🌔🌷 It’s Thursday, March 21. Happy spring! Here’s what’s on deck:
- A state mushroom nomination
- Maple syrup for the birds
- A fish that spawns in freezing water
But first,
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'Birding to change the world'
For the past eight years, college students have paired up with elementary students in Burlington to go on after-school bird walks. They spend hours each week listening and looking for species like tufted titmice (its song has the mnemonic ‘Peter-Peter’), bufflehead ducks (usually close to the shore and easy to spot, with their black-and-white markings), black-capped chickadees (found in many backyards, with their distinctive “Cheeseburger!” song) and eagles.
It’s a project grown out of a course taught by Trish O’Kane at the University of Vermont, and documented in her new memoir. Fourth and fifth graders in the program say it’s been a powerful experience:
🗣️ “It made me more aware about climate change. And how bird species – how we’re affecting the environment and how cool birds actually are.”
🗣️ “It makes us all feel a little more grounded.”
🗣️ “If you have a hard day, it’s really nice to get out and just clear your mind.”
Lots of research supports the idea that being outside is good for kids: Time in green space is linked to higher bone density, while outdoor education has been shown to improve social skills, well-being, resilience and self-esteem.
Versions of O'Kane's birding club program are active in Madison, Wisconsin, where the idea started, and Providence, Rhode Island. Instead of focusing on replicating the program elsewhere though, O'Kane wants to push for changes in national education policy to allow for ample time outside at every public school.
In other news
🐦🍁 Maple for the birds: Nearly 80 bird species nest in Vermont maple stands, from ovenbirds to red-eyed vireos, wood thrush and scarlet tanagers. Ten years ago, Audubon Vermont launched the Bird-Friendly Maple program to encourage sugar makers to manage their forests with birds in mind. Today, the program works with 90 producers in Vermont and others in Maine, New York and Connecticut. It just got $2 million to expand to several more states and formalize a certification process, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act.
🍄 School kids pitch a state mushroom: Students from Windham County chose the bear’s head tooth mushroom as their pick for Vermont’s official fungi. It looks like a white eruption of tiny icicles, grows on trees, and has medicinal properties – it produces compounds being studied for use in treatment of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Students traveled to Montpelier to make their case to lawmakers.
✍️ Other happenings at the Statehouse:
- 💲 The 'Climate Superfund' bill continues to truck along. If passed, it would task the state treasurer with cataloging damage caused by climate change since 1995, and ultimately require fossil fuel companies to cover the costs.
- 🎣 So is lawmakers’ attempt to change the makeup of the Fish and Wildlife Board to be split evenly between people who hunt, fish or trap and those who don't. Right now, the board regulates hunting and trapping rules in the state.
- 🔌 And a bill that would require utilities to source all their electricity from renewable sources by 2035 is still alive. It comes with a big price tag: somewhere between $150 million to $450 million, according to state estimates. Still, that's less than half of what the Scott Administration forecast earlier this year.
In your backyard
These fish require frigid winter temperatures to breed. They’re in the cod family, and closely related to other marine fish.
Get out there
🍁 Tour Vermont sugarhouses: This Saturday and Sunday, March 23 and 24 is maple open house weekend, when nearly 100 maple producers open up their properties to the public and invite people to sample their syrup. Check out the map put together by Vermont Maple Sugar Makers for more.
🧊 Joe’s Pond Ice Out: Since the 1980s, residents at Joe’s pond in Cabot and West Danville have organized an annual competition – whoever comes closest to guessing the exact date and time of the pond’s ice out wins a cash prize. It’s a nail-biter whether the contest will even happen this year with the unusually warm winter weather, but you have until Monday, April 1 to place your bets if it does. It’s only $1 to enter. But there’s lots of competition – over 12,000 entries a year.
🦉Owl breeding season: Join an Audubon scientist on a walk through the woods in Rupert, in Bennington County, on Saturday, March 30 from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the hopes of encountering an elusive owl. Organizers say to bring binoculars, appropriate clothes, and a headlamp or flashlight.
🍻🌊 Chat aquatic ecology: No power point slides allowed at the monthly Suds & Science talks hosted by the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. The next conversation features a scientist from the Connecticut River Conservancy talking about her career spanning aquatic ecosystems, and how actions in the New England watershed “may reach farther than we think.” Tuesday, April 2 in White River Junction.
One more thing
Middlebury College professor and writer Megan Mayhew Bergman recently shared her reading recommendations for anyone feeling all the feels about our changing climate. Here’s the list:
- 🐦 Vesper Flights, by Helen MacDonald: “A gorgeous book about migration, change, nostalgia for old country sides, and McDonald's own life.”
- 🌱 A Small Place, by Jamaica Kincaid (of Bennington!): “A fierce book about the way Kincaid was affected by the landscape and tourist economy of Antigua and the inherent problem of tourism.” (Check out her book My Garden (Book) on her first Vermont garden.)
- 📖 Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov: “A book on displacement and estrangement from his Russian boyhood. The most exquisitely written book I know.”
- 📷 Hold Still, by Sally Mann: “The famed photographer examines the beauty and cost of her deep Southern roots.”
- 📒 Men We Reaped, by Jesmyn Ward: “A memoir where you can feel the heat and pressure of rural Louisiana pressing down on Ward and the boys she writes about.”
- 🏞️ The Lost Words, by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris: “A look at words related to landscape that are disappearing from the imaginative play and lives of children.”
- 🌊 Upstream, by Mary Oliver: “A stunning collection of lyric essays, many about her connection to Provincetown, Mass. and watching the world change.”
- 🦅 The Home Place by J. Drew Lanham: “A memoir of place by famed ornithologist."
- 🛻 Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray: “A memoir of Georgia's longleaf pine, family, and growing up in a junkyard.”
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Credits: This week’s edition was put together by Lexi Krupp with editing from Brittany Patterson and lots of help from the Vermont Public team, including graphics by Laura Nakasaka and digital support from Sophie Stephens.
