Wisconsin Wildlife Phenology Calendar

A few days ago I called a friend of ours who lives in Stoughton, WI.  My sister's brother in law had passed away and I called to tell my friends details of the funeral arrangements that had been made.  We attended that funeral today and it was very sad and so hard to see the family struggling with losing such an important person to them.  He was only sixty years old and left behind five children age 21 and under and also two brothers and two sisters.  We only hope they heal and are left with only good memories.

During the conversation with our friends we began to discuss nature and the return of different birds, ducks and animals after a long Winter.  I have blogged about many of these, but I never knew of a calendar that was available from the University of Wisconsin Extension office.  It is so interesting.  The calendar is called Wisconsin Wildlife Phenology.  "Phenology is the study of periodic life-cycle events in nature that are influenced by climate and seasonal change: wildlife emerging from hibernation, birds nesting or migrating, flowers blooming."  Many of the facts are based on data collected by Aldo Leopold and his daughter Nina.  Even though the information is based on Southern Wisconsin, they give a formula to determine when an event will occur in different areas.  We will see how accurate it is.  Today it says that the Belted Kingfisher is due to arrive and that trees are susceptible to Oak Wilt until it freezes hard again.  By the way, we have lost many many oak trees to the wilt.  Hopefully we won't lose anymore.  The calendar also has beautiful photos and a lot of very interesting information.  I am so grateful that I learned about it.  This calendar has been published every year for the last ten years, but this is new to me.

Any one interested in nature, this would be a perfect calendar.  I ordered it online from http://learningstore.uwex.edu