Nature Center

Today we went to the local nature center at Dawes Arboretum to explore and beat the heat. We had a great adventure. Our Nature center has a small collection of taxidermy animals, which BiGirl loved, and the favorite today was a large owl. Below the owl was a glass case with a skull, egg, and clawed feet to look at. Very neat!

One large wall in the kids area all windows looking out into the bird garden. This is an area that is maintained year round and has binoculars for bird watching, not that you need them everything is so close. Birds we spotted today: female cardinal, blue jay, several humming birds, finches, sparrows, and even a few chipmunks. Part of the wall has a real beehive attached inside in plexiglass with tons of bees going in and out to the flowers in the garden.

Here is a view of the kids looking out the windows. As you can see today there were two tubs of sand. In these were buried animal skulls and bones, pinecones, and other nature items to uncover with a paintbrush. It was TagalongGirl’s favorite thing!

The nature center has a few live animals and here is AcrobatBoy’s favorite, a spotted turtle.


Here is Daddy and BabyBoy with a giant praying mantis, and then Mommy with the baby too.

The center had a table about butterflies and moths with some collections to look at, frog information, a crayfish partially dissected in a glass cube, books, puzzles, and lots more! It was great, and free!

After all this exploring we took a drive through the Arboretum and stopped to walk through the cypress swamp with the kids to see the funny trees with knobby knees poking up out of the ground.

All in all it was a fun and educational morning we will have to repeat once the weather changes and fall begins to see the changes in nature.