Naturally
Kelly Blackledge, visitor service manager at Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, has her car serviced in a garage with woods behind it, which allows her to go birding while her oil is being changed.
Sigurd Olson wrote “A time for silence” and Ralph Waldo Emerson penned, “Drink the wild air.” I walked with those words and friends at Tamarac NWR in May, where we were surrounded by birdsong. I wanted to pull up a chair, lean in and listen.
Don Kroodsma, an author and an expert on birdsong, found that unpaired male Connecticut warblers sing through much of the night. Any male warbler who sings all day long is unpaired. Unpaired mockingbirds sing at night. He said a Connecticut warbler at Sax-Zim Bog began singing at 7:38 p.m. and ended at 10:13 a.m. He added the mockingbird has about 100 songs, the catbird 200 to 400, and the brown thrasher 1,000 to 2,000 songs. All three mimic, but the mockingbird mimics more than the other two, doing some well enough to fool the Merlin Sound ID app that listens to birds and suggests the singer. Don played a recording of a starling mimicking an eastern phoebe and a northern flicker at the same time, one with its left voice box and the other with the right voice box. He described four male chipping sparrows displaying and singing in a lek-like arena during the dawn chorus, but dispersing to their daytime centers of activity before sunrise. Two other males replaced those four after sunrise; those two had been presumably displaying elsewhere during the dawn chorus. Lek-like behavior is observed in birds such as prairie chickens.
Trumpeter swans
I drove over the Wing River on my way to Wadena. As I did so, a pair of trumpeter swans winged their way overhead. Adult males are called cobs, and adult females are pens. They usually mate for life and typically begin nesting when 3 or 4 years old. A pair of swans may build their nest on a muskrat house, beaver lodge or construct it from marsh vegetation. Nest mounds are 6 to 12 feet across and 18 inches high. They will defend up to 100 acres of wetland territory against other swans or predators. In late April, pens will lay a clutch of 5 to 7 eggs. The young swans, called cygnets, hatch in 33 to 37 days and remain in the nest with the pen for at least 24 hours until they can maintain their own body temperature. Cygnets have a light gray plumage and feed mainly on aquatic insects and crustaceans during their first weeks of life. In July, before the cygnets can fly, the adult swans lose their primary wing feathers. In August, adult swans grow new primaries and can fly again. The cygnets fly in September when they are 14 to 17 weeks old.
Q&A
“How many kinds of rabbits are there in Minnesota?” There are three lagomorph species in the state. One rabbit and two hares. Hares are born well-furred with eyes open, and move around shortly after birth, whereas rabbit babies are born blind, hairless and helpless. The eastern cottontail is the rabbit we commonly see. The white-tailed jackrabbit is a hare with exceptionally long ears (hare extensions), is 2 feet long and weighs 6 to 10 pounds. When surprised, it bounds off like a kangaroo. When frightened, it speeds away at up to 40 mph. It can leap 10 feet at a time. The snowshoe hare is slightly larger than the cottontail rabbit and can reach speeds of 30 mph and jump 12 feet in a single bound. Its coat is brown in summer and white in the winter, earning it the nickname varying hare. Snowshoe hares live in the upper half of the state, where they’re typically found in young forests, dense woodlands, thickets, and forest bogs and swamps. They’re about 20 inches long and weigh 3 pounds. The snowshoe hare's food changes with the seasons. In summer, it feeds on grasses, berries, wildflowers, clover and other green vegetation. In winter, it eats bark, twigs and evergreen needles. The snowshoe hare roams a 7- to 17-acre home range. An acre is slightly smaller than a football field.
“Do adult cicadas eat?” Cicadas are often mistakenly called locusts, which are members of the grasshopper family and have chewing mouthparts. Cicadas have sucking mouthparts and don’t chew. Cicadas are in the scientific order Hemiptera, a group of insects known as true bugs. Adult cicadas feed little on plant sap.
Thanks for stopping by
“If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows.”—Henry Ward Beecher.
“We heap up around us things that we do not need as the crow makes piles of glittering pebbles.”—Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Do good.
©️Al Batt 2024
A red-eyed vireo is noted for singing tirelessly from the treetops during the nesting season. Its song can be heard as “Here I am, up here, in the tree, look up, at the top, over here.” One dedicated listener counted 22,197 songs from one vireo in one day. The name “vireo” comes from a Latin word meaning “to be green.” Only the adults have the red eyes. Photo by Al Batt.