November Photo Journal

Here are a few photos of Chippewa Nature Center from this chilly month of transition as autumn slowly fades toward winter. Even though much of it looks sleepy this time of year, Nature is still very busy and beautiful!

Bald Eagle Gets a Second Chance!

Bald Eagle released at Shiawassee NWR

Tips for an Eco-Thanksgiving

This week, families gather together to give thanks for their blessings and celebrate the bounty of the autumn harvest. While this holiday of fellowship and fun can be a wonderful time, it often results in great amounts of wastefulness that can be easily avoided with a little planning ahead. Just type "Green Thanksgiving" or "Eco-Thanksgiving" into a web browser and you'll find dozens of great ideas to make your gathering more Earth-friendly. Here, we offer a few highlights for your consideration:

1. Spare the bird. Take a cue from the President of the United States, who "pardons" a lucky gobbler each year at the White House. Instead, try a vegetarian Thanksgiving!

2. Buy local. If your family just can't think of giving up that turkey dinner, buy organic and buy local. Locally-raised poultry and other produce uses much lower amounts of fossil fuels as they make it from the farmers to your table!

3. Stay local. Consider other alternatives to driving or flying hundreds of miles just for one family dinner. Consider meeting at a centrally-located venue that saves both time and energy for all.

4. Turn it down. If your stove is running full blast and your home is full of people, it'll probably get pretty warm in there! Turn down your thermostat and open some windows if it gets too hot, instead of running the air conditioning!

5. Buy recycled. Many families go through trash bags full of paper products and plastic-ware instead of doing a mountain of dishes. If this sounds like you, search for recycled paper products or ones made from sugar-cane fibers instead.

6. Eat leftovers. Don't just toss that extra stuffing, send it home with your relatives! If you have meat left over, see how creative you can get with turkey sandwiches for the next few days.

7. Don't overbuy. If you have loads of leftovers every year, consider that you may be buying too much. Really plan ahead and only purchase what you plan on eating this year!

8. Decorate creatively. Instead of rushing out and purchasing a cartload of decorations, see what you can come up with that you already own. Make your own cornucopia and dried flower arrangements.

A Bright Idea

It's definitely begun. Walk through any grocery store or department store and listen carefully. Holiday music is everywhere! Take a stroll down Main Street and you'll find lights, wreaths, and other decorations just waiting for a cold, white covering of snow.

Drive around town at night, and you'll notice that many people have taken advantage of warm days in November to put up holiday lights on their homes and in their yards. If you're looking for ways to make your holidays a little "greener" (more environmentally-friendly, not more pine-scented), here are a few things to consider:

1. The "greenest" option regarding holiday lights is to not put up any at all. Strands of incandescent lights (especially the big, old-fashioned ones), really suck up the energy and can make your electricity bill climb. Instead, enjoy the light of the moon on a blanket of freshly fallen snow!

2. Perhaps you think the first suggestion is crazy. If so, consider recycling old strands of lights that no longer work instead of throwing them away. One Michigan company, based in Jackson, takes strands of lights for recycling and will send you a 15% discount coupon to purchase their LED version.

3. Especially if you're replacing lights that no longer work, think about an upgrade to LED lights. LEDs typically use only 10% of the electricity it takes to run an incandescent strand of the same length, saving at least $20 or more in energy costs for a 30-day holiday season.

For more about LED lighting, and other ways to make your holiday season a little greener, check out Green Holiday Tips from the Sierra Club by clicking here.

Larderhoarding in the Home

Odds are you are more of a “larderhoarder,” like a Red Squirrel, than a “scatterhoarder,” like the Gray and Fox Squirrels. I say that assuming you store food in only a few locations, probably a refrigerator and nearby cabinets. That concentration is easy to protect, so you would take action against a stranger found pilfering your supplies. Similarly, Red Squirrels cache pine cones in just a few logs or tree cavities, and woe to another squirrel that approaches!

Gray and Fox Squirrels have a different system. Imagine storing soup in the yard, bread under the deck, and milk in the crawl space? Such scatterhoarding is impossible to defend. You might fight off a stranger in the yard, but by then the crawl space is emptied by someone else. Gray and Fox Squirrels bury acorns and nuts individually, but don’t defend them. They simply use their memory and fine sense of smell to search out between 85 – 99 percent of these buried treasures!

Thankfully for all of us human larderhoarders out there, storage has become vastly more energy efficient in recent years. To find out how much energy your fridge uses, check out this nifty database from Home Energy Magazine. If you have a refrigerator that was manufactured before 1993, it might be time to upgrade to an Energy Star model. Then you won't have to feel guilty at all when you visit your horde for that midnight snack!

Plug the Gaps

No doubt about it, fall is well underway. Leaves are rapidly falling off the trees and a crisp breeze has begun to blow. We've had some nice frosts at night already and (whether we like it or not), winter will be here before we know it!

As temperatures turn, it's important to take a look at where we live and work in order to keep the elements at bay. If you've got some money saved up, perhaps it's time to look into extra insulation in the attic or walls. Do it before the end of the year and you might qualify for a Federal Tax Credit. (Click here for more information and also check with your tax advisor.)

If you don't have a mattress stuffed with money to spend, one of the best energy-saving task you can do is plug the gaps around your windows and doors. A small gap between your window pane or door jam is a direct-line conduit to outdoor air, leaking your heat out and letting cold in. Check these tips from the U.S. Department of Energy about sealing air leaks in your home. Time to get out the caulk gun and get busy!