What's Your Nature?
Become a Nature Up North explorer to share your encounters with wild things and wild places in New York's North Country. Post your wildlife sightings, landscape shots, photos from your outings, and even your organization's events!
The Forgotten History of New York's Firetowers
It feels like every other week this past summer there is a heat advisory for air quality. With all the smoke rolling across our skies this past summer it leaves us wondering where is it burning? And why isn’t it burning here?
The Language of Birds with Joe Longshore
Don't miss this chance to experience a talk from Indian Creek's newest board member, Joe Longshore, on bird language!
For twenty years, Joe has taught wilderness survival, nature awareness and bird language locally and in classes as far away as California. He was first introduced to bird language over 25 years ago while studying with world-renowned naturalist Tom Brown Jr.
Joe's talk will be located under the pavilion at the Center on Saturday, September 20th at 10:00am, rain or shine. We hope to see you there!
Sampling at Hart's Falls
These are a couple of photos from our event with the St. Lawrence Land Trust earlier this month. We collected water samples from Hart's Falls and were looking for different fish species. We ended up catching quite a few shiners by trawling the shoreline, but no big fish. We also managed to catch plenty of frogs and macroinvertebrates from the shallows above the falls.
Exploring Falls Island through Ceramics
Enjoy a late summer's stroll through Heritage Park, in historic downtown Canton, on August 30th at 10 a.m.! Nature Up North, Grasse River Heritage, and local artist Sara Lynch will be leading an interactive exploration of the river ecology of Heritage Park. Following a leisurely walking tour, participants will be invited to make ceramic art inspired by the observations and discussions that emerge from our ecological survey experience.
Postponed! Fungi Fun in Heritage Park
Postponed due to the drought. We're going to wait until September 13th in the hope of more rain.
Snake v. Frog!!!
A common ribbon snake caught a grey frog, and the frog was fighting for its life. However, it did not escape.
Dog-day cicada emerging from cocoon
While on a water sampling event with HEOP students, we encountered a dog-day cicada (according to iNaturalist) on a tree next to the river. It was still waking up and sitting on the shell of its cocoon. Next to it was another cocoon of the same species, but the other insect must have flown off by the time we got there.
An afternoon on the Grasse.
Our first kayak trip on the Grasse River.
The water level is low and with a barely moving flow, it was very relaxing paddle.
We barely saw any wildlife for the first 20 minutes or so, but it picked up nicely after that.
We were able to see a Cuckoo, muskrat, quite a few Ceder Waxwing were picking bugs out of the air, a small area patrolled by Killdeer, and hundreds of frogs among other things, some that would watch us as we watch them.
Rockin Rollers: The Beatles' Endless Tour
Greek mythology holds that Zeus punished the murderous tyrant-king Sisyphus by banishing him to Tartarus for eternity, where he has to roll a big rock up a hill, only to have it tumble back down as he nears the top. Big deal – he got off easy.
Explore Aquatic Wildlife at Hart's Falls
Come out to Hart's Falls Preserve on Saturday, August 2nd, at 9 am for an event all about aquatic species. The St. Lawrence Land Trust, in partnership with Nature Up North, will be leading a series of activities to showcase the aquatic biodiversity present above and below Hart's Falls. We'll be deploying minnow traps and getting in the water to sample macroinvertebrates (small aquatic bugs). Anything we catch will be shared in the aquaria so we can get a closer look. We can't promise what we will catch, but we hope to find small fish, crawfish, and a variety of macroinvertebrates.