Phenology is the study of what happens when in nature — the timing of recurring biological and atmospheric events that mark the true calendar of the natural world. Bill Felker has been building his phenology calendar from Yellow Springs, Ohio since the late 1970s.
His records include wildflower bloom times, insect emergence dates, bird arrival and departure windows, the ripening of wild fruits, first frost, last freeze, and hundreds of other natural events that repeat with remarkable consistency from year to year.
Bill’s contribution is forty years of firsthand observation from a single carefully watched landscape — a record of natural timing that is both scientifically useful and beautifully written. If you want to know when the first fireflies will appear, when the goldenrod peaks, or when to expect the last killing frost, this is the place to start.
I woke at four this morning to katydids chanting, and took inventory of the external world through the day — dogbane pods reddening, wood nettle holding late, buckeye leaves browning, herons circling above hollow fog.
Bill Felker’s daybook for November 23 — the Sun enters Sagittarius and Late Fall deepens in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Field notes from 1984 to 2020 track cranes, crows, witch hazel, and the last leaves of autumn.
Bill Felker’s daybook for November 25 — one of Late Fall’s darkest weeks, with glimpses of spring amid the stripping away of the season, plus field notes from Yellow Springs, Ohio from 1979 to 2019.
Bill Felker’s daybook for November 29 — a meditation on Late Fall’s accumulation of absences, with weather data and personal field notes from Yellow Springs, Ohio spanning nearly four decades.
Bill Felker’s daybook entry for December 4 — sunrise times, weather averages, and forty years of personal nature observations from Yellow Springs, Ohio, marking the start of Early Winter.
Bill Felker’s daybook for December 1 — the start of Early Winter in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Includes weather averages, the December cold front outlook, phenology calendar, and personal field notes from 1983 to 2020.
Bill Felker’s daybook entry for December 4 — sunrise times, weather averages, and forty years of personal nature observations from Yellow Springs, Ohio, marking the start of Early Winter.
The format of all my notes in this daybook owes more than a little to the almanacs I wrote and continue to write for the Yellow Springs News between 1984 and 2017. The quotations, daily statistics, the weather outlooks, the seasonal calendar and the daybook journal were and still are part of my regular routine…
This first volume of A DAYBOOK FOR THE YEAR IN YELLOW SPRINGS, OHIO, is a…Read more n The post A Daybook for January in Yellow Springs, Ohio: A Memoir in Nature (Daybook for the Year in Yellow Springs, Ohio) appeared first on Poor Will’s Almanack by Bill Felker. n]]>
This seventh volume of A DAYBOOK FOR THE YEAR IN YELLOW SPRINGS, OHIO, is a memoir, extended meditation and guidebook to the month of July in southwestern Ohio, as well as in the Middle Atlantic region and much of the East and Southeast. My daily, weekly and monthly weather summaries have been distilled from over…