Member & Public Access to Nature Museum Properties

COVID-19 has forced everyone to make adjustments both large and small in our lives and daily routines.  A noticeable change has been the increased time people are spending outdoors in nature.  For the Nature Museum that meant increased use of our properties.  We welcome this shift to more outside time, and are extremely pleased that individuals and families have discovered our meadows, forests, ponds, hills and trails.  We know that time spent outside in nature is a tonic that recharges the spirit, strengthens the body and invigorates the mind.

To protect the health and safety of the several hundred children who attend our Young Naturalist, Home School Naturalist and other educational programming, we follow CDC and NYS Health Department best practices.  This means our properties are open to the public for walking, hiking and enjoying nature in the early morning (dawn to 8:00am) and late afternoon (4:00pm to dusk) Mondays through Fridays, and all day from dawn to dusk on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.

We know these limitations have reduced access to our trails and property during the week for some people.  Be assured that we will continue to assess conditions and apply best practices going forward so that any decision on expanded access is based on science that puts the health and safety of our students, staff and community at the forefront.

Please come and enjoy nature and our meadows, forests, ponds and trails during the days and hours we are open to members and the public.  And if you are not yet a member please consider joining and supporting our work and our small piece of the natural world.

-Tom Bregman

Birds of the Nature Museum

Bird-watching allows us to discover the beauty and wonder of so many incredible species and creates even more opportunity to form meaningful connections to the natural world. Observing birds in their natural habitat can also guide us to practices of understanding and mindfulness during a time where we could all use a little comfort. 

This list of identified birds shared by some Outdoor Discovery Center regulars gives us insight to the full range of local and migratory species supported by our site and its resources. While many of these species use our site as nesting and breeding grounds (Yellow Warbler, Tree Swallow, Great Blue Heron, Canada Goose), many others depend on our location on the Hudson River for crucial resources such as food, water, resting spots, and safety from predators along their greater migratory pathway. 

Birds are wonderful indicators of environmental health, so we are excited to see that our habitats and plant communities are supporting great biodiversity! If you are a beginner interested in bird-watching, we recommend the Merlin Bird ID app for identification and E-Bird for keeping track of all of your sighted species.

Birds Observed at the HHNM Outdoor Discovery Center / May, 16 2020 / one day total of 66 bird species identified

Twenty-seven (27) additional species seen at the HHNM on other days this spring

  • White-crowned Sparrow

  • Belted Kingfisher

  • Ruby-crowned Kinglet

  • Solitary Sandpiper

  • Virginia Rail

  • Yellow-billed Cuckoo

  • Cooper’s Hawk

  • Hairy Woodpecker

  • Pileated Woodpecker

  • Red-eyed Vireo

  • Blue-headed Vireo

  • White-breasted Nuthatch

  • Eastern Wood-Pewee

  • Canada Warbler

  • European Starling

  • Double-crested Cormorant

  • Mallard

  • Louisiana Waterthrush

  • American Woodcock

  • Bobolink

  • Barred Owl

  • Great Horned Owl

  • Brown Thrasher

  • Nashville Warbler

  • Bay-breasted Warbler

  • Bufflehead

  • Ring-necked Ducks

Calculating Risk and Reward

Last week the Nature Museum’s Young Naturalist (YN) Director Kerrilee Hunter posted an interesting note to the families of the lucky children who attend our YN preschool.  It was a very thoughtful essay and rumination on what could be perceived as the “dangerous” activities our Young Naturalists engage in from time-to-time.  The essay uses a naturalistic see-saw our YN teachers have “constructed” as the jumping off point for a discussion of risk, danger and reward in childhood free play.  Here is how Kerrilee describes the setup.

“We have a piece of driftwood behind the Learning Center classroom that is basically an entire tree. We also have a long plank of wood. The children drag that plank across the driftwood tree, and use it as a see-saw. The thing about that, though - this is not some manmade see-saw, that has handles and a standard seating area and goes up and down predictably at the same angle. Since the plank is not secured to anything, the fulcrum can shift depending on the relative position of the plank to the tree, and the positions of the children themselves as they are using it.”

And while I am not an expert in early childhood development and education (that is why we have great educators on staff), I do have a strong preference for early childhood development that includes pushing up against physical, cognitive and emotional boundaries and comforts.  I hold these ideas based on my own parenting experience and on the long history of human development when humans lived in extremely challenging circumstances nowhere near the top of the food chain.  During this time we did not control our environment, and were frequently forced to adapt and overcome a wide array of dangerous predators, fearsome prey and life threatening conditions.  Imagine what it might be like to come face-to-face with a cave bear, a dire wolf, a wooly mammoth or a saber-tooth tiger!!!

Only since the advent of agriculture, and more recently with the development of advanced technologies and medicines, have humans lived relatively safe and settled lives.  Prior to these developments, and for most of our history, homo sapiens scratched out a tenuous existence as resourceful hunter-gathers.  Just one of many species across the animal kingdom struggling to make it through another day.

But I digress.

Our Young Naturalists, and to a lesser extent the children who participate in other Nature Museum programming, are exposed to the beauty and minor risks of the natural world in carefully considered ways.  I call it the Goldilocks Risk Zone.  Not too much risk to be overly dangerous, but enough risk to learn reasonable limits, exercise bodies and minds, test the world for danger, build strong personal judgement frameworks, and develop the internal tools needed to live and experience life in all its wonderful complexity.  Additionally, exposure to appropriate levels of risk in group settings can strengthen socialization skills and support greater cooperation in pursuit of common goals.

To further quote from Kerrilee’s essay,

“In climbing up, and falling down, and helping each other on this little hill, they’re giving their bodies a sense of their physical world. Those quick, subconscious calculations that the 4’s make on the see-saw are honed by sliding down both on purpose and by accident in smaller ways like this. Could they get hurt doing it? Possibly. Pretty sure I hear some “Ows!” throughout this scene. Then again, those 5 falling-downs were immediately followed by 5 getting-ups. The kids who wanted to challenge themselves by climbing tried the mossy rocks, and part of challenging yourself is the possibility of getting hurt. That’s true all the time in life, physically and otherwise. And the kids who didn’t feel like challenging themselves in that particular way that day found other things to do - finding small treasures, for instance, or discovering how different the leaves move when they’re wet vs when they’re dry.”

These “dangerous things we don’t discourage your children from doing” is how Nature Museum educators teach our students about risks that are a natural part of life and living.  We are helping them to develop a set of skills and experiences that will make them more able to navigate the challenges, risks and yes dangers they will face in their lives.  I think of it as a form of insurance for their future well-being, and as a set of tools to help them lead a more meaningful and satisfying life.

See you on the trail (and see-saw).

By Tom Bregman




Nature Museum Honors Rising Environmental Leaders of the Hudson Valley

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On November 11th the Nature Museum will honor a very special group of ten young environmental professionals currently working in the Hudson Valley.  They include two farmers, a field biologist, an education director, a trail crew leader, a conservation stewardship manager, an outreach coordinator, a conservation and stewardship director, a director of environmental advocacy and a research manager.

Our Rising Environmental Leaders represent a broad cross section of organizations and programs whose intersecting missions are the long term protection and ecological sustainability of the Hudson Valley region.  The ten honorees were selected by their respective organization’s leadership for their impressive early career accomplishments, strong work ethic and future potential as leaders.

The Nature Museum’s terrific group of educators teach respect for, and an understanding of, the natural world and people by integrating outdoor activities and play with age appropriate scientific principles.  Our educational philosophy is based on a growing body of research showing that exposure to the outdoors and nature at an early age supports a child’s cognitive, physical, emotional and social development.

We practice what we preach by turning the outdoors and nature into both classroom and playground because it fulfills our mission to develop future generations of environmental stewards, and helps foster healthy resilient children who can master the challenges of life in an increasingly complex world.  Also, by honoring this impressive group of Rising Environmental Leaders, we are connecting the dots between our nature based educational approach, and the future life choices our students make as they move into adulthood.

To tease out some of these connections we asked the Rising Environmental Leaders about the key experiences and people that influenced them early in life, and the things that moved them to pursue an environmental career.  In almost every case it was some combination of parents, mentors, teachers and direct exposure to nature that connected them to the natural world and fueled their interest in working to protect and sustain planet earth.  The following quotes are just a sample of what they told us.

“I had a mentor at a summer camp who shared his knowledge, and especially his love of learning about the natural world.  He was a botanist, and he always told us the name of the plant last, after teaching us something else that he thought was more important – why it was growing in that location or how it fits in with the surrounding plant community.”

“My days were spent enjoying a healthy ecosystem and observing the species living in the waters, along the shorelines, and in the nearby forests. This privilege inspired my interest in environmental law from elementary school until late high school.”

“I attribute [my love of the natural world] to the people in my life at an early age that guided my appreciation for the natural world.  My family laid the foundation for my initial interest and my mentors fostered that foundation to help shape it into what it is today.”

“The experiences that most piqued my interest in natural sciences took place in the wooded backyard of my childhood in North Carolina.  There, I took solo walks in the woods, scrambling on rocks, investigating mosses, and watching trees change each season.  Nature was my after-school classroom, and this small patch of woods filled me with curiosity and wonder.  Those experiences---both large and small-scale---remain with me today.”

“My parents also always made sure we spent our summers playing outside. I spent most of my summers riding around our neighborhood with my friends on my bike or exploring my grandmother’s farm in South Dakota. All of these rich experience in nature, be it developed land or pristine wilderness made me realize that I couldn't spend my working life bound to an office staring at a computer.”

“My formative experiences as a child consisted of unsupervised hours exploring the twists and turns of the muddy water way with my little brother. We caught tadpoles, frogs, bugs, and snakes together … the summers exploring the creek and winters enduring the beautiful harsh conditions lead me to find the natural work endlessly fascinating and laid the foundation for the work I [now] do in environmental education.”

“From a young age my parents would take me to Bear Mountain, which I quickly came to view as a paradise. My favorite activity was climbing on the boulders … my favorite story was having my mother tell me how all the boulders came to be there … [the] massive glaciers receding and dropping rocks for me to play on … I came to understand the value and beauty of the world around me from [these] immersive experiences.”

“I spent a lot of time playing in my grandmother’s yard in Germany as a child. She was a gardener and grew vegetables and flowers. We also lived on the edge of the agricultural fields so made igloos out of threshed grain and forts out of hay bales. Our family would vacation on dairy farms in the Swiss alps and this gave me some of my first love of nature and farming and the outdoors.”

“My strongest memories of time spent in nature came as a Boy Scout. Every summer I spent two weeks at a Scout camp in the Adirondacks. We slept in tents and had no power at the campsite (so no screens), and after a few days immersed in nature and away from technology I would feel a shift in consciousness - becoming more present and calm; less anxious and unsettled.”

“Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents on their horse farm. My grandmother would take my brothers and I for long walks across the horse pastures and through the woods to mark trails … I can still hear her telling me how important it was to preserve our natural resources because we can never get them back once we have destroyed them. Her love for the outdoors and passion for conservation had a great influence on me.”

Parents, educators and research professionals know that the pre-adolescent years are especially critical in shaping who we are and what we do in later life.  And while non-stop technological innovation continues to shrink our world by virtually connecting us to more information and people, a growing body of evidence shows that too much screen time can be socially isolating and may lead to negative child development outcomes.  With a focus on the natural world, outdoor free play and basic science principles, Nature Museum educators build strong developmental foundations so our students can thrive now and as they mature into adulthood.

It is our hope that by honoring this extraordinary group of rising leaders we will set a high standard for our students to become responsible stewards of the environment, and that by extension they will influence their own communities to protect and sustain our one and only home.  Planet earth.

See you out on the trail.

By Tom Bregman

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Climate, Weather and Personal Resilience

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While it is undoubtedly true that the industrial revolution provided great economic, commercial and social benefits to millions of people, some of that progress is now threatened by the unintended consequences of industrial activities.  From plastics in our oceans, to toxic chemicals in our drinking water, to logging tropical rain forests, none are of greater consequence to our long term well-being than the burning of fossil fuels and related industrial activities that increase the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and oceans.

Although scientists have recorded a doubling of atmospheric CO2 (carbon dioxide) since the mid-nineteenth century, and now have overwhelming evidence on its impact to the climate system, a causal connection between increased greenhouse gases and daily weather (e.g. rain, snow, temperature, humidity, etc.) is only just emerging.  Recent studies demonstrate how a changing climate contributes to the variability and intensity of discrete weather events like droughts, rain, extended heat waves, warm winters, hot or cool summers and stronger storms.  And though not scientifically definitive, the news is filled with stories of regular extreme weather across the globe; multi-year droughts that result in massive wildfires and crop failures, intensifying hurricanes, thunderstorms and rain events that cause epic flooding, and extreme fluctuations between cold (polar vortex) and warm temperatures in winter that play havoc with travel and work.  Professor Michael Mann, Climate Scientist and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University says of recent extreme weather, “This is the face of climate change, we literally would not have seen these extremes in the absence of climate change.”

And the effects go well beyond simple inconvenience.  In a recently published edition of The Guardian newspaper Dr. Daniel Swain of the UCLA Center for Climate Science and his colleagues described how a changing climate can impact weather patterns, and how these changes promote an increase in the intensity and scale of wildfires in California.

“While record-breaking heatwaves grab headlines, some of the most consequential warming in California is more subtle. Nights have warmed nearly three times as fast as days during fire season – lowering night-time humidity and supporting unprecedented nocturnal fire behavior.  Declining spring snowpack and increased evaporation have reduced the moisture available to plants later in summer and autumn.  The fire season itself is lengthening: not only have autumn and spring temperatures risen, but there are signs that California’s already short rainy season is becoming further compressed into the winter months.  Despite this confluence of factors, the total number of fires in California has not increased in recent decades. Instead, climate change appears to be manifesting itself primarily through changes in the character (rather than frequency) of wildfire. Flames are spreading more rapidly and with greater intensity. Around half of the increase in area burned during western forest fires in recent decades can be attributed to the long-term warming trend.”

Of course none of this addresses the difficult issue of policy response, priority setting and the level of resources chosen to allocate to the problem.  The questions of long term impact to our economy and to the natural world, and how we address the effects of climate change have yet to be fully answered.  These are challenges that will confront our children as they move into adulthood and become the next generation of leaders and decision makers.

Because the Nature Museum’s teaching approach focuses on the natural world, environmental science and outdoor play, both climate and weather are important areas of learning and practical understanding for our students.  But rather than giving them a specific policy perspective, our educators focus on the fundamental principles of science and nature, and how they apply to everyday life.  For example, our Young Naturalist Director Kerrilee Hunter says to students and parents, “There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.”  This simple idea encapsulates a practical approach to understanding and solving problems, and fostering personal resiliency in our students.  We know it will serve them well as they make their way in the world and tackle the inevitable challenges of adulthood, come rain or shine.

See you on the trail (and don’t forget your raincoat)!!!

                       By Tom Bregman

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