Every Day Changes at the Nature Center

Carol Fink is having the time of her life.

Fink, a new addition to the staff at the Nature Discovery Center in Heritage Park, previously worked as a farm interpreter at Kensington Metropark for 20 years.

"This is just a new opportunity to love and explore nature, in my own backyard," she said, freely admitting a powerful passion for her work. "I don't know what I was in my last life, but it lived outdoors."

Fink hopes to share her passion through programming and some changes at the Nature Center, which features hands-on activities for children, aquariums, a bird-watching room and a life-size natural habitat.

And now, there's even a very small gift shop, with local and American-made gifts from nature — including bottles of Michigan maple syrup.

"March is maple sugaring month, a very exciting time for Michiganders," Fink said. She and naturalist Tara White can provide information to anyone interested in learning how to select and tap maple trees and how to turn the sap into syrup.

The sweetness doesn't stop there. Bee hobbyist Charles Durbin, who works for Hitachi Corp. in Farmington Hills, has built a Warre-style beehive inside the center, so that visitors can observe bees in a natural habitat. Warre (pronounced war-ray) hives have a vertical construction with top bars.

Durbin, who has long walked the trails in Heritage Park, said he stopped in at the Nature Center to find out whether anyone was responsible for catching bee swarms in the park. At the time, the center has an outdoor beehive, but "the bees were not doing well," he said. "That particular hive was pretty sick."

Then Nature Center supervisor Stacy Fisher asked Durbin whether he could help, and a new hive was born. Durbin even took a comb out of one of his own hives to get things started. Bees will secrete wax from glands in their bodies to make more comb; they can create a bar in one or two days, he said.

"Bees don't make honey, they gather honey," Durbin explained. "It's nothing but reduced flower nectar. ... As long as the nectar is flowing, they'll go to town."

He expects the bees to arrive in the first or second week in May. But until then, there's still plenty more for visitors to see at the Nature Discovery Center.

Diana Willoughby of Livonia brought her children, Logan, 9, and Brenna, 7, who are both home-schooled. Logan takes art classes at the Stables Art Studio, also in Heritage Park.

"We were here for the first time a couple of months ago," Willoughby said. "This is definitely a place to come back to."

That's exactly the atmosphere Fink hopes more people will come to find at the Nature Discovery Center. "We're changing the philosophy. It's more of an open place," she said.

"I'd like to see this become a place where people can come and be at home and very relaxed," Fink said. "It's got the feel of a northern Michigan cabin."