There is a wealth of bird-life in our region, from the soaring osprey and the gawky great blue herons that live along the water, to the flitting hummingbirds and various songbirds that dine at our bird feeders.

At Casa Klepper, we open up our Audubon guide to identify the ones we've never seen before, and we puzzle over feathers we find, guessing what kind of birds they came from. Since we sometimes hear more birds than we see, we decided to try learning to identify birds by their songs (ha! easier said than done).

There are lots of commercial CDs and MP3s out there for bird enthusiasts wanting to learn bird songs, but we found a couple of free websites that work just fine for us bird-feeder-watchers. The kids' favorite is Learn Bird Songs, which only plays the songs of 38 birds, but is easy to navigate and seems to feature birds mostly from our area. I've bookmarked this one on our computer since it's easy for the kids to use. They really enjoy hearing a bird song on the computer and recognizing that they have heard it outside, as well. Being able to hear the song and then identify the bird will take some time, but we've gotten a few of them down. (The kids like to quiz me, making me guess the bird when they play the song.)

The other good web resource we found is at eNature. This website has over 550 birds, and includes pictures, songs (although not for all birds) and encyclopedia-like entries about the birds. It's a bit cumbersome for really young kids, but it is a good supplement to Learn Bird Songs because of its comprehensiveness.

Happy birding!

You never know what you might find underneath your house, especially when you live in a cottage in the forest. Among the scattered (non-living) things we found under our house after we bought it was a rolling seine net. I'd never heard of such a thing (as usual, I'll blame it on my land-locked upbringing), and I certainly wouldn't have known what to do with it even if I had. Fortunately, our local expert (aka "dad") knew just what it was for, and he organized a seining expedition at the Severn River last week.

We (and by "we" I mean "dad") pushed the net along the bottom of the river, through the seaweed and sea grass, and dumped the contents on the sand when the net was full. Nature Girl, her brother and a friend dived right in, pulling out tiny mud(?) crabs, even tinier grass shrimp and slippery minnows. An eel slithered away from the first haul, much to dad's dismay, and the blue crab they found was, alas, just an empty shell.

For a pretty simple activity, seining really impressed the kids. In fact, today they dragged dad out of the house to go seining again. Since they knew they'd find some grass shrimp, the kids brought their fishing rods this time. While they didn't find another eel, each of the kids managed to catch a white perch using the grass shrimp as bait. Yet another successful nature expedition!

The Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center invites families to seine in the tidal pool at their location (seine nets can be borrowed from the visitors center). Visit their website for more information.

I scoured the internet trying to find a place to buy a personal-sized, rolling net like the one in the picture, but I couldn't find anything other than giant seining nets for fishermen. If you know of a local store that carries these, let me know!

Summer camp is over, and my little Nature Girl is sad. But we're holding on to that "in-camp" mentality for as long as we can. Today we went on a rainbow scavenger hunt along the Severn River with Nature Girl's girlfriends, just the right thing for a beautiful day (we finished before the thunderstorms).

I got the idea from "Scribbit", a great blog written by a mom in Alaska, and what a fun idea it is. It's pretty simple - take an egg carton and paint each cup a different color, then fill each cup with things you find that match the colors.

Well, when Nature Girl and her five friends (aged 4 and 5) first got the cartons, they started having what looked like light saber duels with them. This I would have expected from NG's Star Wars-obsessed brother, not from a bunch of little girls in sun dresses.

Once they understood their mission, however, the young Jedis quickly turned their attention to the hunt. Walking, running, squealing and falling over each other, the girls looked for white feathers, blue flowers, brown pine cones, green grass and orange leaves to place in their cartons. We had no trouble finding things of every color, and had only a few instances of sharing violations : ).

Some things didn't fit in the carton, but the girls still took the time to watch them: sea nettles (white), schools of fish (gray), a great blue heron (blue) sitting on an osprey nest (brown) and quite a few blue crabs (blue and red). One mom commented that it was fun to have an open-ended activity that allowed the girls just to explore without interference. It comes so natural to kids, and you could tell they were having a blast.

Each girl got to go home with an egg carton filled with her nature finds. Hopefully the cartons will all be used again. I know ours will -- it will be fun to have a rainbow scavenger hunt in the fall when the leaves change colors.

And guess what my kids and I saw today after the afternoon rain? Yup, a rainbow. Scavenger hunt complete.

"Go. Play. Out. Side. Now." When you follow this with "Why don’t you boys go build a fort?", you'd better be prepared to follow through with it. Fortunately for me (not being much of a fort-builder), our handyman (aka "dad") was home.

We didn't have any plywood, so a Li'l Rascals style He-Man Woman Haters Club clubhouse will have to wait. But dad knows little boys and he knew that a tarp thrown over a rope tied between two trees would do just fine.

The fort must be imbued with some magical powers, because the next thing I knew, the boys (ranging in ages from 6-9) were scrubbing dirty and cobwebby fort furniture, blazing a trail to the fort and getting the area cleared out -- all of their own initiative, I must add.

Nature Girl popped in and out of the mission, leading the effort to dig up rocks (in case of a bear attack) and worms (not sure what those are for). The boys even considered naming the club the "No Girls Allowed Except Nature Girl Club." But in true boy fashion, they now prefer that no girls be allowed.

Lack of plywood notwithstanding, the boys do remind me a bit of the Li'l Rascals (Nature Girl must be Darla). They're assembling weapons out of rocks, sticks and rubber bands (again, in case of a bear attack), eating PBJs in the fort and debating what to put on the official club flag. Maybe next they'll build some milk crate scooters and go down to the ol' fishin' hole with their bamboo fishin' poles.

Or maybe someone will bring a Nintendo DS to the fort and they'll sit out there playing Mario Bros. all afternoon. That will pose a parental dilemma. Would that qualify as "playing outside"?

OK, I know this blog is about getting kids outside, but I have to say something about YouTube.

You can find a video about just about anything on YouTube. Once you bypass all of the prurient, juvenile and inane posts (of which there are millions), there is a treasure trove of videos posted by and for wildlife photographers, birders and all kinds of nature lovers.

Just yesterday, we were watching a hummingbird outside our window and couldn't get a good view of it since it kept flying away. So we went to YouTube and saw up-close videos of hummingbirds, including a short video about their annual migration from Mexico to the northern US.

I first used YouTube with the kids when reading a book about animal babies to my daughter. It was a silly book and it simply wasn't accurate. So, we went to YouTube to watch videos of all of the animal babies (and then some) mentioned in the book. We saw a newborn joey climb into its mother's pouch and nurse; we saw sea turtles hatch and then run toward the sea; we saw lion cubs tumbling over each other; we saw baby chimps clinging to their mother. As abundant and varied as nature is in the Chesapeake Bay region, we can't see this kind of stuff on a nature walk.

To be clear, I don't recommend children using YouTube without adult supervision. There's just too much inappropriate material. But all it took for me to know the value of the website was to watch the video of a two-inch long, blind, newborn joey crawl its way from birth canal to pouch. Wow! or, rather, Crikey!

We are developing quite a collection of nature's cast-offs here, including piles of colorful feathers, assorted seeds, cattails, a petrified skink, butterfly wings, cicada shells. We even have a "herp collection" - well, two things, anyway - a dried out snake we found on the road and a completely intact shedded snake skin from outside the grandparents' front door (!).

The herp collection is of particular interest because of my daughter's first encounter with a snake. It was, shall we say, a bit painful. She was exploring the edge of the woods this summer with a friend and, well, you know the story, it's such a cliche: girl sees snake, girl "tries to look at" snake, snake bites girl. Seeing as the bite was smack between the thumb and forefinger, I think we all know what my little nature girl was trying to do.

From what I understand (based on the ramblings of a five-year-old), Nature Girl was holding a butterfly in one hand while attempting "to look at" the snake. I believe Karma was at work here - mess with a butterfly and you’ll regret it!

So, of course, we had to have the "snake talk", as I'm sure all parents have to have when their children reach a certain age. I explained to Nature Girl that there are some poisonous snakes in our area, not to mention that even non-venomous snake bite (but she already knew that). Bottom line, she should not "try to look at" a snake up close and personal.

There are two types of venomous snakes in Maryland - the timber rattlesnake and the copperhead. We just saw both of these snakes live at the Maryland Zoo at Baltimore in the bat cave, and they are impressive. The Maryland DNR has great information about native snakes (this is where I visited to figure out what to do about my daughter's snake bite). Incidentally, contrary to popular belief, there are no venomous water moccasins (aka cottonmouths) in Maryland.

I look forward to seeing how my daughter will react next time she encounters a live snake, and I hope it is with her usual excited fascination with something familiar yet mysterious. I just hope she doesn't try to bring it home to show mom.

When I sent my son off to camp today for a session called "Nature Muddy," I absolutely expected him to return home covered in mud. What I did not expect was that he would smell like he had spent the day at a cattle farm. I think I could actually see the stench wafting off of him.

Wet, dirty and stinking to high heaven, he was in heaven. "It was so much fun!" Well, when the adventure includes duct taping your shoes to your ankles so the shoes don’t get sucked off in the muck and going in search of swamp farts in a marsh along the Severn River, what boy wouldn't have fun?

I'm all in favor of letting kids get dirty. How much fun they have often correlates directly with how dirty they get, even though the inverse is true for the parent who has to clean them up when they get home. When a kid has no inhibitions about getting dirty, he will feel free to dig in the dirt, climb a tree, roll down a hill, pick up slimy creatures and, generally, visit places that harbor some cool nature stuff. I'd rather clean up after an attempt to dig to China than have no mess after an attempt to reach the next level on some video game.

Oh, and what’s a swamp fart? Decaying matter under the swamp produces a methane gas mixture, which bubbles up to the surface of the water. Stinky gas in the swamp = swamp fart. I can't think of a better way to introduce kids to chemistry!

For my own chemistry experiment, now that I've washed the "Nature Muddy" clothes, I'm going to go run a bleach-only cycle on my washing machine to see if that will get the swamp farts out of my Kenmore.

Children are irresistibly drawn to the magical transformation of a caterpillar into a fluttering moth or butterfly (what child doesn't love "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle?). I would place caterpillars, along with fireflies, in the pantheon of magical insects -- the perfect ambassadors to get kids excited about nature.

The Nature Girl Bed and Breakfast has hosted many caterpillars this summer, always with the hope of having the larva get its wings while in residence. Some of the caterpillars who have checked in have, unfortunately, "checked out," if you know what I mean. But some actually have transformed and flown away of their own volition, and that's pretty cool!

Our greatest success this summer was with tent moth caterpillars. These caterpillars crawled in biblical numbers below a wild cherry tree (which they decimated -- those guys can eat!). After being captured, several of these caterpillars formed tight, white cocoons under leaves and even in a small shell, emerging three weeks later as unassuming, small brown moths. While monarchs transform in an infinitely more awesome and colorful display, witnessing the life cycle of a tent moth was a fun experience for my kids.

When the kids find a caterpillar, we first try to identify it, which helps us figure out what to feed it (for instance, a monarch butterfly caterpillar only eats milkweed, while a banded tussock caterpillar eats a wide variety of leaves). As animal identification has become a regular part of our day ("Hey, a new bird at the bird feeder! Let’s look it up!"), I think the kids are starting to recognize the infinite variety of life and notice and appreciate the differences between species.

After much failure and frustration using insect field guides to ID caterpillars, I struck gold. The Discover Life website enables identification by specifying different characteristics, like whether the caterpillar is hairy or smooth, striped or spotted. Even if the exact caterpillar we have isn't pictured on this site, we have found related species, allowing us to go to the Google to track down the right one.

The current resident at the B&B is a "banded tussock" caterpillar (see picture above) -- sweet in its furriness now, but destined to be yet another bland, under-appreciated moth. No, they don't make popular children's books about the lowly moth, but we'll celebrate them here at the Nature Girl Bed & Breakfast. (If they don’t "check out" first.)

How did I make it to this summer without learning to identify poison ivy? I'll tell you how -- I never got the rash, and my kids never got the rash. But then we all did, and now I have become an expert. Having nearly gone insane from the itching, blistering, horror-movie-special-effects-looking rash, I highly recommend learning to identify poison ivy before you and your kids learn the hard way. Just a thought.

Poison ivy causes rashes by the spread of urushiol oil. This oil is on the leaves, roots, stems -- every part of the plant -- and it doesn't take much to cause a rash. I believe much of our rash problem has been a result of our dog getting the oil on her coat. You see, dogs can pick up the oil on their fur and pass it along to their loving owners. (So, yes, we've gotten ticks and poison ivy from our supposed "best friend".)

As it turns out, when we were playing fetch with the dog each day, we were tossing the ball right into a patch of poison ivy (see photo above). It's a little embarrassing, but, hey, I never said I was Bear Grylls (the ultimate nature guy, from "Man vs. Wild" - he would never play fetch in a patch of poison ivy). I'm just learning things as we go along.

My kids are getting pretty good at identifying the plant, which is great because it's pretty awful as a parent to watch a child suffer from poison ivy. The Poison Ivy Site has great pictures of poison ivy (it doesn't always look the same) and some pretty graphic pictures of poison ivy rashes (not necessarily for all kids, though mine were pretty impressed).

My one bit of advice for dealing with the rashes is that, other than oral steroids, an ice pack (used with a cloth to protect the skin from ice-burn) is the most effective method for suppressing the pain and itch.

Apparently, goats (and probably Bear Grylls) can and will eat poison ivy with no ill effects. While my little nature girl would explode with rapturous happiness if I brought home a goat, I don't think we’ll take that route to eliminate our poison ivy. I'll just (carefully) be pullin' and baggin' the stuff til it’s all gone.