The Iowa Nature Calendar

By Jean C. Prior and James Sandrock
Illustrated by Claudia McGehee

Bur Oak Books

12 pages, spiral bound, 12 scratchboard with watercolor illustrations, 2007
5 x 7 ½ inches opens to 5 x 15 inches
$15.95 paper, 1-58729-617-9, 978-1-58729-617-8

“We Iowans delight in the sensory pleasures of our changing seasons: a winter cardinal’s first whistle, the taste of a springtime morel, the pungent prairie abloom in summer, the blaze of autumn leaf color. Jean Prior and James Sandrock have chronicled dozens of seasonal events that connect us to the cycles and rhythms of Nature. Their Iowa Nature Calendar artfully reminds us of the daily wonders we can experience in the natural world.”—Larry A. Stone

“The Iowa Nature Calendar is a comprehensive daily guide to the progress of natural change in the Midwest. It combines a natural almanac with dates and facts important to Iowans. This is a great resource for the amateur and professional naturalist, a daily reminder that our world is one of constant change, full of the regular rhythms and the great forces that shape our planet—migration, freeze and thaw, the events of the sky and space. From the March blooming of the pasque flower to November’s Leonid meteor showers, the pages are filled with natural notations of Iowa’s landscape.”—Liz Christiansen, Iowa Department of Natural Resources

One of the joys of midwestern living is the variety brought by the changing seasons. The lyrical text of The Iowa Nature Calendar brings a year to life—perpetually—through a daily appreciation of the chirping, blooming, singing details of Iowa’s natural world.

Because keeping track of past years’ observations will enrich your enjoyment of the current year, each month has ample room to add your own notes on blooming wildflowers, nesting birds, semaphoring fireflies, and clicking cricket frogs as well as birthdays, anniversaries, and other annual celebrations.

The authors, both long-time Iowa naturalists, have included birth dates of notable Iowa conservationists, nature-related events from Bald Eagle Days to Christmas Bird Counts to the annual Frog and Toad Survey, and the names of the full moons from January’s Wolf Moon to December’s Long Night Moon. Particularly user-friendly are their suggestions for visits to state parks and preserves; for example, look for bison calves at Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in June and spectacular flocks of migrating snow geese at DeSoto Bend Wildlife Refuge in October. They also remind you to put up purple martin houses and bat boxes in the spring, sign up for a class at Lakeside Laboratory in the summer, clean out your bluebird boxes in the fall, and watch for the glow of the aurora borealis in wintertime. Throughout they present intriguing, well-chosen information certain to appeal to all nature lovers from amateur gardeners to professional botanists.

Jean Prior has been a research geologist for the Iowa Geological Survey, editor of the annual journal Iowa Geology and of the book Iowa: Portrait of the Land, author of Landforms of Iowa (Iowa, 1991), and lead author of Iowa’s Groundwater Basics. A former member of the State Preserves Advisory Board, she contributed to the Iowa Public Television series The Land between Two Rivers. James Sandrock is professor emeritus of German language and literature at the University of Iowa. An active birder familiar with the ornithology of the United States, Canada, and Europe, he has special expertise in the birds of southeast Iowa. Illustrator Claudia McGehee is the author of A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet and A Woodland Counting Book (Iowa, 2004 and 2006).

Nature