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- Birding Hotspots in the US: Drummond Island
- “All About Birds” Gets a Facelift
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- ABA Regional Symposium in North Dakota
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- Reducing bird deaths: a matter of lighting
Childhood Memories - Blandford Nature Center
Earlier this week, I was reminded of the game of Poohsticks.
For those of you not in the know, who may be slightly worried about the name, Poohsticks is a game that originated in the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A.A. Milne. Christopher Robin and Pooh bear take one stick each and drop it off the side of a bridge into the stream below. The one whose stick appears first on the other side of the bridge is the winner.
I remember playing this game when I was much younger. My grandpa would take me and sometimes my brother or cousin to Blandford Nature Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we would go for walks through the woods and sometimes drop sticks off of a bridge over a stream in the nature center. The Blandford Nature Center has an active wildlife rehabilitation center on their premises, and one of our favorite animals to see was a Great Horned Owl with big bright eyes and dark feathers who was kept in an outdoor pen by the rehabilitation center.
Looking back, I think times like these really helped grow my appreciation for nature, wildlife and birds later in life. The great outdoors faces many challenges these days. Urban sprawl slowly eats away at the last remaining pockets of wilderness. Environmental challenges continue to grow in the form of pollution, global warming and fossil fuel dependence. In addition, children in modern society are forced to adopt more and more sedentary lifestyles, not getting to see the outdoors and nature but staying indoors, and we see the result in growing childhood obesity rates, but also in generations of young adults who have less and less appreciation for the planet and its living things.
In this regard, I’m growing more and more to appreciate the ways that I was forced to get out in and learn more about nature and wildlife. I hope places like Blandford Nature Center will continue to have an important place in our ever more modernized and urbanized society.
What are your thoughts on children’s nature/outdoor education these days, or lack thereof?
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