The parrot of the north, the Pine Grosbeak.
This insect is a hunk. It’s a Dogbane Leaf Beetle.
The Carolina grasshopper, Carolina locust, black-winged grasshooper, road-duster or quaker.
The early bird gets a bath in the cleanest water. An American Robin.
Baby House Wrens like sardines in a can.
Cabbageheads and duck snorts
Naturally
I fought the lawn and the lawn won. I retreated indoors, plopped down in a chair and listened to a caller tell me of a wild turkey terrorizing a walk-in basement window this spring. An American goldfinch is currently battling with my office window. The goldfinch fights politely, to my estimation. A chipping sparrow had a brief tussle with the glass earlier. There were no skirmishes featuring cardinals or robins this year. A great crested flycatcher was the year’s marathon brawler. It fought various windows of the house for several weeks. I worried it was ignoring important bird duties. It didn’t reach terminal velocity while striving for world domination, but the flycatcher walloped its reflection. Its attacks have ground to a halt.
Wipe that smile onto your face
As a tour leader, I took many group photos. There are the magic words, words with weight, used to make one smile. I’d say prunes, say cheese, smile, smile you’re on Candid Camera, whiskey, lottery winners, cabbageheads and duck snort. A duck snort is a softly hit ball that goes over the infield and lands in the outfield for a hit. Chicago White Sox announcer Ken “Hawk” Harrelson popularized the term.
Red admiral butterflies kept me company as the tree swallows fledged. I needed to walk past their nest box a few times each day. Each time, the male buzzed my tower. As the nestlings neared the point of fledging, he hunted me down in the yard to fly at me. He seemed happy to be unhappy to see me. The youngsters fledged in the morning. Took to air like experts and headed to a lake.
I saw a great-tailed grackle in Minnesota. The bird is a prolific producer of clacks, clatters, wheezes and trills. The male is nearly 1.5 feet long with a long tail shaped like a boat’s keel and the female is about 3/4 that size. There were 500,000 birds in one roost in south Texas. The population increase is due to urbanization, industrial agriculture and widespread irrigation.
Research reveals
Research shows that zebras have stripes not for camouflage, cooling or individual recognition, but to confuse biting flies.
Research by Marie Perkins, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, studied seven songbird species for mercury levels. Six species showed increasing levels and all six have declining populations (rusty blackbird, palm warbler, wood thrush, olive-sided flycatcher, saltmarsh sparrow and northern waterthrush). The red-eyed vireo was the one species that didn’t exhibit increased mercury levels and its population is increasing.
Q&A
“How clean should I keep my hummingbird feeder?” Clean enough so that you’d be willing to drink the sugar water. A typical hummingbird lifespan is 3-5 years.
“There is a nesting hawk on my southern Minnesota property that tries to catch birds at my feeder. Is it a sharp-shinned or Cooper’s hawk?” Cooper’s hawk as per breeding bird surveys. Sharpies nest in dense stands of mature coniferous and mixed deciduous-coniferous forests with well-developed canopies.
“What was a barn swallow called before it became the barn swallow?” The Oxford English Dictionary dates the English common name "barn swallow" to 1851 though there is an earlier instance in an English-language context in Gilbert White's book “The Natural History of Selborne,” originally published in 1789: “The swallow, though called the chimney-swallow, by no means builds altogether in chimnies, but often within barns and out-houses against the rafters.” Where did barn swallows nest before barns and chimneys? Probably in caves. Europeans refer to the barn swallow as the swallow. Thomas Jefferson called it the American swallow. I’ve heard people call it the country swallow. The barn swallow is the national bird of Austria and Estonia and in many cultures, a barn swallow nest on a barn is good luck. Legend says the barn swallow got its forked tail after it had stolen fire from the gods and given it to humans. Angry gods shot flaming arrows at the bird, one hitting the swallow’s tail, burning away its central tail feathers. Since then, the barn swallow has had a forked tail. Peter Kalm, a Swedish naturalist who visited this country in the 1700s, wrote that barn swallows nested both inside and on the outside of colonists' homes. The barn swallow is the most widespread of the swallows.
“Why are there so many monarch butterflies flying across the roads?” Roadsides are productive habitat for monarch reproduction, but the largest mortality is believed to occur during the fall migration.
“How many broods do chickadees have?” Black-capped chickadees have one. Second broods are rare in chickadees. Replacement broods, begun after losing a first brood, may have fewer eggs.
Thanks for stopping by
When the dew is on the grass, rain will never come to pass. When grass is dry at morning light, look for rain before the night.
“There are never enough 'I love you's.’”―Lenny Bruce
Do good.
©Al Batt 2021
Red admiral butterflies use members of the nettles family as host plants. Photo by Al Batt
A Cecropia moth, the closed wing edition.
An immature Bald Eagle catches a fish.
An immature Bald Eagle catches a fish.
A Monarch Butterfly landing strip.
Every groundhog has its day.
The dappled sunlight of a favorite birding walk at Courthouse County Park near Waseca, Minnesota.
Support your local historical society by growing old.
There is a great crop of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks this year. For that and many things, I am most thankful.
State baseball tournament for those 12 years old and under. Grandson Crosby raps out 4 hits in 5 at bats for New Ulm in victories over Albert Lea (13-3) and Osceola (6-0).
The mulberries are multitudinous and magnificent this year. These were at a county fair.
Knots to you from the Waseca County Historical Society.
Before there was the internet, there was the Herter’s mail-order catalog crammed with descriptions of outrageous outdoor goods. This was the family’s kitchen stove.
The state tournament continues. The New Ulm River Rats defeat Red Wing 5-3 and Minnetonka 12-0. Crosby Batt goes 2 for 4.
The Cecropia Moth has nearly a 6-inch wingspan.
The European Skipper can be abundant here.
Dickcissel.
A Song Sparrow sings.
The young Baltimore Oriole has a cowbird-lick.
A Ring-billed Gull. A gull and a buoy.
A macaroni moon.
An American Crow at its posing post.
Naturally
The cardinals fed at dawn. They avoid crowds. A chickadee is the epitome of a feeder bird—cute, tiny and perky.
The jumbled song of house finches was beautiful music to my ears. I bit a couple of mosquitoes back.
Stephanie Seymour wrote and sang, “Blue jay you made my day And you didn't even try But if you wonder why It's because of all the beauty that I see When you're in front of me.” A blue jay has a gizzard and a throat sac (called a gular pouch). It fills the pouch (observers have counted 70-100 black oil sunflower seeds) and hack up the seeds for consumption or caching later. Reports say its gular pouch can hold up to five acorns.
I saw a Cooper’s hawk in a city. This accipiter mainly eats birds. Studies have found that small birds are safer around Cooper’s hawks than are medium-sized birds like European starlings, mourning doves, rock pigeons, robins, jays, northern flickers, quail, pheasants, grouse and chickens, which are common targets. The female hawk is larger (about 1/3) than the male, a condition called sexual dimorphism, and because of this the female hunts larger birds than does the male.
I don’t see white-tailed jackrabbits around my place anymore. I grew up with cattle dogs. They were smart but insisted on chasing the big hares that leaped 10 feet and ran 40 mph. I saw jackrabbits eat clover, alfalfa, dandelion and grasses.
Q&A
“What do rabbits eat?” I’ve heard eastern cottontail rabbits described as artful dodgers. In winter, they feed on seeds, twigs, bark and tree seedlings. They also practice coprophagy, eating their own vitamin-rich droppings. I can tell where a rabbit had been eating, as the plant had suffered a 45-degree-angle cut. Deer tear away at plants. Rabbits love the tender shoots of various plants—crabgrass, sow thistle, dock, plantain, red clover, white clover and dandelion. Whether you consider them pretty, pesty or perky, dandelion plants can live 5-10 years. Dandelions have wide-spreading roots that loosen hard-packed soil, aerate the earth and help reduce erosion. Deep taproots pull nutrients from deep in the soil and make them available to other plants. They’re used by pollinators. Goldfinches, song and chipping sparrows, indigo buntings, towhees eat the seeds. Rabbits, porcupines, ground squirrels, mice and prairie dogs eat the seeds, foliage and root, while deer browse on dandelions.
“Are bug zappers effective?” A zapper participates in an indiscriminate slaughter of insects, many of them beneficial. A University of Delaware study found that 0.22% of the kills were biting insects. Research showed your chances of being bitten by a mosquito increase when you are near a bug zapper. The light is attractive and so are you.
“What birds eat cicadas?” There are many—chickadees, robins, bluebirds, eastern kingbirds, yellow-billed cuckoos, black-billed cuckoos, house sparrows, red-bellied woodpeckers, red-headed woodpeckers, grackles, red-winged blackbirds, mallards, cardinals, wild turkeys and others.
“Does the male bluebird incubate eggs?” Only the female incubates as male bluebirds don’t develop a brood patch.
“How long is a snapping turtle’s neck?” Common snapping turtles have long necks that reach up to two-thirds the length of their shells, making handling them dangerous. They’re capable of inflicting a painful bite, but a human’s bite is stronger.
“How long will raccoons remain with their mother?” One man’s garbage is a raccoon’s treasure. The kits are weaned in 2-3 months and remain with their mother for up to a year. "Ain't no thing like me except me!” said Rocket Raccoon in “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
“What’s one good thing about having wolves around?” In a short time after wolves had colonized an area, deer-vehicle collisions dropped 24% according to Dominic Parker, a natural resources economist at the University of Wisconsin in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Thinning of the deer population by wolves and behavior changes in fearful deer are factors in the decline. “Wolves use linear features of a landscape as travel corridors, like roads, pipelines and stream beds. Deer learn this and adapt by staying away,” said Parker.
Annie Mattson of Albert Lea asked how long eagles are in a nest. Incubation for bald eagles is about 35 days. Eggs hatch in the order they were laid. Eaglets fledge in 10-14 weeks.
Customer comments
I wrote, “I watched a common nighthawk slice the sky above a ballpark in New Ulm and realized the bird had become the baseball game.” Thomas Schenk of St. Paul wrote, “Al, if you had watched a bat chasing a fly, it would have been a kind of reverse baseball game.”
Thanks for stopping by
“Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.”—Lewis Mumford
“The happiest people I know are always evaluating and improving themselves. The unhappy people are usually evaluating and judging others.”—Lisa Villa Prosen
Do good.
@Al Batt 2021
A male brown-headed cowbird lays very few eggs. Photo by Al Batt
Cedar Waxwing nest.
Cedar Waxwing nest.
These white foam blobs were produced by the nymphs of spittlebugs, small insects related to aphids.
A drizzly bear on a wet and foggy day in Haines, Alaska.
A summer warbler. That’s what my father called the Yellow Warbler.
Blue Flax entertains a hoverfly.
Ble Flax.
The Yellow-headed Blackbird is the local grub hub.
The tree swallows fledged this morning. I walked past the nest box a few times each day. Each trip, the male buzzed my tower. As the nestlings neared the point of fledging, he hunted me down in the yard to fly at me. He seemed happy to be unhappy to see me. I’ll miss him.
The tiniest of cemeteries, a flag, trees and birds. It’s a regular stop on a Breeding Bird Survey I do. I want to spend longer than three minutes here.
A busy bee hotel.
A Red-winged Blackbird calling with its mouth full. We’ve all gotten call from friends who are eating lunch.
I haven’t seen a another fake bird around here since they put out the trio of fake owls.
The petals of spiderwort last only one day, opening in the morning then turning to jelly in the mid-day heat.
Resembling a big sparrow and a little meadowlark, the Dickcissel is a familiar voice.
Resembling a big sparrow and a little meadowlark, the Dickcissel is a familiar voice.
The Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus) is the king of my birdyard.
A young robin dips his toes in a new day.
Young Baltimore Orioles can be demanding when it comes to grape jelly.
The Ebony Jewelwing is a dandy damselfly.
Ditch lily, ditch lily, give me your hand
Naturally
June brought greening and growing. As sung in “Carousel,” “June is busting out all over.”
Bird is the word
I watched a kestrel take a house sparrow from a roadside. Young starlings have a grey-brown plumage. Cuckoos called. These rain crows feed on tent caterpillars.
There are over 800 whooping cranes in the world. I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen them in four local counties as they moved through.
I’ve rescued loon, eagles, hawks, pelicans, herons, owls, ducks, vultures, geese, kestrels, a bittern, a swan and more. They weren’t appreciative as I haven’t received a single thank you note from any of them.
Ditch lily
Baneberry, blue-eyed grass and birdsfoot trefoil bloomed as do the clovers—white or Dutch, red, and yellow hop or golden.
Thick shoots called candles appeared at the terminal ends of pine branches.
The ditch lily, sometimes called an outhouse lily, is a vigorous orange-flowered daylily that finds home in our road ditches. When I spot them, I sing a corrupted Beach Boys song, “Ditch lily, ditch lily, give me your hand. Give me something that I can remember.”
Crepuscular critters
I was late getting home and didn’t take in the hummingbird feeder before a raccoon had taken it down for me. The raccoon removed all six of the tiny, plastic, yellow flowers from their cavities and slurped down the sweet water. A deer towered over the corn rows. Deer are crepuscular, active in the twilight of dawn and dusk.
Spittlebugs
If you want to see an insect, look at a flower. Butterflies included: monarchs, tiger swallowtails, blues, sulphurs, skippers, black swallowtails, fritillaries, cabbage whites and crescents. The swallowtails are our largest butterflies here, but the largest, the giant swallowtail, is uncommon. June is the time for the big moths. The spotted, light brown Polyphemus is named after Polyphemus, the giant cyclops from Greek mythology who had a single large, round eye in the middle of his forehead because of the large eyespots in the middle of the moth’s hind wings. It has a 4-5 inch wingspan. Cecropia has a 5-6 inch wingspan and is reddish-brown. And the luna moth is green with a 3-5 inch wingspan.
Spittlebugs have a protective covering resembling soap suds or spit on a plant. It looks as if a baseball team had been there.
Hot, dry summers make for large populations of boxelder bugs in the fall. Those insects are most abundant in years when May is warm and July is dry. Dawn liquid soap in water is an effective spray to use on the harmless bugs if you find them annoying.
The mosquitoes bothered me as I gathered raspberries. My memory told me I notice the first big batch of mosquitoes around Memorial Day each year.
Ebony jewelwings are beautiful damselflies. In good light they appear a bright metallic green or teal blue depending on the angle of light. They appear black in shade.
Bald-faced hornets build the iconic gray, football-shaped nests in trees. A neighbor called them bull wasps and they’re prolific eaters of deer flies and horseflies.
Those rascally rabbits
A farmer’s market vendor told me apple cider vinegar discourages rabbits. Soak items (corncobs or rags work well) in vinegar for a few minutes and place them around the garden. Resoak every week. Or fill a spray bottle with half water and half vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is also effective at repelling ants.
Q&A
“Why do birds roll around in the dirt?” Birds take dirt baths because the abrasive particles in the dust clean feathers and remove lice and parasites. Birds roll about loose sand or dust and shake vigorously. The sand and dust absorb excess preen oil and remove dry skin. Dust bathing leaves bowl-shaped hollows on the ground. It’s soap and water without the soap and water.
Tom Belshan of Glenville asked about cormorants. John Milton, in “Paradise Lost,” described Satan as having “sat like a cormorant” on the Tree of Life, plotting the downfall of Adam and Eve. Despite the bad press, cormorants have benefited from the banning of DDT. Studies found 90% of the fish they consume are 5.3 inches or less in length and weigh an average of 4.2 ounces. They dive 5-25 feet for 30-70 seconds and could be a problem in baitfish ponds. They prefer an adequate food supply within a mile, but will fly a dozen miles for food.
Moron nature
To get more on nature from a nature moron, go to my blog at https://www.albatt.com/blogs/ Or listen in every Tuesday to KMSU (89.7 FM) or KTOE (1420 AM) aired on various dates. All radio shows are online.
Thanks for stopping by
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”—Winston Churchill
“The Panama Canal was dug with a microscope.”—Ronald Ross (alluding to mosquito research)
Do good.
©Al Batt 2021
Ditch lily or outhouse lily.
The baby robins came out of the blue—blue eggs, that is. Photo by Al Batt
I watched Red-winged Blackbirds mobbing a Turkey Vulture that made the mistake of flying over a marsh. It was a harsh marsh for the TUVU.
The Brown Thrasher and I decided not to shave today.
In our barn, the House Sparrow chirped while I worked. I enjoyed his cheerful company.
An Eastern Kingbird is more enticing than a carrot on a stick to a birder.
St. Francis of Assisi and friends examine dill. I love this statue and knew the fine man whose memory it honors at the New Richland Care Center.
Motherwort.
A Common Yellowthroat fought the lawn and the lawn won.
The Brown Thrashers went out on a limb for me.
A Gray Catbird enjoys suet.
This Baltimore Oriole enjoyed a bit of the grape. I enjoyed seeing this Baltimore Oriole enjoy a bit of the grape.
This Rose-breasted Grosbeak was wondering where the old feeder had gone. It had fallen victim to a fallen limb.
A pair of Brown Thrashers involved in a team-building exercise.
The Nessie in my non-Scottish yard. A Nessus Sphinx. The moth drinks nectar, which gives it powerful flight just as spinach gave Popeye muscles.
The Nessie in my non-Scottish yard. A Nessus Sphinx. The moth drinks nectar, which gives it powerful flight just as spinach gave Popeye muscles.
The ditch lily, sometimes called an outhouse
lily, is a vigorous orange-flowered daylily that finds a home in our road ditches. When I spot them, I sing a corrupted Beach Boys song, “Ditch baby, ditch baby, give me your hand. Give me something that I can remember.”
An American Robin egg on the ground. There’s a story there, a mystery.
A Mallard hen suns herself while the turtle takes a break.
A Red-winged Blackbird brings lunch.
Naturally
The other side of the door sparked my curiosity. There lurked a chickadee and my lawn that thrives on benign neglect. I’m always thrilled to see a chickadee.
I heard it calling “beans.” I watched a common nighthawk slice the sky above a ballpark in New Ulm and realized the bird had become an essential part of that baseball game.
A bird bander married them
My son coached a girls’ softball team. The players complained about being attacked by a bird as they warmed up before a game. It was a killdeer that first feigned injury, and when that didn’t dismiss the intruders, it fluttered at them to protect her nest. No harm was done to girl or bird.
Keith Radel of Faribault told me this about Forest Strnad of Faribault, a late friend of ours who was a Methodist pastor and a bird bander. The bird Forest banded the most was a dark-eyed junco—over 10,000 banded. He banded 700 of Keith’s bluebirds with two birds returning. A tree swallow, banded in one of Keith’s nest boxes, returned seven years later to the same box in which it had hatched. Forest presided at Keith’s wedding on a Friday the 13th, which was good luck.
A money-grubbing crow
I’ve been involved with the American Bald Eagle Foundation (ABEF) in Haines, Alaska, for many years. The ABEF secured a trickster crow that plucked a dollar bill from a willing visitor’s fingers. Sadly, the crow developed seizures and never made it to Alaska. A raven will be trained to perform that dodge.
Soaked, bouncing and concerned
Double-crested cormorants perch in the sun with wings spread to dry. They have less preen oil than other birds and their feathers become soaked rather than shedding water like a duck’s. That might aid hunting underwater.
The wood duck is the only North American duck that regularly produces two broods in one season. This is more common in southern latitudes due to the longer breeding season. The short interval between broods indicates a female’s first one likely failed. The ducklings hatch with the ability to bounce.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has updated its list of Birds of Conservation Concern, a report mandated by the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act of 1988. The new report identifies 269 bird species, subspecies, or populations that represent high conservation priorities for FWS and deserve proactive attention. A few of the newly listed Birds of Conservation Concern that caught my attention are: yellow-billed cuckoo, chimney swift, lesser yellowlegs, belted kingfisher, bobolink, scarlet tanager and rose-breasted grosbeak.
Q&A
“Do ticks fall from trees?” It’s a myth like bug zappers are effective against mosquitoes, deer whistles rid the roads of deer, electronic devices repel mice, and hedge apples (Osage orange fruit) or horse chestnuts discourage spiders. Ticks do climb while trying to find food (blood), but only to the height of the animal. They look close to the ground (grass) for mice and other rodents, and in bushes or tall grasses for larger mammals such as humans and deer.
“When do turtles lay their eggs?” Most of Minnesota's turtle species lay eggs in late May through June. Raccoons and skunks destroy nests by digging up the eggs. A turtle nest cage can be built to help protect them.
https://wiatri.net/Inventory/WiTurtles/Volunteer/Images/ProtectingTurtleNests.pdf
“Are those the same robins in my yard as last year?” There is about a 50% chance one of last year’s nesting pair has returned, but only 25% of fledged robins survive until November.
“I didn’t see many cardinals in Minnesota when I was a child. Was I looking in the wrong places?” Cardinals have expanded their range north into Canada taking advantage of moderate temperatures, human habitation and bird feeders. The growth of towns and suburbs across America has helped the cardinal expand its range. There is speculation the southern birds followed the railroad tracks north.
“What should I do if I find an injured bird?” Try to make the animal as comfortable as possible and call the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota at 651-486-9453. If you find an injured raptor, contact the University of Minnesota Raptor Center at 612-624-4745.
“What birds have more than one brood a year?” Here are some that commonly do: mourning dove, cardinal, robin, house sparrow, eastern bluebird, house wren, eastern phoebe and barn swallow.
“Do deer eat milkweed?” People have told me they have had rabbits and deer eating their milkweed, but it’s unlikely to be their favorite food. I watched a rabbit eat a leaf.
Thanks for stopping by
“In nature, one never really sees a thing for the first time until one has seen it for the fiftieth.”—Joseph Wood Krutch
“Destroying rainforests for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.”—E.O. Wilson
Do good.
©Al Batt 2021
My father called the Indigo Bunting a blue canary. Photo by Al Batt