Here at Flathead Audubon, we’re passionate about birds, which of course means we have to include a passion about their life support system, namely their habitats and food. We’ve been telling this story for over 20 years, and recently produced a 23-minute video on the relationships between native birds, which eat native insects, which eat…
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by Denny Olson In my column last month, I defined our earthly “community” as far larger than just the Flathead Valley community – or any community that includes just one species – us. To be sure, we have spent untold quadrillions of dollars and work hours to shape that larger community to fit our own…
Read Moreby Denny Olson Community Ed From my experience, and I dare say the experience of tens of thousands of naturalists, artists, poets and explorers of the outer and inner landscapes, the big reason to include “nature” in our community of teachers, is that nature includes us in her usually benevolent and sometimes harsh rules. To…
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Jenna Kimble wins Wildlife Conservation Award from Flathead Audubon for her project “Bird Brain” at the 2023 Flathead County Science Fair. Jenna used a maze and her own chickens to test their power to learn. Her hypothesis was that the chickens would take the trial-and-error approach to learning each time to find food at the…
Read Moreby Denny Olson From a recent, unfortunately unattributed, social media post … “When Florence Merriam Bailey was born in 1863, birds were more often seen ornamenting women’s hats than they were in the wild. In fact, on one walk through Manhattan in 1886, she counted 40 different species, stuffed and mounted for fashion. The pioneering…
Read Moreby Denny Olson Studies about nature’s effects on stress and health are a growth industry worldwide. In England, an 18-year study showed that those who lived closest to green space reported less mental distress (after adjusting for variables, like income, education and employment). In the Netherlands, scientists found lower incidence of 15 diseases – including…
Read Moreby Denny Olson I love the woods, the changing rivers, the vistas from above tree-line, and of course, the birds that are always there — everywhere. I can’t begin to count the ways that the outdoors has contributed to my general well-being. But my work as a conservation educator isn’t always driven by all those…
Read Moreby Denny Olson Owen Sowerwine Our Local Outdoor Classroom A couple of days ago, I led a small group of three on a field trip to Owen Sowerwine, that roughly 442-acre parcel of State School Trust land located along the Stillwater and Flathead Rivers just east of Willow Glen near Kalispell. The trip emphasized the…
Read Moreby Denny Olson We are now in the middle of the Jewel Basin Hawk Watch season, and things have begun to heat up — but the numbers of migrant raptors are slightly lower than recent years. Like true geeks, a number of us have been pulling up multiple weather forecasting websites every day, looking for…
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