So, I’m crashed out in bed here after a huge day of walking (Mother Nature loves the NeighbourWoodies, holding back on the rain until we were on our way home) totally chilling out to the Ray LaMontagne CD my lovely pal Karen McKinnon gifted me with recently (oh how I love the Ray, Karen).

I’m totally soaking up this child-free moment that’s all mine, all Ray, and thinking I need to do this more often.

…and then my spinning head wanders back to Monday when the rain stopped, the tiny person and I made a B line for the Filberg and I had the same moment as Ray is currently providing – “We need to do this more often,” I said to the wee one while we chased each other around the grass.

“Why can’t we live with the squirrels? They get to be outside all the time,” the tiny person screamed back at me. “I could live on nuts.”

Even if she couldn’t actually make it more than a day or so on a nutty diet (boredom would surely set in), I definitely think she’d be able to spot a tiny nutty nugget a mile away after the last week or so that we’ve spent out learning about the awesome creatures who run off with all of the acorns, walnuts, chestnuts and other treats that the trees pass along to them this time of year.

I love this nature project because it’s easy, it’s totally fun, you can use the good stuff collected from the day for crafts (check out our Acorn & Pinecone Creatures) and what better place to spend a day hanging out than at The Filberg?

Late Fall is the best time to get out and learn about what our furry friends are storing away for their long Winter sleep. You can catch them running around going through their pre-hibernation ritual, especially early in the morning (before 10 a.m.) or by around 3 or 4 p.m.

It’s an activity for kids of all ages too. Preschoolers are the collectors, school aged kids can get more into the science of it all, or art, or matching trees to their nuts…and the parents get a chance to breathe deeply and enjoy one of the sunniest spots in the Valley.

We take a bucket or a toque (our daughter likes to fill her hat up) and see how many different kinds of nuts or pieces of nuts we find. There’s lots of counting and sorting. Every once in a while a creature will drop by to check us out.

Then, when we got home, our daughter decided that the creatures at our house needed some extra food since we don’t have any decent nuts (she apparently hasn’t realized much about her parents yet:))

Since raccoons are the large creature of dominance in our backyard and we don’t want to foster their relationship with our Koi pond, we decided to go the bird route and make some fun snack options for our feathered, nut loving friends.

With some pine cones from our nut walk, some peanut butter (bacon fat works even better) and seed mix, we pulled together some fast food options for the chickadees and nuthatches flitting around.

It was a fun way to wrap up some nutty learning, talk about how animals store up for the Winter and figure out how we could lend a hand in a crafty way.

The kiddos on our NeighbourWood Walks will be making these ahead of time for our walk at the Lazo Marsh next week, where small birds flock in the Winter to hang out, snack and find a bit of shelter from the cold.