Devin Franklin - Put On Your Owl Eyes: Open Your Senses & Discover Natures Secrets; Mapping, Tracking & Journaling Activities

To my parents, who have offered their unwavering support to me and my work throught the years:

Jay Denny Franklin , whose exciting childhood stories about his backyard exploration beckoned me outside to create my own stories,

and Patricia Farrell Franklin , who taught me to waste not whether it be through recycling bottles, appreciating spring peeper symphonies, or using the gifts hidden inside my own heart.

In this book I use the word backyard to describe a place in nature that you or I come to know very well maybe better than any other human being! This can be the woods, a city park, a suburban backyard, or an empty lot.

We learn about it by sitting quietly, watching and hearing what goes on, noticing what birds and animals are doing, wandering around its different mini-areas, and observing its changes. Every day my own backyard grows more and more interesting as I learn its secrets.

Ill share my ways with you so you can discover a new backyard, too and Ill begin by introducing my own teacher, Lenny Brown.

As a boy living in the countryside, Lenny simply couldnt be kept indoors. He loved squishing barefoot through the beaver swamps in his backyard. When he grew up, Lenny and his wife, Deborah, founded Flying Deer Nature Center a place where kids come to dig their toes into grassy fields, watch wiggling caterpillars, sneak through the forest, and spy on fuzzy fox kits as they play near their den.

Kids always come home from Flying Deer with an exciting tale to tell. The book youre holding brings this kind of fun right to your doorstep, and gets you adventuring outdoors and creating some of your own exciting nature stories to share.

Put On Your Owl Eyes is sprinkled with fascinating backyard stories written by Flying Deer staff, all of whom have spent years closely observing and investigating the natural world. Youll notice that each storys author has a nature nickname something you, too, can have as you take this journey with us!

Nature nicknames link us in a fun way with our wilder backyard relatives. Mine is Green Frog. Green frogs and I both prefer to dress in green, enjoy sitting still, and love jumping into water! Heres how to find your own nickname:

1. Have someone pick a name for you, since a given nickname is better than a chosen one. Or ask them to write a few names on slips of paper and let you pick one from a hat.
2. Keep it local. Choose only wildlife that lives in your part of the country.
3. Trust the magic. Be open to what your name has to teach you. Do some research and keep your name at least until you reach the end of this book.

Make sure your chosen backyard is safe! Get permission from the landowner, as well as permission from your supervising adult. Then research with an adult any possible natural hazards, which may include:

• Venomous snakes
• Ticks, venomous spiders, and dangerous insects
• Poisonous-to-touch plants
• Protective or ill mammals
• Severe weather
• Getting lost
• Widow-makers (dead trees that are ready to fall)

Youll most likely find that these hazards are less common than we think!

Have you ever played a game of hide-and-seek that lasted for hours, or even days? When my teacher, Jon Young, was about ten years old, he played one game that lasted for years! Jon was the seeker, and the hider was a sneaky red fox that lived in his backyard.

Again and again, Jon tried to catch a glimpse of this beautiful wild animal with its fluffy orange coat, golden eyes, and glistening black nose, but that red fox always slipped away unseen. In the end, early one morning at sunrise, Jon won the game. But it took many backyard visits and some help from his neighborhood mentor, Tom Brown, Jr.

Tom, a master tracker, had spent his whole life exploring, studying, and even living in the woods. Over ten years he taught Jon useful tricks, called Core Routines of Nature Connection, to help him find that wily backyard fox, and in time Jon became a master tracker, too.

These Core Routines included Fox Walking a stealthy way of moving through the landscape; listening for Bird Language a way of studying birds to find hidden predators; and Owl Eyes a way of seeing that can detect tiny movements, such as a foxs eye blinking in the bushes!

The fifteen Core Routines presented in this book will help you to discover the secretive wild residents (maybe even a wily fox!) of your own backyard.

Youll write notes, draw maps, and make sketches as you use this book. Find a notebook you like and keep it ready! And look for field guides in your public library. They are awesome resources stuffed with cool facts about our neighbors in nature.

Take the before you start this book and again when you finish!

A backyard might be your own yard, a forest, a desert, a public green space, or a single tree growing on a street corner.

Discovering a New Backyard

This chapter introduces three Core Routines that will help you slow down and open your awareness to your backyard.

In Exploration 1, you will choose a Sit Spot, a special place you can visit each day to make observations.

In Exploration 2, you will be Wandering to explore part of your backyard in an entirely new way.

In Exploration 3, you will use Mapping to identify the habitats in your backyard and study them. Together, these Core Routines will open your eyes to a bigger backyard.

Call of the Wild

Tree Stinger

The sounds of afternoon traffic filled the air as I walked through a busy maze of city streets. Taking my usual route home, I cut through a small park with its grassy areas and a few old trees.

Suddenly I felt an urge to sit under one of the trees. Soon I was leaning against the gray, wrinkled trunk of a box elder, letting out a deep sigh, and beginning to take in my surroundings.

Immediately I spotted something glittering in the air before me. My eyes focused on a huge wasp with a body as long as my smallest finger, flying right at me. Behind it draped a thin black stinger so long it could have jabbed into my forearm and poked out the other side.