In case you don’t yet have your shopping completed for all those on your gift list, I’d like to offer this friendly reminder that two very important naturalist holidays are approaching fast: International Rock Flipping Day and (for those of the British persuasion) National Moth Night.
As legend has it, International Moth Flipping Day was first established as a movable feast in 2007 by Dave Bonta and Bev Wigney. This year it is being observed on September 20th and being coordinated by Susannah Anderson, creator of the Wanderin’ Weeta blog. Its rites of celebration are quite simple:
1. Go outside – as far as you need to go in order to find a goodly sized rock.
2. Flip over that rock (those of you celebrating in areas in which dangerous beasties commonly inhabit the underside of rocks please do so with appropriate levels of caution).
3. Photograph, draw, paint, sketch, write, or on some manner record what you find underneath.
4. Replace the rock as closely as you can to the position in which you found it.
5. Repeat as often as necessary until satisfied.
6. Post your records, in whatever form they may have been recorded, to your blog or upload them to the IRFD Flickr group.
7. Send a link of your post to Susannah in order to be included in the participants list.
Immediately prior to International Rock Flipping Day, beginning the evening of September 18th those in Great Britain will be celebrating National Moth Night (although I’m sure they wouldn’t mind those in other parts of the world honoring the observance of this night as well). Also a movable feast, National Moth Night was first observed in 1999 under the auspices of Atropos (the journal for butterfly, moth, and dragonfly enthusiasts – folks after my own heart to be sure) and it is now run jointly with Butterfly Conservation (the UK charity working to save butterflies, moths, and their habitats).
While I will be doing my best to keep both these feasts, I will be doing so away from home while in Lakeside, Ohio, where I will be representing Wingscapes at the Midwest Birding Symposium. As Lakeside is, as would be expected, beside a lake, there should be an abundance of rocks to flip as well as a healthy number of moths to be observed. Perhaps I might even convince some of the other bloggers expected to be in attendance at the symposium to join me in these observances as well.
