Naturally

 The bison is the national mammal, the rose is the national flower and the oak is the national tree, but we had no national bird. That situation has been remedied. The bald eagle is now officially our national bird after President Biden signed it into law on Christmas Eve. My gratitude goes out to many, but I’d like to give a special nod to a friend named Preston Cook of Wabasha, who was the driving force behind the bald eagle being able to fly to this lofty position. Preston had a vast collection of over 40,000 eagle items (from coins to belt buckles to hood ornaments to two 2,500-pound granite eagles) that he donated to the National Bald Eagle Center in Wabasha. Preston was inspired by Murray Burns, a character in the film “A Thousand Clowns” Preston saw in 1966, who said, “You can’t have too many eagles.”
 A female downy woodpecker tried to land on me twice while I stood peering through my binoculars as I counted American tree sparrows. Apparently, in my dotage, I’ve come to resemble a lanky bird feeder with numerous construction flaws. I was pleased to have been mistaken for something useful.
 Seeing and hearing birds is a gift. Crows are birds. Therefore, crows are a gift. The first bird I saw in the new year was a crow, and I hadn’t been that excited about seeing a crow since the last crow I’d seen.
 There are so many things to see. Bald-faced hornet nests, looking like a gray something or another between a football and a basketball, are seen dangling unoccupied from tree branches.
 Watch for birds pecking at goldenrod galls. Chickadees and downy woodpeckers find the galls a reliable provider of food in the form of larvae. Some ice fishermen use the larvae as bait.
 Great horned owl pairs engage in duet calling during courtship. The male has a lower voice. The great horned owl is a big owl, but the thick feathers for insulation from Arctic cold make the snowy owl North America’s heaviest owl, typically weighing about a pound more than a great horned owl and twice the weight of a great gray owl, which is North America’s tallest owl.
 I walked along the edge of a frozen lake and saw a mink cross the trail. A mink doesn’t change the color of its coat in winter, so it stood out like a sore thumb against the background of snow. Trumpeter swans linger wherever there is open water and blend in with the snow, but their sonorous bugling gives their location away.
 Cedar waxwings stripped the hawthorn and crabapple trees. Cedar waxwings have yellowish bellies, while Bohemian waxwings, which show up in northern Minnesota, have gray bellies.
 Willows and dogwoods become more colorful. Willow trees yellow, and dogwoods redden into perfect subjects for Christmas cards. I love seeing the redbirds on conifers gracing the front of Christmas cards. Cardinals used to be a southern bird, but have moved north thanks to bird feeders, human development and rising temperatures.

Q&A

 “Most winters, I see a muskrat wandering around. What’s going on there?” It's hard for a muskrat to forage for aquatic vegetation if its pond freezes all the way down or the mammal runs out of food in a pond. This forces muskrats to move overland on roads or trails to find food in deeper waters.
 “What do shrews eat?” Shrews belonged to an abandoned order called Insectivora, meaning "insect eater," but shrews are omnivores, eating whatever they can find. They remain active all winter, with a high metabolic rate that causes them to always be in a hurry because they feed voraciously night and day. They eat more than their weight each day and I’ve read that their metabolism is 60 times the rate of a human’s. They eat insects, worms, spiders, centipedes, salamanders, voles, mice, snakes, small rabbits, the nestlings of ground-nesting birds and even other shrews. Unique among mammals, the bite of the short-tailed shrew contains venom that paralyzes or kills its prey.
 “I see rodents scurrying across the walk. How can I tell if they are mice or voles?” Voles are rotund, and their tails are significantly shorter than the long tails of deer mice and white-footed mice.
 “When snowy owls come down here from the tundra in the winter, what do they eat?” Snowy owls prey upon mice, voles, shrews, rabbits, pigeons, weasels, muskrats, waterfowl (ducks and geese), gulls and other targets.

Thanks for stopping by

 "By the age of 70, he who doesn’t read will have lived only one life. He who reads will have lived 5000 years. Reading is immortality working backwards."—Umberto Eco.
 “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”—Desmond Tutu.
 Do good.

©️Al Batt 2024

An American goldfinch wearing its winter disguise. The drab plumage didn’t prevent the finch from being hit in the face with a tiny snowball, likely thrown by a blue jay. Photo by Al Batt.