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ix STIt is easy to overlook nature close to home unless the event is dramatic. Often our openness to nature watching only occurs on a vacation, when we confront the new and unfamiliar. One of my missions in life has been to try to help others discover nature where they live. This began in the early 1970s with photography. Most of us fail to recognize the amazing, life-sustaining world we live in. This endeavor took a dramatic leap forward in 2004 when I purchased my first digital camera. After shooting color slide film of birds, animals, plants, weather events,and other natural history subjects for more than forty years, it was a new experience. The biggest difference in shooting with film and shooting digitally was having a usable image immediately. There was no waiting for film to be processed.After a few weeks of shooting,I felt it would be good to share current seasonal images with others and developed a list of interested friends and colleagues. I began to email them the occasional image along with a short description of its natural history. I hoped it might encourage them to observe more closely where they live. Over a matter of months, I developed a schedule of sending it out every Sunday evening. DISCOVERING WHERE WE LIVE x My wife, Linda, and I live and work on an old family farm in the middle of Iowa. Before settlement in the mid-1850s, our farm was treeless, tallgrass prairie. I have always considered myself a naturalist and have a Bachelor of Science degree in fish and wildlife biology. As a youngster I hunted, fished, and roamed the area around our farm. After my college years and a short stint in the U.S. Army, I had a wonderful association with Iowa State University botanist Roger Landers,who introduced me to the tallgrass prairie in many forays throughout the state. This led to the discovery of a small remnant prairie that bordered an old railroad right-of-way that bisects our farm. Over the years I began to see that tallgrass prairie hosts a diverse wildlife community. Today some thirty-five years later, Linda and I have reestablished a major portion of our land back to tallgrass prairie. It surrounds our family home that is nestled in a small grove of trees. Opportunities to observe and experience nature occur just outside our front door day and night. Now in 2013, some four hundred weeks have passed since this photographic adventure began. The list of weekly recipients has grown to more than four hundred individuals, and for more than five years I have kept an unbroken chain of weekly posts. This has encouraged me to keep an eye out for new or common events each week and to research their natural history . Most weekly posts are relevant to the eastern part of the United States, which not only has a great variety of natural habitats but also shares many species of plants and animals. I have tried to select images that best represent the weeks and months throughout the year. As we watch nature through the seasons and over the years, we grow to expect specific birds, insects, and weather events with the changing seasons. They become old friends leading us to new relationships interconnected to the web of nature. ...

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