NATURE TIP #3: Sit-Spot Practice

Find a place close to home that’s immersed in a natural (or semi-natural) setting. Ideally, this place will be in your backyard, so that it’s easy to get to. Visit this spot regularly—preferably daily or at least several times a week—and sit quietly there, observing with all your senses. Stay each time for 30-40 minutes, breaking visits into 10-minute intervals. Listen for birds and other animals, tracking your observations with notes and pictures in a nature journal. Encourage the kids in your life to do the same. In this way, with a little patience, anyone can learn the local “bird language,” the acquired skill of understanding the meaning of local animal calls and movements. Sit spot practice will get you in touch with all the wild nature events happening daily around your home. Pretty soon, those random birds will become characters with individual personalities that inform you about the current “mood” of the neighborhood. For more information, check out at a pair of books by Jon Young: “What the Robin Knows” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) and “Coyotes Guide to Connecting with Nature, Second Edition” (Owlink, 2010, with E. Haas and E. McGown).