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Photograph Your Natural World
Photograph Your Natural World
The VCNature Instagram account (@vcnature1861) curates and shares photos of Hudson Valley nature at Vassar. Right now, the Vassar community is spread a little further than usual, and each of you has access to a different piece of the natural world. From the Hudson Valley to the Willamette Valley and beyond, we want to see what your current habitat looks like.
Now through April 30, please submit a photo of the nature currently around you through this form to enter our Earth Month Photography Competition. Winners will be selected from two categories: Popularity (most likes at the end of April), and Judge's Choice. Winners will be notified in early May.
This competition is a partnership of the Vassar Farm & Ecological Preserve, the Environmental Cooperate at the Vassar Barns, the Vassar Student Association Environmental Affairs Committee, and the Office of Sustainability.
Virtual Scavenger Hunt
Virtual Scavenger Hunt
No matter where you are this Earth Month, you can still help make the world a more sustainable place. Now through April 30th, join the Office of Sustainability's Scavenger Hunt. Just complete at least four actions from the list below and fill out our Google form to tell us about it. Participants will be contacted in early May to arrange pickup / shipping of their prizes.
Make and distribute seedballs.
Submit a photo to the Photograph Your Natural World competition.
Watch a movie with sustainable themes. Looking for ideas? Visit our Streaming Sustainability page.
Write a letter to a local government official supporting a sustainable/environmental topic of your choice (see Riverkeeper, or Scenic Hudson websites for ideas).
Donate a small amount to a local nature center or environmental education org that is losing money right now due to cancellation of school programs.
Learn about and collect data for a citizen science project, Check out the Merlin Bird ID App or iNaturalist for places to start, or contact ecologicalpreserve@vassar.edu for more information.
Take some time to smell a spring flower, then try to identify it.
Go birding! It’s a great activity to do alone - eBird from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has great resources for beginning birders.
Teach your roommate/family member about composting/recycling. Check your local jurisdiction for their recycling and composting rules - for example, this is the guide for Dutchess County.
@Home Seedballing with HarborLAB
@Home Seedballing with HarborLAB
Celebrate Earth Day with an activity you can do indoors and then follow up safely outside! On Earth Day, HarborLAB is hosting a virtual seedball making activity from 3:30 - 5:00 PM. Click here to register for free!
Seedballs are small clumps of compost or nutritious soil with native seeds. They replicate frugivorous endozoochory, or the scattering of seeds in nutritious poop!
Seedballs are bound together with natural clay powder or flour, or even newspaper and corn starch! HarborLAB volunteers, students, and public participants kayak to habitat areas identified by conservation agencies as needing milkweed, goldenrod, pitch pine, little bluestem, or other important species. Clay and flour balls can be simply tossed, while paper balls are lightly buried. By next season, pollinators like butterflies and bees feed from them, and birds like black skimmers nest among them. Their root systems also strengthen shorelines and the denser vegetation mitigates storm surges.
Or you can distribute seedballs, strolling or biking to abandoned lots and tossing them over fences, or scattering them in the corners of your yard or garden. Check out the event page for more details.
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