Spring is a Season for Hatching!

themes: Animals, nature, growing up, eggs

Watching and Waiting: What Hatches from Nature's Nurseries

By Sara Levine

32 pages; ages 4-8

Millbrook Press, 2025  

When you find something interesting and beautiful 

… what should you do? Should you poke it and prod it? Open it up to see what’s inside? Granted, that is the way curious naturalists discover things. But if you open things up, then what’s inside won’t grow anymore, says Sara Levine. So maybe you could wait?

What I like about this book: Using gentle, lyrical language, Sara ponders how one might observe nature without harming it. In particular, she offers strategies for watching how eggs develop and waiting to see what hatches out. She draws examples from birds, insects, amphibians, and reptiles. Back matter discusses what eggs are, egg cases and galls, and how to be an “observational scientist” – something anyone can do. The photos are gorgeous and will have children looking closer to study the details.

Sara is a member of #STEAMTeam2025. You can find out more about her at her website, www.saralevinebooks.com She's also a guest author joining me at the 5th Annual Arthropod Roundtable over on the GROG Blog on April 16. 

Butterflies come from eggs. But what happens when they grow up?

When a Butterfly Goes to School (Board Book)

by Laura Purdie Salas; illus. by Chloe Niclas 

7 spreads

‎Creative Editions, 2025

What does a butterfly do at school all day? From art class to science, story time to lunchtime we follow swallowtail and her friends.

What I like about this book: I have to confess that I loved the lunch break the best – the butterflies zip and sip their way through the flowers. The luscious artwork supports lyrical prose as the words ask us to suspend reality and join a butterfly on a normal day at butterfly school.

Beyond the Books:

Go on a gall walk. You can find round galls on the stems of goldenrod, bumpy galls on leaves, and fluffy galls on leaves as well. Find out more about galls – and see some examples – here and here.

Birds aren’t the only animals to lay eggs. Find out what other animals lay eggs, and what kind of eggs they lay. 

If you were a butterfly, what sort of things would you learn at school? What might you do in art class? In science? At story time? At play time?

Today we’re joining Perfect Picture Book Friday. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copies provided by the publishers.

Happy Earth Day Birth Day for Red Tailed Hawks

The Red-tailed hawk pair have three eggs - today two have hatched (as of 2:15 pm) and tried to nibble snake for lunch. You can watch on this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM7IEjgmkTo

click on the nest cam button over to the right and you can check in on the nestlings as they grow - and maybe catch #3 hatching.

Baby Birds Need Password for Supper

Juvenile superb fairy wren. (Wikimedia commons)

Like any other baby bird, fairy-wrens sing for their supper. But they have to go one step further and give mama bird a secret password before she hands over the worm. Not only do fairy-wren nestlings have passwords, but each family has a different password – a single unique note that nestlings incorporate into their begging calls.

And they learn this password before they’re born – while they are still in the egg. Mama birds sing to their eggs to teach them their special“feed me” song. The mama birds also teach their mate and any helpers the secret password as well.

Why? Because parasitic cuckoos sometimes lay their eggs in fairy-wren nests. Baby birds need lots of feeding, and cuckoos tend to be greedy, gobbling up the food when given a chance. So if a mama bird can tell which nestlings are her own, she can feed them – and not the imposter.

Each fairy-wren family has its own password, too; and it’s learned, not inherited. When scientists switched eggs (they put one mom’s eggs in another’s nest), the hatchlings sang the “feed me” song that matched their foster-mom, not their biological mom.

So next time you’re at the supper table and mom says, “what do you say?” – you’d better pay attention. Could be your family has a special password, too. Check out more cool news and resources at STEM Friday.

Earth Day Birthday?

Update 04/23 @ 8 pm: First chick's baby photo snapped at around 3 this afternoon - see here.
One still pipping; one still in the egg. This is better than telly.

Update 04/23 @ 9 am: late yesterday we could see inside one of the eggs where a chick had chipped away a section. Haven't seen any chicks all the way out yet, but right now it's cold and windy and mama hawk is providing a down comforter. 

About quarter after noon (EST) nest-watchers noticed a beak poking out of one of the Red-tailed hawk eggs. Could we have an Earth Day Birthday? Nest-watchers are hoping so....

Watch live streaming video from cornellhawks at livestream.com