The greeter at the Cabela’s store in Owatonna, Minnesota.
Below freezing temps here last night. It’s one reason I take photos of flowers. They provide memories of more colorful days.
After posting a couple of sentries, the crows get busy with their foraging.
Corvids in the COVID.
Common Murres in Sitka, Alaska. I’ve been told the name “murre” derives from the purring or murmuring done by the bird.
Common Murres in Sitka, Alaska. I’ve been told the name “murre” derives from the purring or murmuring done by the bird.
A Bald Eagle strikes a pose.
This young Bald Eagle might be smiling, but I doubt it.
Charles Flugum, in his wonderful book "Birding from a Tractor Seat," wrote this about the Blue Jays, "The flagrant rascal evidently enjoys hearing its own voice, putting forth its utmost effort to make the loudest possible noise."
The Tufted Titmouse has steadily expanded its range northward.
A deer’s coat is designed to provide thermoregulation and camouflage. Thin summer coats appear reddish. In the fall, triggered by hormonal changes that reflect the changing season, the reddish summer coat turns into a thicker, faded gray or brown coat.
I love Nashville Warblers. They are lovely and tend to forage in the lower parts of trees and in low thickets where I can see them without being inflicted with warbler neck.
I believe this to be a stink bug, but I didn’t smell it.
It wasn’t a good egret. It wasn’t a pretty good egret. It was a Great Egret.
The American Robin’s scientific name is Turdus migratorius. I once called a friend named Robin “Turdus.” It didn’t go over as well as I’d hoped.
An American Redstart, the Halloween bird.
This Purple Finch female showed up early this year. I’m sure her appearance isn’t meant to indicate a harsh winter because all our winters are harsh.
No social distancing among these Blue Jays.
This tractor is a hay burner.
Naturally
A nature walk is my favorite reality show. I watched northern flickers feeding on the ground. They eat a lot of ants, none of which are deep-fried. Sally Seath of Cedar Rapids told me they ingest ant sushi. I saw the last Baltimore oriole of the year in my yard on Sept. 12. Charlene Nelson of Elbow Lake said she was still seeing one on Sept. 15. Jays, chickadees, nuthatches (white-breasted and red-breasted), goldfinches, woodpeckers and finches (purple and house) fed upon black oil sunflower seeds, the hamburgers of the bird feeder world.
I watched a wind turbine spin. It's 397-feet tall from the ground to the top of the turbine blade when it's pointed straight up. A recent study from a wind energy facility in Norway found that painting a single blade black on a white wind turbine significantly reduced bird mortalities due to collisions. This makes blades more visible as they spin, even at high speeds. It needs more study.
I watched squirrels busily gathering food. I've been trying to get my ducks in a row, but now I have squirrels everywhere. In 1807, the Ohio General Assembly demanded that citizens not only pay their regular taxes, but needed to add a few squirrel carcasses to them. Taxpayers had to submit a minimum of 10 squirrel scalps to the town clerk each year. Tennessee had similar laws, but it let people pay in dead crows if they couldn’t get enough squirrels.
A garter snake crawled across the lawn to a secure place. Most resources suggest it got its name because the snakes resemble garters, pieces of fabric fastened below the knee to keep a person's stockings from falling. According to a National Geographic article, an analysis of government records found that Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Michael Kors and other fashion companies have had thousands of items made from illegal wildlife products seized by federal law enforcement at U.S. ports of entry. Reptiles accounted for 84% of all items, many of which were belts, purses, shoes, wallets and watch bands.
A bald eagle flew overhead. A friend, Dave Olerud of Haines, AK, is the founder of the American Bald Eagle Foundation. He said that when he first moved from Minnesota to Alaska to teach, the superintendent of schools went out on weekends and shot bald eagles.
I checked on the busy lives on a dead tree. A dead tree can be a good thing. A snag is affordable housing for many creatures.
The 2020 Minnesota August Roadside Survey (ARS)
Since 1955, the DNR has conducted an annual ARS during the first two weeks of August throughout Minnesota’s farmland regions. The 2020 ARS consisted of 169 25-mile routes surveyed Aug 1–19. Observers drove routes starting at or near sunrise at 15-20 mph and recorded the number of pheasants, gray (Hungarian) partridge, eastern cottontail rabbits, white-tailed jackrabbits, white-tailed deer, mourning doves, sandhill cranes and other wildlife observed. Counts conducted on cool, clear, calm mornings with heavy a dew yield the most consistent results because wildlife (especially pheasants, partridge and rabbits) move to warm, dry areas such as gravel roads.
The 2020 range-wide pheasant index (53.5 birds/100 miles) increased by 42% from 2019. Favorable weather during the nesting season led to increased brood numbers. The indices for gray partridge and mourning doves also increased, while the white-tailed deer, eastern cottontail rabbit and sandhill crane numbers declined. White-tailed jackrabbit observations continued to be historically low. Incidental sightings recorded by observers included: Great egrets (Rice and Watonwan counties), prairie chickens (Clay County), red-headed woodpeckers (Mower, Redwood, Renville and Watonwan counties), sharp-tailed grouse (Red Lake, Roseau and Polk counties), trumpeter swans (Kandiyohi and Sibley counties), and upland sandpipers (Murray, Freeborn and Renville counties). American crows, Canada geese, American kestrels and wild turkeys were reported in multiple counties.
Q&A
"Why do deer change colors?" A deer’s coat is designed to provide thermoregulation and camouflage. Thin summer coats appear reddish. In the fall, triggered by hormonal changes that reflect the changing seasons, the reddish summer coat turns into a faded gray or brown color, which consists of thicker, longer and darker hairs called guard hairs and includes a thicker undercoat. Coat color, regardless of the season, tends to be darker in forested areas and lighter in agricultural areas where deer are exposed to more direct sunlight.
"How far can a hummingbird fly without stopping?" Researchers from the University of Southern Mississippi found the average ruby-throated hummingbird has a flight range of 1,367 miles. Older birds and males were able to fly farther than younger birds and females.
Thanks for stopping by
"There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it." ― Charlotte Eriksson
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." — Mahatma Gandhi
Do good.
©Al Batt 2020
A group of butterflies is called a swarm, rabble, kaleidoscope or flutter. I call this congregation of monarch butterflies jaw-dropping. Photo by Al Batt
There is a chill in the air. The mosquitoes will start wearing jackets.
A House Finch outside the house.
A male House Finch looking good while hanging around a hanging feeder.
Meadowhawks can be difficult to identify, but this looks like a White-faced Meadowhawk to me.
This Chestnut-sided Warbler is a leaf peeper.
The American Redstart flies and flits and fans its tail.
The Ovenbird sings “Nature, nature, nature.”
The Blue-gray Gnatcatcher eats gnats, but does it eat enough to justify its name?
A Red-breasted Nuthatch may be a small bird, but it has sturdy toes.
The Red-breasted Nuthatch is back.
A Monarch Butterfly on a Butterfly Weed. It was meant to be.
A group of pelicans is called an Evelyn. No, not really, I just like the name Evelyn today. I have heard the collective noun as a pod, scoop, squadron, pouch, fleet and brief. I think “brief” was used humorously, but you never know.
Woody the Woodpecker wasn’t based on a Pileated Woodpecker, but he should have been.
Someone has sent a cat to spy on me.
An immature American Goldfinch looks as an immature American Goldfinch should.
Say, hey! It’s a Say’s Phoebe in North Dakota.
One day, I nearly stepped on these Killdeer eggs. That would have been a tragic accident.
Sandhill Cranes fill the sky with an uplifting loveliness.
This young Bald Eagle had just been released from a rehab center. Due to pilot error, it flew right into a river. Human onlookers held their collective breath and hoped all hope. The eagle floated for a bit before swimming calmly to shore.
An Eastern Yellowjacket fearlessly attacks an apple much larger than the wasp.
So a Goldenrod Soldier Beetle and a Bumble Bee fly into a flower.
The chestnut collar of a Chestnut-collared Longspur.
Sandhill Cranes, parent and colt.
Sandhill Cranes, parent and colt.
Naturally
A neighbor has begun hiding candy bars around his house in preparation for winter. He is scatter hoarding like a gray squirrel that buries acorns throughout its territory.
Swallows gathered on utility wires before becoming snowbirds without campers. I found a northern flicker feather flung in a flicker by a flicker. Warblers are beautiful birds looking as if they'd escaped from picture frames. It may be fall, but Blackburnian warblers are worth getting warbler neck. Yellow warblers, ovenbirds and Nashville warblers aren’t very big, but they are mighty birds. Migration is about normal. There are always variances in species and areas. A bird could be early here and late there or vice versa. Where have all the flowers gone? They've gone to hummingbirds, every one. Flowers and feeders were busily fueling the tiny birds, most of which are headed to Central America on wings beating up to 200 times per second. I need to add that the 200 is during courting displays. Maybe 50-80 times per second during migration. How many wingbeats does it take to get to their winter home? Trying to determine that gives me a math headache. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm thinking it's a considerable amount. Many Baltimore orioles fed on the yard's offerings of nectar and jelly. Common nighthawks flew over. I took the camera for a walk so it could see some of the warblers. A red-breasted nuthatch entertained. I was a bit surprised to see so many purple finches. In these strange days, I'm blessed to be a birder.
Wood ducks floated on a pond made green by algae. Some people call it pond scum. I don’t. I’ve been called pond scum and it hurt. It was true, but it still hurt. Mourning doves feed crop milk or pigeon milk to their nestlings. I've been unable to find either of those at the local supermarket, so I’ll stick with cow and almond milk. I’ve milked many cows, but not one almond. The purple martins have flown the coop for greener pastures, or at least pastures with more insects. Craig Turner could have been wishing them well when he wrote, “So long, Farewell, To every passerbye, To you I hope the sun shines, And you enjoy a wonderful life.”
In "A Sand County Almanac," Aldo Leopold described migrating American white pelicans this way: "Let a squadron of southbound pelicans but feel a lift of prairie breeze… and they sense at once that here is a landing in the geological past, a refuge from that most relentless of aggressors, the future. With queer antediluvian grunts they set wing, descending in majestic spirals to the welcoming wastes of a bygone age." I've visited Leopold's Shack – a rebuilt (in 1935) chicken coop along the Wisconsin River near Baraboo, WI, which has become a metaphor for living lightly on the land. Leopold called for a "land ethic" – a caring, ethical relationship between people and nature. He died in 1948 from a heart attack while fighting a brushfire on a neighbor’s farm.
The woolly bear caterpillar or woolly worm is a famed weather prognosticator. The wider the rusty brown section, the milder the coming winter is supposed to be. The more black there is, the more severe the nearing winter. Orbweavers make my spidey senses tingle. Emerald ash borer larvae kill ash trees by tunneling under the bark and feeding on the part of the tree that moves nutrients up and down the trunk. According to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, Minnesota has approximately one billion ash trees, the most of any state. The insect is confirmed in 23 of 87 counties.
The butterfly effect is a phenomenon wherein a small change in conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes. I watched a butterfly flutter through the yard and imagined a shingle loosened on a roof in Pocatello, Idaho.
Q&A
Toni Perschbacher of Albert Lea asked how long a honeybee lives. An egg becomes a larva in three days. Drones (male bees) live for around eight weeks. Sterile worker bees tend to live up to six weeks during summer and six months in winter. A queen bee has an average productive lifespan of two to three years (some live as long as five), during which she lays up to 2,000 eggs in a day. The total time it takes to become an adult bee is about 21 days for workers, 24 days for drones and 16 days for queen bees. Queens develop faster due to a rich diet.
Thanks for stopping by
"When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty." —John Muir
"To those who have not yet learned the secret of true happiness, begin now to study the little things in your own dooryard." — George Washington Carver
Do good.
©Al Batt 2020
The woolly bear caterpillar or woolly worm is a famed weather prognosticator. The wider the rusty brown section, the milder the coming winter will be. The more black there is, the more severe the nearing winter. This one shows there will definitely be a winter. Photo by Al Batt
Wanted poster seen in Jamestown, N.D. Police warn residents not to approach the suspect but to instead call 911. He is considered armed and very old.
Why it’s called a Chestnut-backed Chickadee. Seen in Juneau, AK.
A Vesper Sparrow, a lovely singer of the evening vespers. This was an attempt at digiscoping that kinda worked only sorta.
A crow harassing a Red-tailed Hawk on a nice day.
Seen in Fargo, North Dakota.
The rare Hammer-headed Shovelbird.
A Scissor-tailed Flycatcher has a tail enough to make a kite envious.
Flower of an Hour is regularly found in crop land.
The Ruffed Grouse is famous for its drumming. I think one toured with The Beatles, but I might be mistaken.
A muskrat mound is for those who didn’t join the Beaver Lodge.
This is what John Wayne would look like if he were 7 feet tall, made of bronze and still in his birthplace in Winterset, Iowa.
He was just driving along when suddenly all that plumed grass sprung up. It was nearly a “Twilight Zone” episode.
Care for a bowl of honey bees?
I hope the Common Nighthawks find plenty of insect company during the birds’ migration.
Here I am, pointing out an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in my dreams.
The day I was initiated into a gang of Giant Puffballs.
A hover fly became a finger fly. I was training it to point.
Here’s a fun fact: .00137% of cellar spiders are wine cellar spiders.
A Blue Jay’s resume photo.
A bumble bee doing a pollen count.
The optimism of birds is contagious. Eastern Bluebird.
A House Finch holds his own in a color competition.
A Halloween Pennant dragonfly will frighten a mosquito by eating it.
This mushroom doesn’t need much room.
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