Photo from a post titled "Occupational Hazards"

The Infinite Universe Blog is an engaging and witty site authored by local naturalist and photographer Tim Boyle.

I highly recommend scrolling down and checking out the sidebar section titled “Things kids say to a naturalist…”

Black Crappie Image From the Leader's Guide

I finally got a chance to take an indepth look at MinnAqua’s Leader’s Guide.

I knew it would be good because it won a 2008 NAI Interpretive Media Award, but it far exceeded my expectations. I anticipated a curriculum guide much like the Project WET and WILD guides – which are great resources. However, the MinnAqua Guide builds on the template in a couple major ways.

First, each chapter contains an impressive quantity of local aquatic natural history, essentially eliminating the need to seek out other sources to build your knowledge or to tweak activities to be locally applicable. The guide is alone worth reading to simply increase your natural history knowledge.

Second, the guide also comes with a CD containing a plethora of seriously impressive images, especially of fish. No simple line drawings here, think detailed full-color images that look like the fish jumped out of the water onto your page.

The guide also includes hyper-detailed evaluations of how each lesson meets Minnesota’s Academic Standards and ready-to-use assessment quizzes and standards. To top it all off, the entire guide was reviewed by over 100 experts in various fields so you can feel ultra-confident about the accuracy of the content.

You can get a copy by attending or hosting a MinnAqua Educator Workshop. Contact Michelle Kelly for more info.

Project BudBurst

Springtime always peaks my interest in phenology. Recently, I went to a local book seller and inquired if they sold phenology journals, the women at the book store asked if I had looked in the New Age section. Right away I knew her mistake, “Not Phrenology,” I said, “Phenology.”

Here is a list of phenology resources from people and organizations who definitely wouldn’t make the same mistake.

The Minnesota Conservation Volunteer has a great young naturalists article on Phenology, including a teachers guide.

Project BudBurst is “is a national field campaign for citizen scientists designed to engage the public in the collection of important climate change data based on the timing of leafing and flowering of trees and flowers. ”

The National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service’s extensive phenology page.

John Latimer, of Grand Rapids, hosts an interesting phenology radio series with the MP3s available on his website.

Red Wing Nature Notes is group blog which holds true to its name.

And the Star Tribune reports that this week the first barge plowed upstream through the ice at Lake Pepin.

I didn’t realize that MaryBeth developed the National Eagle Center with sheer hard work and determination. Like many of us working in environmental science, she followed her passion.

The National Eagle Center is an inspirational place on its own – but learning the story of its development makes it even more amazing.

The Wild Woods Guide

This website, created by John P. Loegering (a Wildlife Ecologist at the U of M),  is a handy compilation of websites for gardeners and naturalists seeking info about land and wildlife management. 

The book The Wild Woods Guide is an indispensable book full of interesting and little-known facts about north woods animals, plants, weather, and more. Written by journalists, this books gives a different perspective on what people find intriguing about the north woods. Lots of little facts, like name origins and connections to historic lore, that will make you seem like a super -genius if you spit them out during a program. Also, the couple-page-long chapters make for perfect bus reading and easy referencing. 

ScienceBlogs – Environment Channel is a compilation of blogs written by professional earth scientists. Its the best resources for discovering the new research, trends, and for getting sound scientific responses to current issues. These blogs are all personal soap-boxes for the authors, so you get a non-censored perspective which can be refreshing. These blogs are also great inspiration if you are trying to create a press release which connects to current issues. 

Website to watch: Telling River Stories is the brain-child of Patrick Nunnally of the River Life Program hosted by the Institute on the Environment at the U. The website is a connection to river stories accessed through a geographic interface. Its similar to the Friends of the Mississippi River‘s Field Guide, but for the entire Mississippi River. 

Free images from the Fish and Wildlife Service! As an environmental educator I was always looking for high-res copyright free images of animals, plants, and landscapes to use for programs. This FWS website a great resource! 

Those are just a few resource which I hope are new and helpful for you! There are of course lots more (link to a compilation created by the Sharing Environmental Education Knowledge website).  If you have additional good resources to share, send ‘em my way!