Spend a (virtual) day in the woods

Ohio’s 2020 Day in the Woods series—which has gone virtual for now because of the coronavirus shutdown—kicks off on Friday, May 8, with the aptly titled “Keeping Yourself and Your Woodlands Healthy.”

Four, one-hour online sessions will cover spring migrant birds, the benefits of woodlands to your health, and management practices related to things such as tree seedlings, trails, and invasive species.

Viewing the sessions is free. Find full details and the link to watch.

CFAES’ OSU Extension outreach arm is one of the many sponsors of the series.

Blue birds? Happiness

Members of the Greater Mohican Audubon Society lead a guided bird walk from 9-11 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 11, in CFAES’s Secrest Arboretum in Wooster, home to species like the indigo bunting shown here.

Admission is free and open to the public. Find out more. (Photo: Getty Images.)

This bird must be a Buckeye

Birds are “incredibly important in the overall functioning of various ecosystems,” says EnvironmentalScience.org.

On Saturday, June 9, you can see birds functioning within the specific ecosystem of CFAES’s Secrest Arboretum. Members of the Greater Mohican Aududon Society will lead a guided bird walk there from 9-11 a.m. Admission is free. The arboretum is on CFAES’s Wooster campus.

Get details. (Photo: Scarlet (but not much gray) tanager, iStock.).

What you can see on a Day in the Woods

You’re invited to come see, hear and learn about breeding birds at a program in southeast Ohio’s Vinton Furnace State Forest on Friday, June 8. It’s part of the A Day in the Woods series co-sponsored by CFAES’s Ohio State University Extension outreach arm and a number of partners. Hours are 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Registration is $12. Learn more.

Fun fact: The beautiful cerulean warbler, pictured, an Ohio species of concern, is among the birds breeding in the area. (Photo: iStock.)

New book on Ohio’s breeding birds, co-edited by scientist with CFAES

Breeding Birds cover for GBA highly anticipated new book on breeding birds in Ohio sheds light on the current distribution and changes in the status of the state’s bird populations.

The Second Atlas of Breeding Birds in Ohio — published by the Pennsylvania State University Press and edited by Paul G. Rodewald, Matthew B. Shumar, Aaron T. Boone, David L. Slager and Jim McCormac — comes 25 years after the state’s first breeding bird atlas and provides a new look at contemporary Ohio bird life and how it has changed in that time. Continue reading

I went back to Ohio, but my Bryson City ginkgo was gone

See who comes back this spring when OSU’s Secrest Arboretum in Wooster, part of OARDC, holds a free public bird walk April 9. Northward migrating birds, such as tree swallows and eastern phoebes, should be among the arrivals, who may find the place looks different than when they left. A tornado hit the arboretum last September — after many summer birds had gone south — and turned more than 1,000 trees (on about 30 of the arboretum’s 120 acres) into virtual toothpicks.