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!
Macroinvertebrates in the Grasse River
I worked with Nature up North to moniter water quality on the Grasse River in Canton, NY and we found a bunch of different macroinvertebrates! I learned that this means that the quality of water here is very good.
Indian Creek Nature Center Fall Work Day
Join Board members for a workday to set the Center in order for the winter. Tools will be supplied, or bring your own. There’s plenty of work for all.
Stargazing Campfire
Nature Up North is excited to invite you to a night of stargazing and astronomy at our fall Campfire with St. Lawrence University Physics Professor Aileen O'Donoghue. On this date the moon will be a waning crescent, just four days away from the new moon and a great time to see stars and planets. We’ll start around the campfire at 7 pm with a short discussion, followed by the opportunity to join Aileen in small groups at a telescope set up a short distance away. This event is free and open to the public, with water and s’mores provided. Bring your friends and family!
FUNGI AT THE NATURE CENTER
Join us at the Center as Claire Burkum shares her enthusiasm for all kinds of fungi. Participants will see lichens, shelf fungi, and probably mushrooms, and also perhaps distinguish these fungi from similar (but non-fungal) organisms like slime molds. Bring a hand lens or magnifying glass if possible. Leader: Claire Burkum, (315) 261-1884
Edwards Nature trail
This is a short (3 mile round trip) hike on the old G&O railroad grade. It starting to look like fall, and the continuous flocks of geese made it sound that way too.
Step Up for Maples! Maple Monitoring Info Session
Chances are, if you live in the North Country you're familiar with sugar maple trees. In the face of climate change, there is recent concern about how a warming and increasingly unpredictable climate will affect both sugar maple health and maple syrup production. In this info session at the Canton Free Library, we’ll introduce you to Nature Up North’s ongoing Monitor My Maple project, in which North Country residents record important seasonal observation about maple trees in towns and villages.
Fall Mushroom Walk with Claire Burkum
We had a great turn out of mushroom enthusiasts for the first Nature Up North fall Naturalist Walk on Friday. Led along the St. Lawrence University Kip Trail by our guest, local mycologist Claire Burkum, the group was lucky to see a diversity of mushrooms - thanks to some recent rains. Sightings ranged from common puffballs and boletes to dainty bird's nest fungi (an exciting first for me). Thanks to everyone who joined the fun!
NIGHT SKY
Say goodbye to the summer sky with an evening of star gazing. You'll take a tour of the sky using a telescope, binoculars and the unaided eye. We'll explore the mythology behind some of the constellations, and view star clusters, the Andromeda galaxy, and Saturn. Feel free to bring your own binoculars.
FALL WARBLERS AND OTHER MIGRANTS
Come enjoy a fall bird walk at Indian Creek Nature Center. Participants will view a wide variety of species on a hike through shrubland, marsh, wetland, and forest habitats along the Tower and Succession Trails. A spotting scope will be used to view birds on Lower Lake from the top of the observation tower. Bring binoculars!
SLU Maple Monitoring
For Nature Up North, fall means maple monitoring season, and I'm enjoying getting outside to record observations for the maple trees we're monitoring on the St. Lawrence campus. If you drive along Park St, you'll probably see the purple ribbons! This tree, a silver maple (Acer saccharinum), was distinctive. Not only does it have some spectacular orange lichen clinging to it's trunk, but it has pretty significant damage/loss of leaves in the crown. Clearly, not a happy tree, but we'll need to study it longer to learn more about what's going on here.