My father called American Goldfinches “wild canaries.” This is the male spending time with Mariah Canary.
Northern Flickers eat a lot of ants, none of which are deep-fried.
Naturally
Birds typically look well-dressed, but many are molting now and appear unkempt. Labor Day seems like the end of the summer. My ears gathered the limited birdsongs, the music of the world. Robins are in flocks. Their keen eyesight allows them to see worms, but their primary hunting technique might be their sense of hearing. A study concluded that robins successfully listen for prey, even if they can’t see the worms.
There are 45 species of goldenrod in Minnesota and many hybridize, making identification difficult. They host many insects. A National Geographic article said there are 10 quintillion insects on Earth. A butterfly landed on my arm and mud-puddled in my sweat. Autumn meadowhawks are the last species of dragonfly I see each year. I've found them at the end of October and beginning of November, as they are more tolerant of the cold than most odonates. They're a red or yellow species of late-season meadowhawks, identified by orange-tan legs that distinguish the species from other small, similar species with black legs. Green darner dragonflies are a major prey item for juvenile American kestrels, whose inexperience in catching birds and small mammals makes them more dependent on available darners. The young kestrels time their first migration to coincide with peak numbers of migrating green darners.
Roger Tory Peterson wrote "A Field Guide to the Birds." His favorite bird was the king penguin. He explained his fascination with birds: "They are attractive, they sound off with spirit, and they can fly wherever they choose, whenever they choose. The truth is, the birds could very well live without us, but many — perhaps all — of us would find life almost intolerable without the birds."
The leaves of white oaks tend to have rounded tips, whereas leaves of red oaks have pointed tips. Acorns of white oaks germinate in early autumn. Acorns of red oaks don't sprout until spring. Gray squirrels often eat white oak acorns as soon as they find them and store acorns from red oaks to eat during the winter or next spring. Some scientists believe squirrels choose to store the red oak acorns because of their higher tannin content. Others conclude that red oak acorns are better foods to bury because their winter inactivity makes them less likely to decay in the ground. They believe the reason squirrels consume acorns of white oaks immediately is because they germinate in the fall. They grow a thick taproot as they germinate that squirrels don't find appetizing.
Q&A
"Can owls see in the daytime?" They can. Their pupils don't constrict as much as ours do in bright light, so they close their eyes partially. They look sleepy when they're wide awake and alert. Some owls see better than we do in bright light.
Eric Annexstad of St. Peter wrote, "As we have been chopping corn silage we are swarmed by barn swallows. Are they catching bugs or just showing off their wings?" Barn swallows enjoy the company of farm implements, lawn mowers, cattle and anything else that flushes flying insects for them to eat on the go.
"I saw your photo of the beautiful garden spider, the Argiope aurantia. Is that what Charlotte was?" No. When E.B. White started writing "Charlotte's Web," he called the spider Charlotte Epeira because he'd misidentified the spider in his barn as a gray cross spider, Epeira sclopetaria. He contacted an expert at the American Museum of Natural History who identified the spider as Araneus cavaticus — the common barn spider. His spider was renamed Charlotte A. Cavatica. Charlotte said she ate, "flies, bugs, grasshoppers, choice beetles, moths, butterflies, tasty cockroaches, gnats, midges, daddy longlegs, centipedes, mosquitoes, crickets — anything that's careless enough to get caught in my web."
"Do we have chiggers here?" The chigger is a scourge of summer and there are always enough to go around. They're here, but aren't common in Minnesota. Chiggers are the larvae of trombiculid mites and are reddish, yellowish or orange, and nearly invisible. Chiggers are found in grassy, weedy and shrubby areas, especially in wet locations. Chiggers climb foliage and grab onto people or animals. Chiggers don't burrow into skin or feed on blood. They feed externally on liquefied skin cells broken down by their saliva. The itchy bites are common in areas where clothing is tight and skin is thin. The majority of chigger bites occur below the waist.
Thanks for stopping by
"What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism." ― Albert Einstein
"There are flowers enough in the summertime, More flowers than I can remember: But none with the purple, gold, and red That dyes the flowers of September!" — Mary Howitt
Do good.
©Al Batt 2020
A differential grasshopper peeks out from its hiding place on a bottle or closed gentian. The closed flowers keep out all but the large and strong insects like bumblebees. Photo by Al Batt