Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge

I admit it. I love to spend time at Wildlife Refuges! As I walk this path towards my husband, at the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, I get to see the great work that a refuge does for wildlife and learn more about the species that live there.

It is wonderful that more and more wildlife refuges are now offering workshops on Nature Journaling. Nature Journaling is an excellent way to capture it all. After all, it's just a recording of your response and perception to the nature around you.

Digitally photograph, record, sketch, illustrate and or write about the signs of animal, plant, human life and physical structures that you see.

You can pick how you want to nature journal. I will generally start with the basics - date, time, location, weather, anticipated weather and then begin with descriptives. I spend 5-15 minute or more at a single location and write down photograph and occasionally illustrate what I observe. You could do something as simple as picking your favorite wetland and writing about what you observe as you take the boardwalk there.

One of my favorite tasks to do is to close my eyes for a period of time to rely on my other senses. And then open my eyes and write down any flora, fauna any physical structures I see within a short period of time say 5 minutes and then expand beyond that if I wish to spend more time in that location- which I frequently do.

During this time, I'm writing and photographing what I see. And sometimes, I'm looking through my bird book for identifiers- for the Latin name- or even how to go about attracting a species. I also spend a fair amount of time looking at water, rocks, dead tree branches etc.

Occasionally, I will record sounds to playback. These relax me.

I have future plans to set aside time to set up and easel and paint what I see. With that in mind, what challenges does the environment in your favorite wildlife refuge face? How might it change in the next 10 years?  

A few years back I did a review on The Naturalists Notebook. You can check it out here.