This is the final post in our month-by-month suggestions of what to look for in nature observation with children. December marks the end of the calendar year and the beginning of a new season: summer in the south and winter in the north. With such deeply different seasons, people grow up with profoundly different associations with this time of year. For those in the southern hemisphere, December and its festivals is a time of sunny, hot days, going to the beach, the long and lazy school holiday, and outdoor cooking, while in the north it is a time of bundling up, baking pies and cookies, sitting indoors before the fire. The differences in nature are just as dramatic.
In Britain, in the northern hemisphere:
- Foxes, searching for food, are seen much more often
- Where it is cold, the Stoat assumes its white coat to become an Ermine
- Yellow buntings congregate in flocks
- The Wren can be heard singing
- Holly berries are easy to see
- Winter aconite flowers
- The Velvet Mushroom is found on trunks and stumps
In Brazil's Atlantic Rainforest, in the southern hemisphere:
- Grecian Shoemaker butterflies (above) can be seen
- Toucans call out in the evening
- Black Jacobin Hummingbirds (above) appear
- The Pitanga fruit is ripe
- The lethal Lonomia caterpillar (below) appears
Be sure to download the free Nature Observation Chart.
The drawings above come from the page for December in my picture book about the Atlantic Rainforest, The Big Field : a Child's Year Under the Southern Cross.
©2010 Anne Morddel
Seasons South and North
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