Naturally
Prairie flowers dance with butterflies.
Fall birding is great. There are more birds to see. A friend says, "For warblers in the fall, go where chickadees call." That’s true. If I see chickadees feeding, I look for other bird species. Chickadees know the best places to dine.
Adult starlings go through a complete molt in late summer. Their bill color changes from yellow to black and new feathers with white tips are grown as winter approaches. Winter weather, sunlight and friction dull the speckled look, and by the breeding season, they are back to the uniform dark brown or black.
Dale Waltz of Rochester said that when someone asks him what bird is singing and he doesn’t recognize the song, he appears to give it proper thought before answering, “Mockingbird.”
Paul Hanson of Albert Lea asked what you call two crows perched in a tree. An attempted murder. A group of crows is called a murder. Does it take three to be a murder? Two is company, three is a murder. The two could have been conspiring to commit a murder most fowl. I think a group of crows should be called a crowd.
An Uber driver told me he was delivering food for Uber Eats, Grubhub or DoorDash, I forget which. I recall working at the Outer Banks of North Carolina and watching a jaeger chase a gull that didn’t know it was delivering food. The Grubhub gull dropped the food it was carrying and the jaeger ate it.
Groovy birds
I watched a flock of groove-billed anis feed on the ground of a pasture in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. They nest communally with as many as four pairs of birds using one nest, a bulky cup of twigs lined with fresh leaves. All parents share the duties of incubating and raising the young.
Osmundson Prairie
Osmundson Prairie is Minnesota's southernmost SNA (Scientific and Natural Areas), less than a mile from the Iowa border on the Faribault/Freeborn County line. It’s one of the state's smallest SNAs, at 6 acres. This hilly remnant of southern mesic, black soil prairie hosts two state-listed plants. Rattlesnake master has yucca-like leaves and round white flower heads; and Indian plantain has clusters of white, tubular flowers. Invasive species such as Queen Ann's lace and wild parsnip are ongoing concerns. Periodic prescribed burns help sustain species such as lead plant, prairie coreopsis (stiff tickseed) and downy gentian. There have been summer records there of grassland birds like upland sandpiper, dickcissel, sedge wren, eastern meadowlark, vesper sparrow and bobolink. Albert Lea Audubon Society assisted with this site's preservation, which was made possible by the donation of land to the state of Minnesota by Mildred Osmundson Wickman in memory of her family.
Q&A
“Why does campfire smoke follow me?” It’s because smoke follows beauty and intelligence. Attack smoke follows the path of least resistance that is determined by wind direction and movement around the fire, which can cause a tailwind that pulls smoke with it.
“Are snakes poisonous or venomous?” Poisonous describes something that can cause death or injury if it’s ingested or absorbed. Venomous describes creatures that inject their victims with a toxin. In simple terms, if you bite an animal and get sick, the animal is poisonous. If it bites you and you get sick, the animal is venomous.
“What’s the difference between a swamp and a marsh?” A simple distinction is that a swamp is predominantly forested, while a marsh has few if any trees.
“When should I take down my hummingbird feeders?” Leave your feeders up as long as hummingbirds are visiting them. The birds won’t stay because you’re feeding them, so leave the feeders out for another week after you’ve seen one just in case stragglers come through.
“Monarch butterflies have been congregating in my yard. How do they choose a spot?” They want a roost that provides shelter from the wind and offers a convenient source of nectar. Roosts might provide safety in numbers as an anti-predator strategy when the butterflies are vulnerable in cool temperatures.
Thanks for stopping by
“Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.” ― Paul Hawken
“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’” — David Foster Wallace

©Al Batt 2021

The Tennessee Warbler breeds in Canada’s boreal forests and enjoys a nip of nectar.

Rightly or wrongly, I’ve always called these stump puffballs.

Nashville Warblers have been known to use porcupine quills as nest material.