Naturally

It was a chilly day with edges softened by a diminished wind. No leaves were leaping, but a lovely young opossum drank from the birdbath.

Q&A

Jack May of Mankato wrote, “When I was a kid, we would plow our land with a moldboard plow. Gull-like birds would flock behind the plow. You could distinctly see them pluck earthworms from the ground. It never seems as dramatic these days, but this is a little reminiscent of those days. Any thoughts?” In my youth, a small, black-headed gull of the prairies, the Franklin’s gull, was a common sight behind farm implements exposing earthworms, grubs, insects and mice. I called them “prairie doves.” Another common gull that feeds behind the plow is the ring-billed gull. It isn’t black-headed, is larger than a Franklin’s, and has a ring around its yellow bill. Franklin’s nest primarily at Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge in Marshall County. Estimates show a drop in nesting populations due to unfavorable water levels. The ring-billed gull population has increased in Minnesota, thanks to an omnivorous diet and adaptability to human-modified landscapes, including feeding at landfills and parking lots. I see more ring-billeds shadowing the implements of husbandry today in my neck of the woods, but they don’t appear to be the tractor aficionados the Franklin’s gull was. There is a lot of harvesting done during the hours when gulls aren’t working.
Micah Nettekoven wrote, “Is it true a woodpecker’s tongue wraps around its brain?” A bird’s tongue is called the hyoid apparatus and is how woodpeckers extend their tongues to reach insects deep inside the holes they’ve drilled. A woodpecker’s tongue is long and the bird needs a place to put it. This hyoid apparatus of a woodpecker travels below the jaw, wraps around the back of the head and runs toward the nostrils. Scientists think the hyoid apparatus acts like a seatbelt and provides extra cushioning of the head during pecking.
“I heard bucks don’t eat during rut. Is that true?” Are they too obsessed with breeding to eat? Bucks lose weight during the rut, but it’s from burning calories. Bucks eat during the rut, just not as much because of their hectic schedule. A deer’s diet consists of a variety of crops, grasses, vegetation, acorns and nuts. The browse of deer on twigs can look similar to the browse made by rabbits. Deer have incisors only on their lower jaw and this requires them to tear off their food. Rabbits make sharp, clean cuts at an angle, as they have incisors on both upper and lower jaws.
“Why do birds migrate?” The two primary reasons are food and nesting locations. Birds migrate to move from areas of low or decreasing resources to areas of high or increasing resources. Here’s more about how migration evolved. Birds nesting in the Northern Hemisphere tend to migrate northward in the spring to take advantage of burgeoning insect populations, budding plants and an abundance of nesting locations. As winter nears and the availability of insects and other food drops, the birds move south. Migration can be triggered by changes in day length, lower temperatures, changes in food supplies, and/or genetic predisposition.
“What are the close relatives of a cardinal?” Molecular phylogenetic analyses for 832 species show the closest relatives to the northern cardinal to be the pyrrhuloxia and vermilion cardinal with these three species being closely related to some grosbeaks (including rose-breasted, brown-headed and crimson-collared), This differs from an earlier study using morphological characters. Colloquial names for a cardinal include cardinal-bird, cardinal grosbeak, cardinal redbird, common cardinal, crested redbird, top-knot redbird, Virginia nightingale and Virginia redbird.
“Will we get a lot of snowy owls this year?” Predicting the movements of snowy owls is difficult due to limited information on prey availability and nest success at their remote breeding sites in the Arctic. Some snowy owls migrate south every winter. Every three to five years, a spike in the population of lemmings, their chief food source, results in a larger number of surviving owl chicks. Adult owls chase young owls from territory. The owls aren’t coming south because they’re hungry. Peaks in lemming numbers cause a boom in snowy owls. Large numbers of owls force the lemming population down. With fewer lemmings around the next year, snowy owl numbers fall. Fewer owls mean lemming numbers rise and the cycle repeats.

Thanks for stopping by

“A gull, up close, looks surprisingly stuffed. His fluffy chest seems filled with an inexpensive taxidermist’s material rather lumpily inserted. The legs, unbent, are childish crayon strokes—too simple to be workable. And even the feather-markings, whose intricate symmetry is the usual glory of birds, are in the gull slovenly, as if God makes too many to make them very well.”—John Updike.
“Even stones have a love, a love that seeks the ground.”—Meister Eckhart.
Do good.

©️Al Batt 2022

The call of the red-breasted nuthatch is a nasal, tinny yank-yank that is higher-pitched than the white-breasted nuthatch. There is a "tin horn" quality to its call. This nuthatch can be quite tame. Photo by Al Batt.

The “Little Kids First Nature Guide to BUGS” is a wonderful book. Its wonderful information and impressive photographs have made this a book for kids of all ages. Better yet, it has turned me into an appreciative Little Kid.

One of the many things I am thankful for this Thanksgiving is the wonderful collection of National Geographic Kids books. They are superb. And they are great for those of us masquerading as adults.