing land or farmland, logged for the wood, bulldozed for mining. More than half of the destruction has taken place since the Second World War. That works out to a bit more than 80,000 square kilometers stripped every year, roughly 60 Scotlands wiped out.

Small, very small patches remain, remote islands of desperately threatened species in an ever rising sea of tarmac and concrete. Some of these patches have been declared protected areas by the government, though there are no police to enforce that protection. One area, the one closest to where I lived, was declared a World Heritage Site, which had the result of bringing more eco-tourists. One or two patches have been purchased privately by wealthy people and are being replanted, as with the Instituto Terra founded by the great photographer, Sebastião Salgado. The Nature Conservancy has a campaign "Plant a Billion" trees, aimed at replanting this rainforest. The Prince of Wales has launched his Prince's Rainforests Project to help all rainforests. Can a significant portion of the exquisitely beautiful Atlantic Rainforest be brought back? The organisations trying are of course optimistic, believing that even though many animal and plant species have been lost forever, the many that remain can multiply. But will it ever snow butterflies again?

In a small patch of preserved forest a few hundred kilometers north of Rio, I was strolling one of the footpaths on a very hot January day. Ahead of me were two elderly couples, Brazilians, walking slowly. Above and around us were birds of radiant bright colours and no fear. Many of them were in a single small tree, barely more than a shrub, and on the ground below it. The people in front of me approached the tree and began speaking more excitedly, their soft voices becoming audible.

"Pitanga!"

"Oh, I have not seen pitanga since I was a child."

The tree and ground were covered with a small, bright, red-orange fruit that the birds had been enjoying until we came along. The couples stooped and gathered and tasted and exclaimed, closed their eyes and smiled with pleasure. I came up to them and they encouraged me to try this fruit I had never seen before. It is only a centimeter or less in diameter, the shape of an oil lantern's globe. I timidly tasted and found myself smiling with delighted pleasure too. The others grinned and nodded.

"It's good, isn't it?"

The taste was a mixture of both sweet and peppery, a bit like jalapeño preserves, and warm from the sun. I had a few more. The others took off their hats and filled them, stripping the tree. As we walked away in our bliss, I turned back. There was not a single fruit left for the birds. And there you have it. 

The drawing of pitanga above is taken from the page for December in 

The Big Field : a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross.

©2011 Anne Morddel

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Seasons South and North

 

What to Look for in December in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

This is the final  post in our month-by-month suggestions of what to look for in nature observation with children. December marks the end of the calendar year and the beginning of a new season: summer in the south and winter in the north. With such deeply different seasons, people grow up with profoundly different associations with this time of year. For those in the southern hemisphere, December and its festivals is a time of sunny, hot days, going to the beach, the long and lazy school holiday, and outdoor cooking, while in the north it is a time of bundling up, baking pies and cookies, sitting indoors before the fire. The differences in nature are just as dramatic. 

In Britain, in the northern hemisphere:

• Foxes, searching for food, are seen much more often
• Where it is cold, the Stoat assumes its white coat to become an Ermine
• Yellow buntings congregate in flocks
• The Wren can be heard singing
• Holly berries are easy to see
• Winter aconite flowers
• The Velvet Mushroom is found on trunks and stumps

 

 

In Brazil's Atlantic Rainforest, in the southern hemisphere:

• Grecian Shoemaker butterflies (above) can be seen
• Toucans call out in the evening
• Black Jacobin Hummingbirds (above) appear       
• The Pitanga fruit is ripe
• The lethal Lonomia caterpillar (below) appears
  
  

 

Be sure to download the free Nature Observation Chart.

The drawings above come from the page for December in my picture book about the Atlantic Rainforest, The Big Field : a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross.

©2010 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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Launching My New Book - One Fun Week

I am very, very excited and happy to announce the launch of my newest picture book: One Fun Week. It is a simple book that could be read to little ones to help them learn the days of the week , or it could be a first reader for an older child. For each day of the week, a lively little boy dresses in a different costume: superhero, pharaoh, wizard, cowboy, pirate, rock star, knight. Anticipatory symbols of the costume to come please young children as they guess what costume comes next. 

 

A great gift!

 

Buy it now using the Paypal storefront in the panel to the right, on this page.

 

One Fun Week

ISBN: 978-2-9531864-7-5

Binding: paperback

Pages: 36

Weight: 2.7 ounces

Dimensions: 21 x 15 cm

 

 

El Gran Prado

 

I am most pleased to be able to announce before the holidays that "The Big Field : a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross" is now available in Spanish with the title of "El Gran Prado".  The Big Field is a lovely picture book for all children and an important addition to resources for the Early Years curriculum. Patterned after books of hours, it is a month-by-month account of life on a farm at the edge of the Atlantic Rainforest in South America. Birds, flowers, butterflies, and bugs abound in a warm and gentle story of three young children living on their grandmother's farm and learning from her the seasonal changes and simple activities that often mirror those of children in the northern hemisphere. The subtext of the grandmother's determination to reforest the big field of the title gives hope and a way forward to young children as they learn about nature in the modern world. I am most grateful to Celia de Lamo Terry and to the young and brilliant Costa Rican, Erika Moyer, for their translation.

This new edition joins those in French, with the title of "Le Grand Pré" and Portuguese, with the title of "O Grande Campo". 

These can be purchased: 

•  directly from my storefront at Lulu.com
•  from the Paypal store in the panel on the right
• by sending an e-mail to me at:  a.morddel (AT) yahoo (DOT) com

I hope it will make a wonderful gift for your Spanish speaking friends.  Thank you.

 

©2010 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

 

What to Look For in November in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

Continuing the comparison of what children may observe in nature in two sample places, one in the southern hemisphere - Brazil, and one in the northern hemisphere - Britain, we are now in the eleventh month of the year. In the north, it is deep enough into autumn that no trace of summer really remains. In the south, springtime is surging toward summer with a life force that is heady.

Remember to download the free Nature Observation Chart for children to colour and use for their observations. In Britain, here is what can be observed in the month of November:

• Bucks are grunting
• Fieldfares and Redwings are feeding - sometimes together -  on hips and haws (rose hips and hawthorn berries)
• Greenfinches begin to flock
• Ash leaves fall
• Hazel catkins (photo above) become conspicuous
• Yarrow flowers again
• Trout spawns

 

In the Atlantic Rainforest of South America, one can now see:

• The magnificent orange-barred giant sulphur butterfly (above) is everywhere, absolutely everywhere
• Unfortunately, the highly poisonous Brown spider is also about, and every child must learn to recognize and avoid it     
• Golden medallion trees are in bloom
• Bougainvillea, called Primavera (the very word means Spring), blooms pink or purple
• The bright pink Tillandsia stricta, or "air plant",  (below) is also all around

 

In both hemispheres, it is a truly thrilling time of year, full of change. Enjoy observing!

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The drawings above come from the pages for November in my picture book about the Atlantic Rainforest:

The Big Field : a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross.

©2010 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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Book Review : Fruits of India

 

How I wish I had had these books sooner! In early years education, it is so important to use the familiar when teaching children words for things. In our school's library, we had a few beautiful picture books of fruits and vegetables, almost none of which grew in the tropical country where we were. Teachers diligently taught and tots diligently learned the words for foods that they almost never saw, imported foods that only the wealthy could afford, thus imparting a subconscious lesson that none desired or intended. 

Now, Tara Books, the publishers of the exquisite book, The Night Life of Trees, have produced a wonderful alternative. Each of these lovely board books, Fruits of India, Vegetables of India, and Flowers of India, is a collection of beautiful photographs by Jill Hartley and Helmut Wolf. Those of the fruits show them cut to reveal the seeds. The photographs are of a very high quality, bright, close, with nicely balanced colour, so that the plants look real and natural, not like advertising images. The last page of each book gives the names of the fruits, vegetables or flowers, in English. I particularly like the choice of a matt as opposed to a glossy surface, making the entire product a much less harsh object for a small child.

These books are not only of value for children living in tropical countries where the plants represented surround them. They are also a wonderful, simple and affordable teaching tool for discussing the seasons of tropical countries. Many of the pictures show plants that can be found elsewhere:

• strawberries are in almost all countries now, including Mexico and Brazil
• mangos grow in Brazil as well as in India
• passion fruit grows in sub-Saharan Africa and much of South America
• jackfruit can be found throughout sub-Saharan Africa as well as the Indian sub-continent
• garlic and onions are global
• bottle brush and hibiscus can be found in many countries
• oh! how wonderful to see the , also called plumeria, and to recall its heavenly odour

Use my chart of Seasons Around the World and these lovely books the better to help children understand how changes in the seasons on the Indian subcontinent are seen in plants and food. Use these books to know what to put on your South-North Seasons Table  or to add greater interest and authenticity to your garden with children. And keep your eye on Tara Books to see what wonders they will give us next.

 
©2010 Anne Morddel
Seasons South and North

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What to Look For in October in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

We are in the tenth of our monthly comparisons of nature observations in a southern hemisphere location - the Atlantic Rainforest of southern Brazil, northern Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay - with those possible in a northern hemisphere location - Great Britain and, with slightly different timing, much of western Europe.

In the northern hemisphere, October is early to mid-autumn, and this year it is a cold one. There is much to see as animals and plants prepare to protect themselves during the harsher cold weather to come -- by storing food, preparing to hibernate or become dormant, or moving on to warmer climes. 

• The Common Shrew prepares its winter nest
• Field Voles prepare to hibernate
• Goldfinches visit thistleheads for seeds
• The Hooded Crow arrives
• Frogs hibernate, as do Grass Snakes and Toads
• Ivy blossoms
• Walnuts ripen
• Dogwood leaves turn purple
• The Northern Winter Moth appears
• Wasps hibernate
• Garden spiders lay eggs in a ball of yellow silk; the eggs will hatch in the spring

In the Atlantic Rainforest, October means rain, and rain and rain. It is springtime and the rain is almost warm. As nature awakens from its very short winter, colour abounds.

• The native Tiger Claw tree (above) blooms
• The swallows return from the north
• Termites rise on wing from mounds as high as a child of seven is tall
• The magnificent, metallic call of the Bare-Throated Bell-bird can be heard ringing in the forest

• Butterflies and beetles appear in great variety and great number

Be sure to download the free Nature Observation Chart to make a note of all that you see. 

The drawings above come from the pages for the month of September in:

The Big Field : a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross.

 ©2010 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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What to Look for in September in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

September is a month of an equinox and of noticeable migrations. There is much to observe this month. Be sure to download the Nature Observation Chart.

In Britain, now is when one can see that:

• Many mammals are preparing to hibernate: the Dormouse, Hedgehogs, Squirrels and the Water Vole,
• Many birds are leaving: the Blackcap, the Garden Warbler, Sand Martins, Swallows and more, and a few birds will arrive, such as Siskins,
• It is also a time to listen, for the Robin will begin to sing again, the Tawny Owl will hoot, and the Stone Curlew will clamour

                (You can find these birds on the RSPB website and hear the calls and songs of man of them. Listening to this first will help children know what to expect as they listen outdoors. )

• Rose hips (above) and holly berries ripen,
• Garden Spiders are everywhere!

 

 

In the Atlantic Rainforest, it is spring. The fog finally burns away and:

• The beautiful yellow ipê tree (above) blooms and is known in folklore as the sign in nature that means the cold weather is over for another year,
• The Rufus-bellied Thrush returns from its winter in the Amazon region to the north and starts to sing,
• The fork-tailed fly-catcher arrives to catch mosquitos throughout the summer,
• The beautiful bright orange butterfly called the Flame (below) appears.

The drawings above come from the pages for the month of September in:

The Big Field : a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross.

 ©2010 Anne Morddel

Nature Writing

 

From a fairly early age, I have read books on nature: The Sand County Almanac, The Outermost House (my belovèd favourite) the works of Richard Jeffries. Currently, I am on the more scientific writings of Alexander von Humboldt. I find nature writing to be more than poetry and more than fantasy for the armchair hiker. It is an effort to describe, understand and communicate about the world that surrounds us as well as inhabits us, and dominates us while we humans think we are taming it. At its best, nature writing is philosophy written with a great and beautiful style; it helps us to see the patterns of which our species is a single thread.

In my own work of nature writing for children, I have attempted to use the observation of detail that is inherent in all nature writing as an avenue to the way that small children see things in close-up, as it were. By describing nature as they see it, without condescension,  more with adult collaboration, my books communicate that a love of nature -- in an increasingly unnatural world -- is both normal and healthy.

Ron Harton's website, www.naturewriting.com, is his personal project, a dedication to bringing together those writing about nature in English today. On his website, he discusses nature writing, has many lovely examples of nature journals and essays, poetry, short stories and quotes. He writes his own blog on the subject. He gives connections  and sources for nature writers, ideas, and books.  I am deeply honoured that he has included The Big Field: a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross in his list of books. Please do visit his website to read the wonderful contributions of some of today's best nature writers.

©2010 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

"The Tree"

 

As a child, I lived in a house with a magical garden that included a massive old oak tree. For a few years, it was the most important thing in my life. It was where I hid from a certain bully who tormented me but who could not climb. It was where I read on summer days, where I watched birds build nests in the spring, where the leaves fell in autumn, where the cats joined me, where the branches bent and creaked in the winter storms. I could climb out my window and crawl across a part of the roof and be in the tree. It was a place of peace and mystery and comfort. 

The Australian/French film, "The Tree" is about just such a symbiotic relationship that a bereaved little girl has with a massive fig tree next to her house. The film has a plot, of course, and drama, but the story is that wonderful experience of being in and taking solace from a tree. Every child should have the opportunity for that. 

What to Look for in August in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

 

I am continuing here my month-by-month comparison of nature observations in Britain in the northern hemisphere and the Atlantic Rainforest in the southern hemisphere. It is well past mid-summer in Britain and some migrants all ready are beginning to depart. In the Atlantic Rainforest no one likes August for it is always cold and dreary, but so windy that many children fly kites.

In August, in Britain, children can observe in nature:

• That the Nightingales, Tree Pipits, Turtle Doves and Swifts leave
• Many insects have their second broods: Asparagus Beetles, Blood Vein Moths, Holly Blue Moths, Pine Saw-flies and Diamond-back Moths
• There are still many wildflowers, but they indicate the season to come: Autumnal Hawkbit, Autumnal Lady's-tresses, Field Gentian, Pennyroyal, Peppermint and Wormwood
• Lizards catching the warmth
• Slow-worms are born

 

In the cold, wet fog of the Atlantic Rainforest winter:

• The screeches of the Southern Lapwing echo as it protects its nest
• Millipedes are seen

 

• Stick insects are seen
• Blue Swallowtail butterflies arrive
• Hummingbirds come daily to feeders, for they suffer greatly from the cold (On very cold days, they can be found unconscious on the ground. Children are taught to pick them up gently and to hold them in their cupped hands. The warmth will usually revive the bird.)

Do not forget to use the free download Nature Observation Chart, which children can colour, if they wish. 

The drawings above come from the pages for the month of August in

The Big Field : a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross

 ©2010 Anne Morddel

One Little Wild Child

 
 

At one time, I was the librarian at a small bilingual early years school in southern Brazil. My days were filled with story times, children borrowing books, class visits and tidying up after them. Children are the same everywhere: all little ones snuggle and tumble together like puppies. There was one girl, however, who preferred to stay aloof.

She was a most purely mischievous child. She had stiff, straight, dark gold hair that fell messily below her shoulders. It was cut to a tangled fringe across her brow, and woe to anyone who tried to comb it! Her features were even, dainty, pert, even pretty, but for the way they hardened and her hazel eyes narrowed quite diabolically when she was crossed. This was a child whose entire personality had been completely overwhelmed by her enormous trait of stubbornness. She was three years old and she was the headache of the school.

She was a trial for us all. When the others formed a queue and marched, she refused. If her teacher scolded her,  she stubbornly -- and with a calm face and a small smile -- ignored everyone and continued doing whatever she was not to do. She was an expert at finding the most maddening behaviour: pouring glue into the fish tank, grinding felt pens over the pages of another child's treasured book from home, or eating at a glacially slow pace well after the lunch room had been emptied and classes begun again. It did not help matters that she had an angelic twin brother. The more the staff of the school pitied him and tut-tutted in judgment of her, the more determined she was to misbehave. She was brainy. She caught all the lessons in a trice and then, while the others struggled, turned her mind to mischief. She had exhausted everyone's patience. Full of devilry in the library as much as everywhere else, she had exhausted my patience as well, until one day.

It was a warm spring day in mid-November. In the Atlantic Rainforest, there is a quite magical period of perhaps three weeks when the cozy warmth of spring holds before it gives way to the dripping heat of summer. For just that short time the warmth hovers, as if the air were holding its breath before surging into heat, the way a diver does before she vaults. It is a moment of absolute harmony and perfection.

During this period in November, the tiny bromeliad, tillandsia stricta, (also known as "air plants") blooms everywhere in an ecstasy of urgency. It cannot bloom in the great heat or in the early and cooler spring, but only during this golden time. Each plant produces one hot-pink flower the colour of bubble gum. They cling to everything: tree trunks, even on smooth palm trunks, roofs, branches, walls, electrical wires above the road; pink dots all over the place in a splattered, brief and beautiful display, a Jackson Pollock moment of nature.

Into my library that day walked this difficult child, clutching tightly one of the bright pink flowers. She held her flower all day long, would not surrender it for anything. Fortunately for her, it is a sturdy flower and does not wilt. Her mother later told us that the child gripped her flower until she fell asleep in her bed. That day I forgave her everything, and more.  In that day of furious obsession with a pink flower, she encapsulated the foundation of all culture, of all that pulls humanity out of the mire of animal instinct toward civilization.  I will cherish always that wild, ferocious little soul who could love beauty. 

She became the inspiration for Chloe in The Big Field : a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross.

©2010 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

What to Look for in July in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

In the northern hemisphere, this summer has been peculiar, swinging an a pendulum extremely between hot and cold weather. Yet, for Britain, there is the old saying: 

"An England summer : two hot days and a thunderstorm."

In July, in Britain, one can expect to see in nature:

• Harvest mice building their nests
• Weasels having their second litter
• The Cuckoo, if it still can be heard in your region, now ceases to call
• The Drinker Moth appears
• Hover flies are numerous and should remain so to the end of September
• Canterbury Bells blossom
• Golden Rod flowers
• Marjoram flowers
• Yellow Toadflax flowers
• The Grass Snake lays its eggs

 

 

In the Atlantic Rainforest of Southern Brazil, the fog can be so thick that a child will not let go of your hand for fear of being instantly lost. When the sun does come out, one can see:

• The Brazilian Skipper (above)
• The Oven bird (to the right) building its odd nest  (below)  
• The Blue Ipomea purpurea flowering along the roadsides     
• Bromeliads so heavy with moisture that they fall from trees with a heavy, clumping sound

 

 
The drawings above come from the page for July in 

The Big Field : a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross. 

©2010 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North 

What to Look for in June in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres

 

June is the month of one of the summer/winter solstices. In the ancient Cornish language of southwestern England, it was known simply as "the summer month". In June in Britain one can see that:

• Squirrels are born - look for their nests high in trees
• The feathers of Mallard Drakes change to resemble those of the females - look for them in the ponds and lakes
• Swifts lay their eggs
• Carps spawn
• Dozens of different moths appear: Gothic moth, Goat moth, Lappet moth, Brown moth, Heart and Dart moth, Riband Wave moth, Scarlet Tiger moth
• Just about everything flowers: Lady's Fingers, Lady's Mantle, Elder, Cow Parsnip, Dogwood, Lavender, Stinking Mayweed!

        
 

 In the Atlantic Rainforest of southern Brazil, it is winter, and the temperature can drop to zero degrees celsius. The weather is wet and foggy, the rainforest dripping and sunless on many days. Now is the time the hummingbirds will come to the feeders, for there are fewer nectar-bearing flowers blooming. Yet there is much to observe in nature:

• The beautiful Orsis Bluewing butterfly (above) is seen
• Paraná pines are dropping their huge seedballs, and monkeys are eating the seeds
• The Azure Jay also eats the seeds, and buries some for later in the season. The ones he forgets to dig up  grow into trees (below)
• Lacewing katydids are about

 

June is a month of wonderful observations for the Nature Observation Chart, whatever the hemisphere. 

The drawings of the butterfly and the jay come from the pages for the month of June in 

The Big Field : a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross

©2010 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

Rescue and Preservation of the Atlantic Rainforest

 

At long last, it seems that more attention is being given to the rescue and preservation of what remains of the magnificent Atlantic Rainforest. There is quite a lot going on in terms of preservation, and much of it includes educational material. Here are some of the sites in English:

• The Natural History Museum has an article about the amazing biodiversity of the Atlantic Rainforest
• The Iracambi Farm works with local children. The website has an English page. They may be willing to start a cooperative nature observation project with schools.
• The World Land Trust is working with REFUA in Brazil to protect the Atlantic Rainforest and has a lot of information about the animals of that rainforest.
• The Nature Conservancy has a large project to replant the Atlantic Rainforest. The webpage has information and a video.
• The best of the new endeavors, with the most pictures and videos is the Atlantic Rainforest Institution

Visiting these sites will help you learn more about the Atlantic Rainforest and seasons in one part of the southern hemisphere.

©2010 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North