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!
Braving the Cold: Meet our Local Overwintering Birds
Come to the Indian Creek Nature Center for a birding session focused on the birds we expect to see all winter long, and a quick craft at the end!
Led by Nature Up North Environmental Education Intern Emma Rubin, this birding walk will last about an hour along a nature trail (TBD) at Indian Creek Nature Center. After our walk, we'll gather at the pavilion to create suet bird feeders to bring home and help each of our backyard birds find the food they need to prepare for winter.
Brilliant Fall Leaves mean Fairies are Here to Stay!
Thimble and Blossom are back on North Country Trails this fall! While they're waiting to migrate south for warmer weather each winter, Thimble and Blossom stop over for a couple of months on our trails to enjoy the fall foliage, tuck in the bears for hibernation, and to answer all of your nature questions! They stopped by Nature Up North to tell us how excited they are to see who can find their homes and to deliver their clues. Visit one of the trails below and follow their clues to find where Thimble and Blossom live!
On the road again
She just stood and watched me slowly get closer and closer to her.
Peek-a-boo!
Ran in front of my car but I was going slow enough and saw her in advance.
Baby Snapping Turtles
A snapping turtle nest opened up next to the Wachtmeister Field Station last week. If you came to any of our suimmer campfires we probaby took a moment to share this nest with you. Last summer, there were a few nests that were dug up or hatched by the end of the year. This time around the nest lasted until mid-September, and a dozen or more babies made it out.
Pumpkin Carving at Phantoms in the Park
Nature Up North is teaming up with Grasse River Heritage to host its second year of pumpkin carving in Canton! This year will be a little different than last year.
Night Sky Viewing at Indian Creek Nature Center
With days shortening and weather starting to chill, now is the time to view the stars above the Indian Creek Nature Center! Join Ben Roulston, an astronomer from Clarkson's Reynolds Observatory for a short walk to the observation tower at Indian Creek and an evening of viewing the moon, stars, nebulae, and more! In order to ensure proper viewing conditions, this event is slotted to take place on one night between October 3rd (Friday) and October 9th (Thursday). The decision on which day the event will occur will be made the day of.
Seed Saving Class and Seed Collection
Join Mary-Ann Cateforis (and me) at Cornell Cooperative Extension next Monday 2-3:30 for a hands-on class about saving seeds from native plants! We'll collect some from the pollinator garden on site and Mary-Ann will bring more from her garden, generously sharing MANY types of seed with class members once we have prepared them for storage. Registration is required: https://stlawrence.cce.cornell.edu/events/2025/09/29/collecting-and-sav…
A short stop at Indian Creek.
A quick walk from the parking lot to the lean-to, the ponds were extremely low level.
In fact the rabbit was standing where it's normally water at first pond.
We saw quite a few Northern Harrier, a few thousand red-winged blackbirds, the frogs were still out as were turtles, a muskrat was collecting lily pads for it's den and various fly catchers were around.
It was another terrific visit.