Get to Know your Local Flora and FaunaGet to Know your Local Flora and FaunaGet to Know your Local Flora and FaunaGet to Know your Local Flora and Fauna
  • THE BOOK
  • EVENTS
  • PRACTICES
  • COMING OUT OF SHUTDOWN PATHWAY
  • JOIN US
    • LIVE AND ONLINE COURSES
    • WELLNESS PROFESSIONALS - LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR WORK
    • ORGANIZATIONS - LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR WORK
    • OUR TRAINING ACADEMY FOR WELLNESS PROFESSIONALS
    • INDIVIDUALS- FIND A GUIDE TO WORK WITH
    • LICENSE OUR FILMS
  • SHOP
  • MY ACCOUNT
  • Login
  • HELP
0
Get to Know Your Loca Flora and Fauna

Get to Know Your Local Flora and Fauna

Get to Know Your Local Flora and Fauna

In other words, your non-human neighbors

About two hundred feet from our back door, every spring, a mated pair of kites returns to nest. Eighty feet up in the Eucalyptus trees at the front of our property is a ramshackle nest that two years ago was used by Great Horned Owls, and this years is being used by Red-Shouldered Hawks. Our neighbor leaves a bucket of fresh water in the walkway beside her house, and the same family of deer return to drink from it. A hummingbird has built a nest in a rusted iron wind chime. There is a gnarled Monterey pine one lane over that seems to be the grandfather of all the Monterey pines in that area. Up the hill by my sit spot is a Coastal Live Oak with a beehive in a hollowed-out branch. There's a particular coyote that keeps wandering through our complex.

Anytime you step outside, you are in someone’s neighborhood. The most humble patch of dirt has inhabitants. We are, most of us, even in urban environments, surrounded by a constantly changing cast of creatures. In most major cities, raccoons and coyotes and foxes walk the empty streets at night. In the over-size puddle from that last rain you may hear an itinerant frog. And this doesn’t even begin to account for creatures that are passing through on migration: insects, birds. Like any relationship, getting to know your local flora and fauna requires awareness and interest. If you are seeking to get to know the animals that live in your place, look not only for them, but for evidence of them. What is evidence? Feathers, fur, scat (droppings), tracks, shelter. A web is evidence of someone’s home, as is a nest, as is, perhaps, a flattened place in otherwise high grass. Poop, ever fascinating to children, and the children in all of us, is a robust form of evidence. Consider what sources of food exist for various creatures. Of plants, again, consider your local eco-system(s). If forested, what are the primary kinds of trees? Perhaps buy a field guide to local anything. Consider visiting a state park, many of which hand out free maps with guides to various local species. Learning about the plants and animals of a place connects us not only to the creatures, but also to the land. It begins to make things personal. Making it personal is how we build ropes, the doorway to connection.

Related Practices:

Related to Get to Know Your Neighbors , Building Ropes, and Observing Closely.

Who taught us this?

We learned this from instinct.

Teach me how

The instinct to know our environment seems hard-wired.

Who taught us this?

We learned this from instinct.

Teach me how

The instinct to know our environment seems hard-wired.

Video: Distill | Photography: Stein Egil Liland | Licensed from Pexels.com, used with permission.

JOIN US

Directory of Practitioners (Guides)
For Wellness Practitioners
For Organizations
Communities of Practice
The Complete Film Series
Analog Apps
Training for Wellness Professionals
Apply to teach on the platform
Join Our Newsletter

The Restorative Practices Alliance is headquartered in Northern California and serves internationally. Our mission is to re-center safety and connection as the baseline of an ecological human multi-culture. We are a philanthropic ancestral neuro-technology cooperative and culture repair engine, powered by intellectual property licensed from Applied Mindfulness, Inc., and held in trust from other sources of wisdom.

ABOUT US

Global Council of Governance
Faculty, Advisors, & Affiliates
HQ
Glossary of Terms
Privacy Policy
Legal

GLOBAL HEADQUARTERS

San Francisco Bay Area, California

UNITED STATES LOCATIONS

Homer, Alaska

San Diego, California

Boulder, Colorado

Maui, Hawa'ii

Chicago, Illinois

St. Louis, Missouri

Sante Fe & Corrales, New Mexico

Stone Ridge, New York

Portland, Oregon

Seattle, Washington

INTERNATIONAL

Stroud, United Kingdom,

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Manila, Philippines

Bahia, Brasil

 

www.restorativepractices.com

CONTACT

tel: 1 844 REST PRA (737 8772)

support@restorativepractices.com

 

LOGIN

Remember me

    0