March has been a crazy month for us. Mr. McGoozle was gone most of the month and those of us at home have been sick with one thing or another almost the whole time. The weather has been typical Montana spring- some days in the 40s, some days around 0, snow, sun, ice, and mud. Here’s a collection of nature photos and a funny story.

A Funny Nature Story

We were eating lunch one Saturday and I noticed particles floating past the window. At first. I thought it was snowing again, but on second glance, we saw that it was “raining” feathers. We first blamed Slinky McPuffin who is sometimes also called the bird murderer. But she was sleeping peacefully upstairs. I went to the front door to see if she had previously made a kill and left it on the front step and now the wind was picking up feathers. No, no bird on the porch. The feathers were drifting down from the sky. Stubby put on his boots and went outside to see what was happening. He reported that there was a bird of some sort sitting on the peak of our house roof. I went out to see and tried to take a picture but was only fast enough to catch it flying away. We think that it was a small raptor eating another bird. Last week we saw what we think was the same species of bird sitting on the neighbor’s fence. Our best guesses on the type of bird are either a merlin, a sharp-shinned hawk, or a Cooper’s hawk. I lean more toward one of the first 2 options based on size and head shape but both times it’s been so quick and distant that it’s hard to make an ID in my novice experience. Email me if you have more experience and can help us figure out what bird this is.

I am very much hoping that in April we will do more nature journaling that we can share. We’re trying out a 4-day school week so we can do more outside on the 5th day with the weather hopefully improving.