Handbook of Nature Study - November Bird List

Our front yard feeder has been busy, busy, busy the last few weeks. The colder nights and mornings seem to draw the birds out to our feeders and it is a joy to watch each day from our front window. I joined Project Feederwatch this year for the very first time and I am thoroughly enjoying counting birds two days a week...just a few minutes a day.

We have had some wonderful bird visitors to enjoy and it makes me happy to see them spending time in our yard plantings and feeders.


Here is our beautiful Western bluebird in the Pistache tree. We don't see these regularly so it is a treat when they flock into the trees to snack and then sun themselves.


Our most exciting new friend is the Ruby-crowned kinglet. We have nicknamed him Rudy the Ruby. He looks much like a little goldfinch but there is a bright orange patch on the top of his head...the feathers sort of ruffle up to show the color. These images are taken through our living room window when Rudy was sitting in the bushes looking into the house right at me. He came four days in a row and landed on the same branch....I loved being able to get a really good look at him up close. Thanks Rudy.



Here he is with his feathers down. Interesting huh?



This is the first year we placed a birdbath in the frontyard and I am always amazed at how many birds each day come to bathe and drink from this water source. I highly recommend putting out a birdbath to attract bird visitors. We found that if we put a few rocks in the middle of the birdbath, making the water a little more shallow, more birds actually bathe. Don't they look like they are having fun?


Now for our November Bird List:
Yard and Feeders

1. California Towhee
2. American Robin
3. Western scrub jay
4. House sparrows
5. House finches - really pink right now
6. Lesser goldfinches
7. Anna's hummingbird - still several birds that come everyday to the feeder
8. White-breasted nuthatch
9. Spotted towhee
10. Oak titmouse
11. Dark-eyed juncos
12. White-crowned sparrows
13. European starlings
14. Western bluebirds
15. Great horned owl - hooting 5 AM
16. Mourning doves - sweet pair
17. Ruby-crowned kinglet - new to our life list!

Travels around town and to the Sierra

1. American Crow
2. Canada geese
3. Brewer's blackbirds
4. Steller's jay
5. Pigeons
6. Turkey vulture
7. Snowy egret - flying
8. Red-tail hawk
9. California quail
10. Bald eagle!
11. Mallards
12. White-headed woodpecker
13. California gulls
14. Osprey
15. Common raven

This was the best birding month in a very long time. My field guide has been busy and our bird list is always handy.


There is a wealth of birding information on the internet but I have not found a more homeschool-friendly site than the ones sponsored by Cornell University. I would love to encourage you all to subscribe to their homeschool blog (click the logo above to pop over there now).

You can also follow them on Facebook .
You can download their FREE Homeschool Guide to Project Feederwatch.  
Of course, my favorite resource is their AllAboutBirds website which is a great tool for identifying and learning more about birds in your own neighborhood.

We also are submitting this post to Heather's Tweet and See link-up.

The Creative Interpretation of Nature

Illustration: William Morris. Rose textile design, 1877.

One of the most consistent and widely reflected inspirational points used by creative individuals of any discipline is that of the natural world. It has stimulated untold generations of work and continues to do so, and will no doubt be the source of countless future generations. There is something about the world around us that constantly reconnects in our creative experiments. This connection can be interpreted in a number of ways, but mainly through ideas of observation and empathy. 

Observation can never be a truly group experience but always an individual one. Every human sees the external world around them, as indeed they do the internal, differently from the next individual. A tree for example, will appear in seven billion ways depending on the eye construction of each human on the planet and the connections to the brain from the eye, and also the links within that brain. We may all think that we share the same experience, but of course we never can, nor should we. It is our uniqueness, despite a world population of seven billion that allows us to interpret and reinterpret in so many ways and levels, the world we inhabit and see around us. 

Illustration: William Morris. Tulip textile design, 1877.

In that respect, creativity can only ever be personal and identified to the individual through their own practical observations and experiences. The way this is then interpreted externally through art, design or craft is yet another unique level of understanding between the individual and their surroundings. Line and colour are just as personal as initial observation and there are just as many variations of colour and line as their individuals on the planet.

Therefore, all art, design and craft by its very nature is unique and individual and although mass production has taken humans beyond the realm of a contained connection with each individual product, there is still the initial individual and unique connection with the original. In textile design for example, the surface pattern may well be printed or woven in staggeringly large numbers through mass production, but the pattern itself will always have a small and intimate connection between the original human creative and their surroundings. This relationship is an important and often vital one for creative people, the connectivity between themselves and their surroundings being a lifelong one.

It is sometimes hard for us to see ourselves within the midst of the complexity of nature, rather than standing aside from it as we are often portrayed. We tend to regard nature as an entity that we are somehow excluded from. This disconnection has led to a belief that the natural world is a commodity that needs to be both exploited and coveted. In some respects, the process of commodifying everything around us, whether it be plant, rock or fauna, ultimately reflects back in on ourselves and we start to see our species not as seven billion fellow individuals, but as a conglomerate mass, a market to be as equally exploited and coveted as the external natural world.

Illustration: William Morris. Evenlode textile design, 1883.

The creative interpretation of nature brings us both comfort and a sense of belonging. Whether expressed through tapestry or embroidery, through surface pattern or lace, or indeed any other discipline where decoration or ornament is used. It would be very hard to find an individual that did not own something within their home or amongst their personal belongings that did not reflect the natural world in some form or another. 

This connectedness and obvious emotional relationship that we all have in some form with the natural world around us, whether we see that world as a creative or not, begs the question as to why then can we be so dismissive and destructive of that same world that we admire so much when seen in a small piece of fabric.

Further reading links:

The Poet of Modernism | André Kertész Retrospective | The Hungarian National Museum | Budapest

Text by Alison Frank

Following on from the Royal Academy of Arts' show, Eyewitness: Hungarian Photogrpahy in the 20th Century earlier this year, The Hungarian National Museum celebrates the career of Hungarian-born photographer, André Kertész, originally named Andor Kohn, (1894-1985) who spent most of his career as an exile, first in Paris, then in New York. The Hungarian National Museum's retrospective of his career contains two sections. The main section gives a chronological overview of Kertész's career; curated by Michel Frizot and Annie-Laure Wanaverbecq, this retrospective was previously exhibited in Paris, Berlin and Winterthur (Switzerland). The second, much smaller section, is a special Hungarian addendum curated by Eva Fisli and Emöke Tomsics as part of the museum's international conference, Views of Kertész.

The latter section looks at the reception and influence of Kertész's photography in Hungary from the beginning of his career to the present day. It begins with a copy of the magazine where Kertész published a photograph in 1917, and ends with some pieces by contemporary photographers responding to his work. This text-dense segment of the exhibition explains that under Communism there was an attempt to appropriate the work of Hungarian nationals living on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Successful Hungarian émigrés were taken as examples of innate Hungarian talent, and their work was scrutinised for its sociological dimensions. This led to Kertész being incorrectly categorised in Hungary as a social realist photographer rather than the independent documentarian of emotion he considered himself to be.

The exhibition's main retrospective spreads across five rooms: one each for Kertesz's Hungarian, Parisian and New York periods, a round room for his photographic nude “distortions”, and finally a long narrow room displaying magazine spreads of his photojournalism.

Kertész was 18 years old before he received his first camera, but as early as the 1910s, he was already experimenting with night-time and underwater photography: his Underwater Swimmer (1917) appears particularly ahead of its time. Kertész began by taking photographs of friends and family, especially his brother Jenö who was willing to be photographed in a variety of dramatic and athletic poses. When he was conscripted during the First World War, Kertész took photographs of fellow soldiers at rest. Capturing lighter, informal moments of military life, these images offer an unaccustomed image of World War I.

In 1925, Kertész moved to Paris, where (the exhibition notes explain), he became “one of the leading figures in avant-garde photography”, alongside Man Ray. Characteristic of his modernist experimentation was The Fork (1928), in which he made clever use of shadows to alter the object's usual appearance. For the light-hearted and “racy” Parisian magazine Le Sourire he created a series of “distortions” of female nudes, which he achieved through the use of curved mirrors (hence the curators' decision to exhibit these images in a curved space). Some of these images are intriguing artistic abstractions; others create bizarre funhouse mirror effects, while others still give a disconcerting impression of deformity.

Kertész achieved a more consistent impression with his photographs of artists' studios, starting with Mondrian's. In these, the photographer managed to create a portrait of the artist in absence, making use of light, shadows, personal items and occasionally art pieces to evoke the style and personality of the studio's inhabitant. In Paris, Kertész made his living through photojournalism, contributing to the birth of a new medium of expression. He worked primarily for the news magazine VU, creating more than 30 photo essays between 1928 and 1936.

In 1936, Kertész moved to New York, where he would spend the rest of his life. He was lured to America by a contract with the Keystone agency, which was broken after just one year. Not speaking English, and classified as an enemy alien during World War II, Kertész felt isolated and unhappy in New York. These feelings were reflected in Kertész's photographs of lone clouds, menacing pigeons, and general abstraction which rendered the city anonymous. His work was not well-received in New York, and in order to survive, Kertész spent 14 years taking conventional shots for Home and Gardens magazine. Following his retirement in 1961, Kertész saw his work gaining international recognition, with exhibitions at the Venice Photography Biennale, the Bibliothèque Nationale and the MoMA. In 1982 the Ministry of Culture in Paris awarded Kertész the Grand Prix National de la Photographie.

Long after he had become an established photographer, Kertész said, “I regard myself as an amateur today, and I hope that's what I will stay until the end of my life. Because I'm forever a beginner who discovers the world again and again.” Kertész saw photography as a sort of visual diary that documented the way he felt about the world around him, and insisted that emotion was the basis of all his work, rather than an artistic impulse. The power of Kertész's images seems accordingly to emanate not just from their strong and balanced composition, but from the intense feeling that they capture.

André Kertész Retrospective, 30/09/2011 - 31/12/2011, The Hungarian National Museum, 1088 Budapest, Múzeum krt. 14-16, Hungary. www.hnm.hu.

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Caption:
Víz alatti úszó, Esztergom, 1917
Courtesy La Bibliothèque nationale de France

Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival - November Newsletter Edition

November is over and it is time for us all to enjoy the nature study adventures of other families who participated in the various Outdoor Hour Challenges during the past month.  I procrastinated putting the carnival together so I was submerged in nature study goodness all weekend long as I enjoyed each and every entry back-to-back. My heart is full.

Thank you dear readers for all the support of my work. I appreciate your carnival submissions, your kind comments on my blog posts, your financial support through purchasing books and using my affiliate links, and for nominating and voting for the Handbook of Nature Study in the Homeschool Blog Awards. 

Sneak Peek - More Nature Study #2 Winter 2012

I look forward to December and then the new year coming. I will be releasing my new More Nature Study #2 Winter 2012 ebook near the end of December and it is going to be fabulous. I have so much to say about it but I will wait until a future post. If you have any feedback or comments on the last ebook including the advanced study options (More Nature Study - Autumn 2011), please email me directly. I would love to hear any of your thoughts as I put the finishing touches on the new ebook.

Also, my daughter is finishing (finally) her new Hearts and Trees Art, Handicraft, and Nature Study kit...hoping to release it this weekend. Check over on her blog or follow her Facebook for all the details.



Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival - November Newsletter Edition

Maple Seeds

• Zonnah writes about their Samara aka Maple Seeds nature study for this edition of the carnival. She includes some wonderful up-close images of the seeds.
• Makita and her children didn't have a maple to study but they chose the local Sycamore Tree to observe and learn more about. They included the seeds in their nature journals as well. They also did a Leaves and Fall Colors study which you will enjoy reading.

November World - Birds Journal Entry from Janet @ Across the Page

November World

• Tricia - Hodgepodge Mom has submitted their November World entry which includes a walk in the rain as suggested in the OHC Newsletter.  They look like they really enjoyed this activity!
• Amy from Hope is the Word writes Our November World, sharing how important it is to make the effort to get outdoors no matter how busy we seem to get. Lovely blue sky in their images and journals. Amy also did a follow-up entry where they went to a local park to observe their November World.  Excellent thoughts in this entry...don't miss reading it.
• Janet from Across the Page shares their entry Exhaustless Entertainment as part of this challenge. She says that this nature walk turned out better than expected...I couldn't agree more! Take a look at what they found and then their journal entries. 
• Amanda from A Thousand Words has put together an entry with their Autumn River Walk - featuring her nine year old son. Wonderful account of nature study with boys. Amanda also shares some important thoughts in this entry: Accidental River Hike. I really liked reading her thoughts and I know you will too.
• Zonnah treats us to her November World...another nature walk with a curious young man. This was a fun entry to read...brought back memories of my boys' younger days.

Short Thistle Video (Thanks to Shirley Ann)

Thistles

• Shirley Ann from Under An English Sky shares there Thistle Study with carnival readers. As always, they inspire me with their nature journals.
• FlyMama Di from Homeschool Review and Crafting Too also went on a thistle hunt with her son. They were successful in finding some to study up close and they found some grasshoppers too.
• Tricia and her children completed their Thistle and Sunshine Nature Study this month....in their backyard stick fort! They show us such a great example of making learning happen on all levels.
• Thistles and a Wimpering Viking...what a great title to Angie's thistle entry to the carnival. You MUST read this one and see their great extended study.  So many things to learn...
• MissMoe shares their Thistle Nature Study...they do not find any thistles but plenty of other interesting things to observe, including an artichoke which is in the thistle family. 
• Robin from Harris Homeschool submits their Thistles and Milkweed study. Lovely images in this entry...thanks for sharing.

The Hodgepodge Family took a walk in the rain!

Seasonal Weather
Zonnah shares their Rain Gauge activity. They have had a lot of rain in November!

Amy's daughters thought this tree looked like it had animal paws!

Potpourri

• Barbara from The Schoolhouse on the Prairie has contributed their Seasonal Tree Study for carnival readers to enjoy. They picked a tree and got started learning more about it and then followed up with journals. Great job!
• Catherine from Joyful in Hope shares OHC #10 Picnics in this edition of the carnival. All the way from Russia! I really liked seeing their landscape and their pretty snails. Yes, pretty snails. Catherine also completed an entry for the OHC #11 Tree Study with images of their tree in all four seasons. Wonderful!
• Mother Robin has submitted a fall entry this time- Autumn Rainbow: Fall Flowers, Leaves, Berries, and Seeds. This account of their fall color walk is inspiring.  

Fall Leaf Color Journal Page from Monica's Daughter

• Monica from Discover Their Gifts submits their Nature Study-Fall Color Walk entry to this carnival. I am always interested in seeing everyone's nature journals and they did some wonderful work as part of this study. So colorful! They also completed their Cobwebs and Spiders Study and would like to share it and their webs with carnival readers.  
• Kattie from 2 Ladybugs and a Lizard contributes their Fall Colors entry. They did a colored pencil blending activity in their nature journals...excellent!
• Rachel writes about their Oaks and Acorns nature study. They did a great comparison study of different oaks and followed up with some fantastic nature journal entries.
• Jessy shares their family's Eastern White Pine and Pinecone Study to the carnival this time. 

Short video showing a caterpillar molting. (Thanks Bethany!)

• Bethany from Little Homeschool Blessings shares their Surprise In The Shed entry....so glad the surprise was not snakes! They also have a wonderful Swallowtail Butterfly entry to share with carnival readers. The video above is from their entry...thanks for sharing Bethany! One last entry for their family: How to Start a Tree Study.
• Julie from the Homeschool Balancing Act shares their Fall Colors entry. She was surprised that they found so many colors in their neighborhood. Love the magnolia seed pod and the berries!
• Janet from Across the Page has put together a lovely entry on their Squirrel Challenge. This was a pleasure to read from start to finish.

The winner of the November Giveaway (chosen by Random.Org) is Amanda from A Thousand Words! She will receive the Audubon Plush Bird - House Sparrow! Thank you to everyone who made an entry to this edition of the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival.


See you all next month! Remember that December's Newsletter link will be for subscribers of the blog only. Please click over to the blog and subscribe using the form on the sidebar.