It's Boreal, not Boring!

Last week's camping trip took me to a really special biome, the boreal forest. It's a band of temperate forest just a few hours north of here and you can tell you're getting there when you start seeing fewer deciduous trees and more conifers. What's fun about entering a completely different biome is that you start to see different wildlife, too. For example, one encounters more species of warblers, only a few of which nest around my home. The Black-and-white Warbler (Mniotita varia), however, moves farther north in the summer and I normally only see them when they migrate through in spring and fall.



Around where I live we have mostly White-breasted Nuthatches (Sitta carolinensis) but in the boreal forest one sees more Red-breasted Nuthatches (S. canadensis) as well.



More boreal beauty to come!