Pfeiffer Nature Center & Foundation

It’s the time of year where we just seem to have one bleary day after another.  But there’s hope on the horizon as my daffodils have popped up ready to bolt with the first week of warm and sunny weather.  So taking my cue from the daffodils, I went out and marked the trees at the house I will be watching for Project BudBurst.

The project uses citizens like us to record the emergence of buds tracking the progress of spring.  I really enjoyed doing this last year and would encourage you to try it as well.  Simply look at the list of trees and plants for your area, choose which one you’ll watch, then make a point to take a peek to note the changes.

I’ve marked our Eastern Redbud today with a little strip of colored ribbon to remind me to look.  I pass the tree every day on my way to the car so it’s super easy to remember to observe the tree changes.  The Project BudBurst site makes it convenient for me to make my observation entries online and I get a little burst of happiness each day as I watch this little tree respond to the changes of the season.

Today was the kind of day we hope for to help us get through these long western New York winters.  It was absolutely glorious with bright sun, ice blue skies, no wind, and tons of snow of excellent consistency for sledding, snowshoeing, and snowman building!  Sixty-five folks braved these conditions to visit our Lillibridge property for our Snowshoe Blitz.  The talented staff from Paths, Peaks, and Paddles in Tonawanda provided equipment, instruction, and guided walks allowing our visitors to explore and enjoy the best we have to offer during the height of the winter season.  The trails had thick fresh snow, the trees loaded with heavy white coats that brought the boughs low enough to brush their freshness against your cheek.  Lots of happy people (and dogs) emerged from the forest all smiles and enthused about their new found winter sport!

Both properties are open dawn to dusk, year round and provide miles of trails to enjoy winter hiking, nature exploration, cross country skiing and of course, snowshoeing!  We have several pair of snowshoes available for daily and weekend rental.  On March 6, we offer a 2-hour snowshoe program.  This is a small group experience using snowshoes to explore the trails of Lillibridge and enjoy the quiet and peace of the snow laden forest. Snowshoes provided.  Experience limited to 6 participants.  10:30-12:30 PM General Public $10/PNC Members $5.  Call the office at 716-933-0187 for details.

Get out and enjoy this wonderful winter!

Thanks to a grant from the NYS Council on the Arts and the consistent support of the Cattaraugus County Arts Council, we’re happy to announce (drum roll please)…

FILM FESTIVAL, 2010!

Whether you’re young in years or young at heart, Pfeiffer Nature Center’s Film Festival wants to see what’s in YOUR viewfinder. Take still photos or video, create animation or shoot reality, make it pretty or edgy. All we want is your interpretation of this year’s theme: My Backyard. Be as expansive or as narrow as you’d like within that theme.

Download a flyer suitable for posting, submission guidelines, and an entry form. Tell everyone in your art class, your photo club, or your neighborhood about it, and challenge them all to submit. It’s fun, it’s easy, and it’s free.

Check out some of last year’s winners on YouTube.

Don’t wait – go take some pictures!

Laura so appropriately suggested that I post a picture of our finished wreaths. Why didn’t I think of that?!

So here’s a picture of wreaths being decorated as well as one of a finished beauty.

There’s still a few days to order one for this year, but call or email me SOON — director(at)pfeiffernaturecenter(dot)com — to get yours!

All wreath sale proceeds support Pfeiffer Nature Center programs.

Peg

Vicki Schmidt, a Pfeiffer Nature Center Board Member, generously made and donated a no-sew nature-themed blanket to be raffled as a mini fundraiser.

We sold raffle tickets at Portville Heritage Days and for the following week.

On July 18 Sue Stevens drew the winning ticket. Congratulations to Kay A. Enjoy snuggling in your new blanket on our chilly evenings this summer.

…like Christmas?!

It’s only July, but many of us here at Pfeiffer Nature Center have been preparing for our annual holiday wreath sale for months already.

Preparing how, you say? By gathering and drying materials for the wreath decorations. So far I know we’ve collected several bags of pine cones from white pines. We also have many bunches of lamb’s ear and coronation gold yarrow drying in barns and basements in two counties. And probably other things I’m not yet aware of.

You may have plants in or near your house, wild or domestic, that would dry well and make beautiful additions to our wreaths. We’d love to have them.

A few ideas to get you started…

statice – any color,

seeds from money plant/honesty plant/silver dollar ,

smoke bush (do their flowers dry well?)

seed heads from Siberian Iris, tree peony, or other interesting heads, and

seed pods from Kentucky Coffee Trees.

There are surely LOTS more. We try new things each year. Some dry beautifully, some don’t. Some hold up well, some don’t. We only use the ones that dry beautifully and hold up well on our wreaths.

If you’ve not harvested flowers for drying before, here’s what you need to know.

Pick flowers BEFORE they are fully opened. They’ll continue to open a bit after they’re picked.

Pick the flowers when they are dry – not just after a rain or first thing in the morning when they’re dew-covered.

Pick the flowers with relatively long stems; you can always cut them shorter, but can’t make them longer!

Gather a small bunch (4-12, depending the on flower/stalk size) and wrap the end of the stalks with a rubber band. Make the rubber bank moderately tight. Run a portion of a partially-opened paper clip through the rubber band, and clip the other portion to a clothes hanger, a short piece of twine, or other object that will allow the bunch to hang upside-down.

Be sure that air can circulate around the bunches. Hang your bunches in a dry, dark place and wait. If your basement, barn, or other location isn’t dark, you can always aid that by hanging the bunches inside a paper bag, which both decreases light and allows moisture to escape.

If you gather things you’d like to donate to us for use on our wreaths, call our office (716.933.0187) or drop me an email-director(at)pfeiffernaturecenter(dot)org. I’ll be grateful for your help.

by Peg Cherre, Executive Director

If a home garden is your nature indulgence of choice, check out Peg Cherre’s recent posts about a peony that didn’t bloom for 12 years and a great regional resource, particularly for fruit.

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

By nature shots we don’t mean anything like jello shots.

Instead, point your camera at all things natural. Shoot video or stills. Edit and organize your work, and submit it into our third annual Pfeiffer Nature Center Film Festival!

We’re looking for amateur photography buffs (regardless of whether you take your pictures in the buff) to submit short videos or automated PowerPoint presentations. And we do mean short – from 30 seconds to five minutes. Give us your interpretation of this year’s theme: naturescapes. You can use new photos, or pix you took years ago.

The guidelines are simple, and there’s no entry fee, so there’s no reason not to enter!

The deadline is approaching, but you still have four weeks to get your entry in.

Grab your camera and get outside!

Pfeiffer Nature Center is happy to to join an established partnership between the NY Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, Cornell University, and the National Wild Turkey Federation to reintroduce the American Chestnut.

Once called Queen of the Forest, 1 in every 4 trees in northeastern forests was an American Chestnut. Chestnuts were an important source of food for farm animals and people alike, and the wood was prized for everything from fence posts to ship masts. Then the Chestnut blight hit, killing all but a handful of trees in the United States.

The American Chestnut tree has a particular significance for Pfeiffer Nature Center, since that’s what our historic log cabin is made from.

So when we had the chance to plant some unmodified American Chestnut seedlings on our Lillibridge Road property, we jumped at it. It’s true that these seedlings are likely to succumb to the blight, which remains active in the soil, but with a little luck, these trees will produce fruit before they die, and with even more luck, some of their fruit will produce blight-resistant trees.

On May 22 volunteers Jeff McMullen and Josh White planted 9 saplings around the upper meadow on our Lillibridge property. Wish our trees long and prosperous lives!

6/30 Update: Dr. Peter Ducey from SUNY Cortland graciously responded to our request for tadpole ID, indicating that likely candidates are wood frogs and american toads. I’m quite sure they’re not toads due to the shapes of the egg masses, so we’re left with wood frogs, one of my initial guesses. I found a site with a photo of a wood frog tadpole that confirms this. (Try not to think about how he got that picture.)

I took Kenton & Rebecca’s suggestion, and this morning captured a few tadpoles in a clear plastic container. Again. For the third time. I carried them to my sugar house, where it’s nice and dark.

And then back out into the early morning sunshine.

It’s now perfectly clear – those tadpoles are indeed iridescent, not luminescent.

I STILL don’t know what kind of frogs they’ll turn into, however, so still looking for your information.

by Peg Cherre, Executive Director