Description
Book SynopsisTake an enchanting journey through the shifting seasons in a wildlife sanctuary home to wetland, forest, and grassland and supporting an incredible diversity of plants and animals. Flocks of waterfowl exploding into steely skies above frozen marshland, salamanders creeping across the forest floor to vernal pools, chorusing frogs peeping their ecstasy while warblers crowd budding trees, turtles sunning on floating logs, the ecological engineering of beaversthese are but a few of the sights and sounds marking a year at Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary and its neighboring landscapes in Southern Maryland. In an absorbing account of a year in the life of this sanctuary, naturalist Colin Rees invites us to join him as he explores the secrets and wonders of the changing natural world. Alongside the author, we witness spring's avian migrations, quickening of aquatic vegetation, burgeoning of myriad invertebrates, and the assaults of extreme weather conditions. We revel in summertime's proliferatio
Trade ReviewBirds led Colin Rees — a former environmental advisor for the World Bank — to Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary. There he discovered a wider love, of the natural world, so strong it led to his latest book,
Nature's Calendar: A Year in the Life of a Wildlife Sanctuary . . . In Jug Bay, Rees documented an ecological year from a variety of viewpoints. His weekly visits to the park coincided with citizen science projects, sampling and surveys with volunteers or researchers. During active times in the sanctuary, he visited as often as three times a week to make his observations, which take the form of a diary of sorts, much in the style of
Sand County Almanac.
—Kathy Knotts,
Bay WeeklyWritten in exquisite prose,
Nature's Calendar: A Year in the Life of a Willife Sanctuary is a year-long ramble through southern Arundal County's Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary. Colin Rees entwines the delight of an explorer, the awareness of a lifelong naturalist, the scope of an historian, and the insight of a professional conservationist . . . Any nature enthusiast will appreciate the care and breadth of this book—its celebration of Jug Bay's exceptional wildlife, the esteem of its custodians and students, and an unflinching look at threats to its integrity, including climate change, invasive species, and human activity.
Nature's Calendar will surprise, educate, and inspire. It's a book to be savored, studied and re-read.
—Barbara Johnson,
Outlook by the BayRees captures, in painterly prose, an entire year of nature in all of its changing beauty, fragility, brutality, and complexity . . . Filled as it is with a lifetime of knowledge and skilled observation, we can still hear in Rees's writing the infectious wonder of a young boy in Wales who fell in love with birds and went on to devote his life to the natural world. Readers should need no further convincing to go vicariously with him on this meditative yearlong excursion.
—Lucie Lehmann,
Wilson Journal of OrnithologyTable of ContentsForeword, by Rick Anthony
Acknowledgments
Prologue
The Setting
The Seasons by Month
January: The Big Cold Moon
February: The Snow or Hunger Moon
March: The Wakening or Crow Moon
April: The Grass Moon
May: The Planting Moon
June: The Rose Moon
July: The Thunder Moon
August: The Corn Moon
September: The Hunting Moon
October: The Leaf-Falling Moon
November: The Mad Moon
December: The Long Night's Moon
Epilogue
Appendix A. Animals Mentioned in the Text
Appendix B. Plants Mentioned in the Text
Notes
Bibliography
Index
