(Airdate: April 23, 2025) Please join Nature Now host Debaran Kelso as we take up Part 2 of our conversation about seabird conservation with our guest Peter Harrison, this time joined by his wife Shirley Metz. Peter is a world-renowned seabird expert, artist, and conservationist, and his wife Shirley an avid adventurer and conservationist in her own right. This show highlights their remarkable joint conservation efforts.
(Airdate: April 16, 2025) Whales of Alaska have been studied by NOAA scientists for many years. For a third of a
century, Dave Rugh flew in small aircraft, stood on sea cliffs, rode various ships, and spent a lot of time on sea ice documenting the abundance of whales around Alaska. This included the enigmatic bowhead whale, belugas (which are white whales) in Cook Inlet near Anchorage, and gray whales which migrate from the Arctic to Mexico’s warm lagoons.
(Airdate: April 9, 2025) Nan Evans and Christie Lassen are at it again in this Part 2 of “Birds and Their Feathers”. Join them this week as they explore such topics as: What is the impact of diet on feathers? How do feathers keep birds warm? And cool? How do feathers help birds fly?
(Reprise airdate: April 2, 2025) Ancient bacteria, single cells and long strands of strange little plants, plus minute single celled animals and weird fantastical animal larvae – these are the members of the Earth’s massive and hugely important planktonic ecosystems. Come with Nan Evans as she talks with Dr. Gretchen Rollwagen-Bollens about this strange world and its significance to global ecology and human well being. Consider eutrophication, the world’s biggest threat to water quality or cyanobacteria and one of the causes of toxic algal blooms such as the ones in our local Andeson Lake.
(Airdate: March 26, 2025) Please join Nature Now host Debaran Kelso as we welcome our special guest Peter Harrison. Peter is a world renown seabird expert, artist, and conservationist, and this week we will be speaking about writing and illustrating his beautiful new book Seabirds: The New Identification Guide. We end with exploring the world of the albatrosses, in anticipation of his upcoming public lecture sponsored by the Port Townsend Marine Science Center on March 30, 2025. This is Part 1 of a two-part program.
(Airdate: March 19, 2025) Envision a bird – any bird. What do you first notice? The feathers, of course. But, what do you really know about those beautiful and amazingly variable structures? Join Nan Evans and Christie Lassen to explore feather forms and structures, colors and patterns, and the incredible usefulness and functions of feathers.
(Part 1 of 2)
(Reprise Airdate: March 12, 2025) Please join host Debaran Kelso and puma specialist Dr. Mark Elbroch as we explore both mountain lion ecology, and how we might learn to share our world with this large successful predator. Part 1 of a two part program.
(Airdate: March 5, 2025) This week Nature Now hosts, Jackie Canterbury, Nan Evans, and Debaran Kelso, got together to share their best reads and top “wish list” books to read in the coming year. As naturalists, the choices include some great natural history picks. But their eclectic tastes range across poetry, philosophy, history, personal reflections of authors, and art. Tune in to hear their conversation and to share in the fun they all had doing this program.
(Airdate: February 26, 2025) Join Jackie Canterbury as she talks again with Brittaney Drake about science visualization and bird illustration techniques. In Part I we talked to Brittaney about teaching nature at the Pearl Remote Democratic High School in Seattle, Washington, with focus on the democratic classroom. Today we will explore science illustration which is ‘art in service of science’ and discuss how bird illustration is used to teach art and nature in her democratic classroom. Brittaney uses a variety of bird illustration tools including black ink, gouache watercolor, colored pencil, and digital illustration to teach bird illustration.
Note: Nature Now provides credit for songs and calls of Pigeon Guillemot to xeno-canto, Thomas G. Graves, XC663793 http://www.xeno-canto.org/663793
(Airdate: February 19, 2025) Saving Ourselves and Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder. Are we dimishing our lives of the senses? Nan Evans talks with special guest Richard Louv, author of many books examining the crucial connections between the natural world and human physical, mental, social and even cultural health. Richard Louv first developed the concept of a nature-deficit disorder in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods. You will be inspired to get yourself and those you love outside to explore, play, watch and listen.
