By :

AL BATT

My neighbor Crandall stops by.

"How are you doing?" I ask.

"Everything is nearly copacetic. All my life I wanted fame and fortune. I've given up on the fortune, but I finally have fame."

"How so?" I say.

"Google Earth has put me on the map."

Naturally

Inspired by The Old Farmer's Almanac saying winter’s back breaks around the middle of February, I trudged outside into the land of Mark Trail. Mark Trail is a newspaper comic strip created by Ed Dodd in 1946, which centers on environmental and ecological themes. The snow was deep as February had decided it'd be no more mist and ice guy. The trees appeared solemn in the storm. When the sun arrived the next day, each tree had a single follower, its shadow.

I love what is near. I treasure the familiar. I don't wonder where my sense of wonder went. I carry it with me. The jays cried "Here, here, here" and nuthatches traveled briskly up and down the trunk of a tree. I found enchantment in a pair of cardinals. Their name comes from the red plumage resembling the robes of the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church. The word comes from the Latin cardo, meaning pertaining to a hinge. Things with cardinal qualities are principal, chief or essential.

A reader reported a barred owl perched on a shepherd's hook in the yard and wondered why it was there. Barred owls eat many kinds of small animals, including a winter menu of squirrels, mice, voles, rabbits and birds. They hunt by perching on an elevated perch and using their sharp senses to scan for prey. They'll also perch near water and drop down to catch fish. Barred owls swallow small prey whole and large prey in pieces, typically eating the head first and then the body. They occasionally store prey temporarily in a nest, on a branch, or on a snag to eat later.

I walked past an old Toyota Tercel in town. A tiercel or tercel is the male of any of the raptors used in falconry. It caused me to think of other old cars carrying bird names. Ford Thunderbird, Ford Falcon, AMC Eagle, Buick Skylark, Pontiac Firebird, and Plymouth Roadrunner.

Dorothy Nielsen of Albert Lea spotted seven trumpeter swans in February. Swans nested not far from Dorothy's home. Swans were once hunted for their meat, skins and feathers. By the 1880s, trumpeter swans disappeared from Minnesota and by the 1930s, only 69 trumpeter swans remained in the lower 48 states (in Montana). The DNR Nongame Wildlife Program released 21 swans in 1987 near the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge in Becker County. One of the most beautiful sights I've seen in Alaska, a place filled with beautiful sights, was a pair of swans flying soundlessly through a mist over the Chilkat River. The white plumage in the haze and against the blurred mountains was breathtaking.

Q&A

Vern and Kay Rasmussen of Albert Lea asked where cardinals roost. They prefer thickets and evergreens for roosting. Dense shrubbery and brush, and tangles of grapevines, honeysuckle and cedar are ideal

"Is rhubarb native to Minnesota?" Rhubarb is from Central Asia. Records date back to 2700 BC in China where rhubarb was cultivated for medicinal purposes. Marco Polo found rhubarb on his travels to China in 1271. Pie plant came to America when a Maine gardener obtained seed or rootstock from Europe in 1790-1800. He introduced it to growers. It became popular and by 1822 it was sold in markets.

"What bird migrates the farthest?" The Arctic tern, a 4-ounce bird, follows meandering, round-trip routes between Greenland and Antarctica each year, racking up 44,000 to 59,650 frequent flier miles. This tern lives up to 30 years,

"What owls are seen at the Sax-Zim Bog?" The Bog, three hours north of Minneapolis, 50 minutes from Duluth, and 40 minutes from Hibbing, has a bird list of 240 species. Possibilities are great gray, northern hawk, great horned, snowy, barred, long-eared, short-eared, boreal, and northern saw-whet owl. The species vary from common to uncommon to rare. A barn owl was seen at the Bog this year, where there are 30 to 40 days a year of below zero temperatures.

Things Mark Trail wants you to see

1. Goldfinches have been shopping for yellow feathers.

2. Shrews make small tunnels into the snow beneath bird feeders.

3. Weeping willows are a golden-yellow.

4. Pussy willow catkins are early signs of spring.

5. In German: "Der Spatz in der Hand ist besser als die Taube auf dem Dach." That means, "The sparrow in the hand is better than the dove on the roof."

Driving by Bruce's drive

I have a wonderful neighbor, named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me, such as: I used my pen to fill in all the capital O’s and zeroes on the papers in front of me as I sat at a desk waiting for a phone call from a radio station. I typically limit my filling to those two things. It’s not a compulsion, it’s just a thing I do.

I'd gotten to the hotel in Lincoln somewhere between late night and early morning. Getting to my room, I discovered the TV was on and there was no remote control. I checked the TV and found no on/off switch. I went back downstairs to the desk clerk. He gave me the remote from the lobby TV. It worked on mine.

Commercials with a little football mixed in

A friend of mine has a radio show. Dennis Green, who was the coach of the Minnesota Vikings at the time, was her guest. My friend, not knowing much about sports, asked Green to sign her Homer Hankie, which promoted the Minnesota Twins. He did.

A guy asked how I liked the Super Bowl. He bushwhacked me because he didn't say anything about the weather first. Common etiquette says you should never ask a man a question until you've mentioned the weather. I was stumped for an answer and said, "I took the good and left the rest."

I didn't watch the Super Bowl. I loved playing football but watching can be a challenge for me – especially an NFL game. The Super Bowl runs four hours with 15 minutes of action.

I realize people watch the Super Bowl for reasons other than football. There are parties, betting, music and ads. I saw some of the commercials. Some were funny. I like the movie "Groundhog Day," so I enjoyed the commercial featuring it. Some ads encouraged me to make poor food decisions and others urged me to buy a new vehicle to make friends, family and strangers envious. I'll try to eat healthy while driving a car no one notices.

I enjoy reading George Will who wrote, "Football combines two of the worst things about American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings."

I have people I know and people I love who are athletes. None of them are in the NFL, but I'll watch them instead.

There are two sides to every argument and thousands are online

I used to stop at a Minneapolis cafe and order pancakes. They had a good rating from the Batter Business Bureau, but I came to watch a gifted guy flip the pancakes. I read a newspaper while eating.

A relative gets his news from social media. I tried that one day and now believe in 29 conspiracy theories and am certain the earth is flat. I learned what kind of doughnut I'd be and received more bad advice than a dozen ex-brothers-in-law could give. I discovered there is regular crazy and then there is online crazy. The internet gave my brain a painful twist. There were many sick and tired people commenting on the news. That noted philosopher, Will Ferrell said, "Sleep is so cute when it tries to compete with the internet."

Bill Nye the Science Guy said, "The information you get from social media is not a substitute for academic discipline at all." Everybody knows that. Or do we?

Nature notes

There are winter days when it seems as if everything I'm even remotely interested in had been canceled due to weather. That’s when nature and its great cavalry of things come to the rescue. I watched rabbits dancing by the light of the moon. Red osier dogwood and willows showed color as if they'd been tanning.

February is National Bird Feeding Month. Feeders attract many species of birds, each an unexcelled beauty. American tree sparrows fed under the feeders. Poorly named, this sparrow nests on or near the ground. Woodpeckers drummed on resonant wood, making Pinocchio nervous.

Red squirrels moved through shallow tunnels in the deep snow. Traffic backed up. One squirrel peeked out of a hole, checking for those on its enemies’ list, when another squirrel goosed it from behind. The lead squirrel shot from the subway as if it were a miniature rocket launched from Cape Canaveral.

Thanks for stopping by

"All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child." – Marie Curie

"Hate is a dead thing. Who of you would be a tomb?" — Kahlil Gibran

Do good.

PHOTO BY AL BATT The bill of the starling is beginning to turn yellow – a sign of lengthening days.

It was a pleasant pheasant day. Photo by Al Batt