Because keeping track of past years’ observations will enrich your enjoyment of the current year, each month has ample room to add your own notes on blooming wildflowers, nesting birds, semaphoring ?reflies, and clicking cricket frogs as well as birthdays, anniversaries, and other annual celebrations.

The authors, both long-time Iowa naturalists, have included birth dates of notable Iowa conservationists, nature-related events from Bald Eagle Days to Christmas Bird Counts to the annual Frog and Toad Survey, and the names of the full moons from January’s Wolf Moon to December’s Long Night Moon. Particularly user-friendly are their suggestions for visits to state parks and preserves; for example, look for bison calves at Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in June and spectacular flocks of migrating snow geese at DeSoto Bend Wildlife Refuge in October. They also remind you to put up purple martin houses and bat boxes in the spring, sign up for a class at Lakeside Laboratory in the summer, clean out your bluebird boxes in the fall, and watch for the glow of the aurora borealis in wintertime. Throughout they present intriguing, well-chosen information certain to appeal to all nature lovers from amateur gardeners to professional botanists.