Pagan Holly

Autumn is in full swing: the leaves have changed colour and are starting to fall, the skies are often grey, the air is cool, and nights are becoming long. I love fall. But is it my favourite season? I’m not sure. I decided to examine the pros and cons of each season and try to rank them from favourite to least favourite. Some context: I live in southern Ontario, Canada, where seasonal change is pretty extreme. Winter is long, dark, and freezing cold. Summer is long, hot, and humid. Spring and fall encompass dramatic changes in day length, temperature, and the natural world. It’s not unique in this regard, and there are certainly places where seasonal temperature variation is much greater (Siberia, apparently), but I think it’s fair to say that every season in this region is kind of a lot. I’ll start with fall since it’s the current season. Pros of Fall The weather is cooler (eventually). Autumn brings cooler temperatures around mid-October. I can finally open the windows after many mon

I participated in Global Big Day again this year. I hadn’t birdwatched in too long and the event was good motivation. It snowed on Big Day 2020 and I didn’t see too many birds but this year was a lot more interesting. I submitted three checklists on Big Day itself, plus one the day before and one the day after. Here is my list of species from the whole weekend:

On May 9, I participated in Global Big Day , a birdwatching event coordinated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology . The Lab of O encourages all birdwatchers to participate in Big Day by recording their sightings in eBird , the Lab of O’s citizen science project that collects data from users’ birdwatching checklists in order to learn about bird populations, distribution, and migration. Although I’ve been using the Lab of O’s bird-ID app  Merlin  for years, this was my first Big Day and the first time I’d used eBird. While it doesn’t have anything explicitly to do with Paganism, birding is one good way of tuning into nature and developing relationships with the land and beings of a particular place. Through activities like birding and gardening, I’ve come to love the place where I live and be more aware of the changes and goings-on of each season. Notably, this May 9, it snowed. I don’t think I’d ever experienced snow in May before! The snow stuck in the morning but melted by midafternoon;

The spring equinox is approaching in the northern hemisphere, but if you’re like me and live somewhere fairly far north, it’s still winter and it seems like spring might never arrive. Although I believe in appreciating each season for what it is, sometimes it’s good to remember that spring really is on its way, even when we can’t feel it in the weather just yet. Here are five signs of spring that careful observers can discover even when there’s still snow on the ground and an icy chill in the air. The days are lengthening. The sun may not be visible when gray clouds blanket the sky, but pay close attention to the cycle of day and night and you’ll notice that the days, which have actually been lengthening since the winter solstice, are starting to be noticeably longer. How much light is in the room when you open your eyes in the morning? What does the sky look like when you leave work or step outside in the evening? Paying attention to this subtle change over the coming weeks