Phenomenological Visions

All things must end

2009-02-17T21:10:00.003-06:00

It is with a little sadness that I write this post. This is, I believe, the last post for the Phenomenological Visions blog. I started this blog 8 years ago more as a personal online journal and it has morphed into something else, something more public. That's great but while the name Phenomenological Visions meant something to me back in college it isn't as meaningful to me now and it is utterly unmemorable let alone spellable or pronounceable to most people.

All hope is not lost though. I already have a new blog. From now on I will be blogging on my new blog, The Twin Cities Naturalist. This is the companion blog to the podcast I hope to start producing shortly, The Twin Cities Naturalist Podcast.

Thank you to everyone who read this blog. I hope you enjoy my new blog even more. If nothing else, the name is a whole lot easier to remember! See you on the new site.

~Kirk

Silent Love

2009-02-14T08:00:00.004-06:00

This is my February Au Naturel column for the magazine Stillwater Living

Silence. This is the sound of love in the woods in February. It is a dark evening in a frozen landscape with the moon hidden behind a winter blanket of clouds. My snowshoes crunch through the bare woods of maple and oak. The sound doesn't seem to travel far. The porous snow absorbs and deadens sound. When I stop, it is silent. There is no wind tonight, there are no animal calls, there is nothing and it is this absence of sound that tells me something is happening.

Back in the first week of December, Ron Lawrenz, our Director at the Lee and Rose Warner Nature Center excitedly shouted "owl!" from his office. His corner office view of the hardwood forest gives him a constant reminder of the reason we do what we do. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted movement in the woods. He looked up just in time to see a barred owl alight on a small tree about 125 feet away.

He struggled to point it out to us as we huddled at the windows but it was difficult to discern, the owl is a master of camouflage. Finally, it moved and we watched it fly closer. It landed on the edge of the woodland clearing the building sits in. The tree it chose was the same tree we had seen a barred owl in last February. Could this be the same owl?

Over the following months, the owl moved about the forest searching for a nesting site and calling out for its mate. We could hear the owls in the woods, their voices threading through the bare branches like auditory shadows. They sang as we walked to our cars in the evening surrounded by the early darkness of winter. The barred owl calls out "Who hoo hoo hoo, Who hoo hoo HOOoo." The call is commonly described as the questions "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?" Sometimes, our female captive barred owl calls back but she's injured and not allowed to fly around the woods with the other owls, nor is she free to find a mate. That doesn’t stop the occasional confused male from perching near her enclosure and hooting to impress her.

As I stand in the woods this February evening though, there are no hoots. There's only the sound of snow crunching lightly under my shifting feet and the quiet rhythm of my labored breathing. The silence speaks. What I am tempted to say is that barred owls are clever, that they fall silent in February with purpose and careful thought but this is ascribing too much human thinking to an evolutionary adaptation. They are silent in February because there is an evolutionary advantage to doing so. They have already mated and they do not hoot because they are incubating eggs. Now, around Valentines Day, is the time for silence. They do not want to give away the location of their precious young-to-be.

It seems funny that we have a day devoted to love in February and the origins of tying romantic love to the pre-existing day celebrating Saint Valentine are far from clear. What I do know is that February is a time of deep cold. Perhaps that's why we feel the need for a day devoted to something that warms us. It reminds me of the ancient rituals of bonfire lighting on the solstice. Create that which is missing. Kids give out cards with hearts and cherubs, or these days, Sponge Bob Squarepants and Hannah Montana but what do these things have to do with love and the season and bringing warmth? We need valentine's cards with owls on them. Owls pair bond for life. They choose one mate and stick with it. It is in this cold dark month of February that they mate and work their hardest to bring forth new life. That seems like a wonderful symbol of love to me. But why February?

Owls nest and mate long before other animals who wait for spring. In doing this, they get a jumpstart on their food source. The female owl will incubate the eggs for a month and by the time the young owls are ready to leave the nest six weeks after hatching, the rest of the animal world has mated in the more traditional spring and there is an abundance of small critters to eat. Young owls are well fed on the bounty of spring.

I stand in the cold silence knowing that there are small white eggs silently being kept warm in a nest somewhere nearby. Snow begins to fall and the collected sound of all those millions of flakes touching down on the ground is a barely auditory whisper. I whisper, "good luck" to the owls and head home through the snow to rejoin my love and celebrate warmth on a cold winter's night.

2009-02-08T20:11:00.001-06:00

Over the last week we've been having a fox squirrel at our feeders at the nature center. We don't see them very often as they are more solitary than grey squirrels. They are slightly larger and you can see the belly is reddish like a fox instead of white like a grey squirrel. Interestingly, the habits of gray squirrels and red squirrels are reversed here in Minnesota and more southern cities. Several people I have spoken with who used to live in states south of Minnesota say that it is fox squirrels who frequent the feeders and gray squirrels are only seen in the woods. I wonder why that might be? The range of the fox squirrel does extend further to the west than the gray squirrel so it is possible these people lived on the very western edge of the gray squirrel range and as such they were fewer in number which allowed the better adapted fox squirrels to increase in number. More fox squirrels would mean that more would be found at feeders. This does not explain why gray squirrels would be less frequest visitors to feeders. I would think feedres woud allow them to survive better outside or at the fringes of their range.

The number of redpolls under the feeders at the nature center has increased over the last week as well. We're now seeing a flock of about 21 birds every day though with the warm spell we're seeing I wonder if they may start heading back north. They seem to prefer feeding off the ground rather than the feeders and as Birdchick pointed out when I talked to her about it she said, "Well ya, they've never seen a bird feeder before." Good point!

On my yearly bird tally I've added four new species, two of them lifers! I saw a Purple Finch at work on the last day of January and then a Northern Cardinal on the feeder at home. I'm slowly making our open wasteland of a yard more bird friendly and the fly-through feeder is a favorite addition for the birds.

Today, Sunday February 9th I had the opportunity to sneak away for a little birding as my inlaws were in town and watching Camden. There was a report of a rare bird just down the street from my house so I had to go. I didn't realize until I got there that the bird was hanging out about 3 houses away from the house of someone I know. That was pretty fun. There were a lot of people there and the neighbors were wondering why on earth there street was full of people with binoculars, spotting scopes and huge camera lenses as long as my arm. The bird in question was a Varied Thrush which is related to the American Robin and usually only found in the Pacific Northwest. A lone male has been hanging out with a flock of robins and eating crabapples. After waiting abot half an hour it finally showed up but only briefly. I managed to get a photo from a long way off. This was through a 480 mm lens and then cropped in. Unfortunately, the focus is on the berries in front of the bird but you can see it clearly and tell what it is. This is from over 200 feet away so it was a bit hard to judge focus and bird flew off just seconds after I snapped this.

While I was waiting for the Varied Thrush to arrive I noticed some movement at the top of a very tall spruce tree and I turned my binoculars on the cones at the top. My hope panned out. There was a beautful male and female white-winged crossbill. People have been seeing them like crazy this year but I had yet to come across any. I'd never seen one before so that was a lifer bird as well. Not bad to get two new life list birds in the span of 30 minutes on a Sunday afternoon in February.

2008 Running Bird Tally
27. Purple Finch
28. Northern Cardinal
29. White-winged Crossbill
30. Varied Thrush

Final Birds of January

2009-01-31T18:09:00.000-06:00

I have two more birds to add to my year list and I have only my own absentmindedness to thank. I worked today, the last day of January, and only had a morning group. I finished up and headed into the kitchen at the nature center to have a late lunch only to discover I didn't have anything to eat in the fridge. I decided to head down to Stillwater for lunch and spend the afternoon working from a coffee shop. Near the intersection of Co. Rd. 7 and where Norell continues South, I spotted a flock of birds on the shoulder of the road. I pulled over and was delighted to see they were all American Tree Sparrows. I would have preferred some lapland longspurs or horned larks but I'll take what I can get. Half-way to Stillwater I saw a lone Mourning Dove on a telephone line. That's two new birds for the year. Chelsey thinks she saw a purple finch mixed in with the house finches at home so I need to watch out for that as well.

2008 Running Bird Tally
25. American Tree Sparrow
26. Mourning Dove

More Redpolls

2009-01-29T17:40:00.004-06:00

Three common redpolls showed up at the feeders yesterday at work. They were a little far away to get a great photo but fun to see none the less. I also saw a swan on the way home flying East over Hwy 36. It was flying pretty high so I have no idea which species it was. Today at home I saw a pair of house finches at my bird feeders. I think I might have seen them earlier as well and it didn't really click that it was a new species for the year list. Now where are those siskins and crossbills?

24. House Finch

Barred Owl on the Hunt

2009-01-22T18:44:00.007-06:00

A nice surprise today, bird number 23 for the year appeared like a striped ghost in the woods. After hearing them a couple of times, I finally saw a Barred Owl in 2009. I guess it isn't fair to say finally when we're only 22 days into the year. I walked past the windows at work and saw something large fly through the woods. I figured it was an owl right away. It took a while to locate where it had gone. The camouflage was incredible.

I finally saw him dive toward the ground out of a tree, undoubtedly going for a little mouse under the snow. He was about 150-200 feet away. I happened to have a camera with me so I snapped some photos. At that distance, shooting through the trees the auto-focus had trouble. I wish I had my camera with me which has manual focus.

I also shot some video to give you an idea for how far away he was and how hard he was to see and find. It starts out close with the owl in the middle and then zooms out.

I went out to see if I could find where he had landed on the ground, I was hoping to find the classic wing prints on the snow. I did find where he landed but he must have landed without his wings touching the ground much. I think what you see here are tail marks on the right hand side, feet made the big hole in the middle and then the extension of the hole on the left could have been from his head as he poked around for the mouse. Other interpretations are entirely possible. It isn't very clear.

2009 Running Bird Tally
23. Barred Owl

Redpolls, a coyote and Eagles

2009-01-21T17:27:00.004-06:00

Yesterday a pair of common redpolls showed up at the bird feeders at work. I tried to get the camera but was working on a project and couldn't get back to the feeders for 30 minutes or so. They were gone by then and didn't show up today. Today was our volunteer training so I had the chance to take a group of volunteers out on the trails. We found a lot of mouse tracks and trails. We also came upon some coyote tracks. I tried to take a picture and accidentally shot some video. The video is cool though because it gives you some perspective.

On the way home I spotted the Bald Eagles at their nest on Keller for the first time this year. Most of their nest blew down last year so it will be interesting to watch them rebuild it.

2009 Running Bird Tally

21. Common Redpoll
22. Bald Eagle

Good Riddens

2009-01-20T18:22:00.003-06:00

Took this at lunch today. The countdown finally reached zero!

Unfortunately I had to teach so I missed the inauguration. :(

I guess I'll just have to actually go to DC in 2012. Consider that fair warning to my friends in DC.

~Kirk

Bird Vacation

2009-01-15T12:10:00.000-06:00

It is crazy cold outside so our captive raptors are taking a little vacation inside. The American Kestrel's heater broke so he's especially happy to be inside. Here's his cozy tropical crate.

The Red-tailed Hawk is just hanging out inside.

~Kirk

First 20 Birds of 2009

2009-01-13T18:37:00.001-06:00

Sometwhere around Thursday of last week I finally got a good look at Dark-eyed Juncos (that would be slate-colored juncos for all you bird-banders, splitters or old-schoolers) on the side of the road and also a lone bird under the feeders at work. Monday the 12th of January I had my first school outreach of the year which is where I pick-up a lof of my birds. I get to drive the work van to a lot of schools and I take mostly country roads. I have a great high vantage point to see a lot of roadside birds. If I'm lucky I get to see Snow Buntings, Horned Larks, Northern Shrikes, and more. Of course, I haven't seen any of these yet. I also have my fingers crossed to come upon some Lapland Longspurs this year which would be a lifer. True to form, I did add one new species for the year on my first outing to a school. Right after leaving the center I saw a pair of female Ring-necker Pheasants in a corn field. That makes 20 birds in 12 days. I beat last year by one day.

2009 Running Bird Tally
19. Junco
20. Ring-necked Pheasant

Starting Fresh

2009-01-07T16:40:00.001-06:00

Welcome to 2009.

2009 started off painfully slow for birding. Not a single bird came to my feeders on January 1st. The only thing that stopped me from being totally skunked was a flock of pigeons I saw in the distance. On the drive to my parents house for out annual fondue dinner there were no crows, no red-tailed hawks, nada. It was very strange. At their house there were no birds at the feeders as well.

Friday the 2nd, I didn't see any birds either but the seeds in my fly-though feeder had been moved around so something had been in there while I wasn't looking. Driving to work on Saturday, the birds started to show themselves. There were some crows in the trees. Finally, birds.

As I walked up the sidewalk to work I saw blue jays and nuthatches and black-capped chickadees.

When I came inside I swung past the windows overlooking the feeders and was delighted to also see two wild turkeys, downy woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers, a red-bellied woodpecker and a flock of American goldfinches.

I did hear a pileated as well as a barred owl hooting in the woods but I only count birds I see so those will have to wait.

Sunday the 4th of January I finally discovered who was eating the seeds out of the fly-through feeder. There are a pair of House Sparrows that swing by every so often.

Monday the 5th of January I didn't think I was going to see anything new but while putting things away in the lower classroom I noticed a couple of birds "frozen" on the feeders as though there was a predator in the area. I took a look out the windows but couldn't see any hawks or shrikes. What I did see was my first Pileated Woodpecker of the year.

Tuesday the 6th I finally saw a Red-tailed hawk on my drive to work.

On Wednesday the 7th we went on a planning retreat to the St. Croix Watershed Research Station. They have some fantastic springs that stay open all winter and attract wildlife. I saw a few species I had seen already such a white breasted nuthatch, downy woodpeckers and black-capped chickadee. I did see some new ones for the year. First up was mallard ducks. There were also lots of American Robins around the stream that goes into the St. Croix River. There was one sneaky European Starling mixed in the group. I stepped out on a break and spotted a few Cedar Waxwings which was good timing as I didn't see them again all day. On a hike I also saw a brown creeper which was fun because I haven't been seeing them around the feeders yet this winter. There were two disappointing misses. I didn't see a bald eagle that was apparently there and someone just ahead of me flushed a Wilson's snipe out of a spring area. I'll have to go back some time this winter to see the snipe as apparently it is almost always there.

What I haven't seen (but expect to shortly) are juncos, purple finches, northern cardinals, pine siskins, pheasant, bald eagle, and starlings.

I'd like to see 20 birds in January and I'm pretty close in just he first 7 days.

2009 Running Tally
1. Rock Pigeon
2. American Crow
3. Blue Jay
4. White-breasted Nuthatch
5. Wild Turkey
6. Black-capped Chickadee
7. Downy Woodpecker
8. Hairy Woodpecker
9. Red-bellied Woodpecker
10. American Goldfinch
11. House Sparrow
12. Pileated Woodpecker
13. Red-tailed Hawk
14. Mallard Duck
15. Cedar Waxwing
16. American Robin
17. European Starling
18. Brown Creeper

The Birds of 2008

2009-01-04T13:57:00.002-06:00

I finally had some time to compile my species list for 2008. Not a bad year for me. I'm probably forgetting something but I count it up as 131 species of birds. I had the tally at 129 but realized I didn't have down the Eastern Towhee, or Ring-billed Gull. In 2007, my final tally was 137 birds. Considering I was taking care of a baby at home and Chelsey and I had virtually no free time I think this is a pretty respectable number. Also, in 2007 I went to both Arizona and North Dakota and saw about 28 species that aren't even found in Minnesota so also considering I didn't leave the state I'm feeling even better about this number! I'm excited to see what 2009 brings.

2008 Final Tally
1. House sparrow
2. American crow
3. Hairy woodpecker
4. White-breasted nuthatch
5. Downy woodpecker
6. Black capped chickadee
7. Brown creeper
8. Red bellied woodpecker
9. Red-breasted nuthatch
10. American goldfinch
11. Pileated Woodpecker
12. Red-tailed hawk
13. Rock pigeon
14. Wild turkey
15. Pheasant
16. Bald eagle
17. Northern Shrike
18. European Starling
19. Barred Owl
20. Mallard duck
21 Slate-colored dark-eyed junco
22 Townsend's Solitaire
23 American Tree Sparrow
24 Blue Jay
25 Canada Goose
26 Mourning Doves
27 American Robin
28 Northern Cardinal
29 Common Redpoll
30 Common Merganser
31 Snow Bunting
32 Horned Lark
33 Great-horned Owl
34 Red-shouldered Hawk
35 American Kestrel
36 Red-winged Blackbird
37 Sandhill Crane
38 Purple Finch
39 Cooper's Hawk
40 Fox Sparrow
41 Great Blue Heron
42 Turkey Vulture
43 Common Grackle
44 Eastern Phoebe
45 Eastern Bluebird
46 Pine Siskin
47 Song Sparrow
48 Tree Swallow
49 Lesser Scaup
50 Trumpeter Swan
51 Ring-necked Duck
52 Wood duck
53 Hooded Merganser
54 Bufflehead
55 Great Egret
56 Hermit Thrush
57 Northern Waterthrush
58 Yellow Rumped Warbler (myrtle)
79 Black-throated Green Warbler
80 Barn Swallow
81 Horned Grebe
82 Red-headed Woodpecker
83 Palm Warbler
84 Yellow Warbler
85 Cliff Swallow
86 White-Crowned Sparrow,
87 Northern Flicker
88 Rose-breasted Grosbeak
89 Baltimore Oriole
90 Blue-headed Vireo
91 Clay Colored Sparrow
92 Orange-crowned Warbler
93 Ruby-throated Hummingbird
94 House Finch
95 Chimney Swift
96 Tennessee Warbler
97 Indigo Bunting
98 Common yellow-throat
99 Gray Catbird
100 Least Flycatcher
101 Great-crested Flycatcher
102 Swainson's thrush
103 Yellow-throated vireo
104 American Redstart
105 Cape May Warbler
106 Northern Rough-winged Swallow
107 Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
108 Blue-winged Warbler
109 Chestnut-sided Warbler
110 Wood Thrush
111 Wilson's Warbler
112 Eastern Kingbird
113 Scarlet Tanager
114 Red-eyed Vireo
115 Warbling Vireo
116 Swamp Sparrow
117 House Wren
118 Tufted Titmouse
119 Blackpoll Warbler
120 Mourning Warbler
121 Eastern Wood-pewee
122 Blackburnian Warbler
123 Canada Warbler
124 Ovenbird
125 Winter Wren
126 Olive-sided flycatcher
127 Belted Kingfisher
128 Spotted Sandpiper
129 Red-necked Grebe
130 Eastern Towhee
131 Ring-billed Gull

Damn Hot

2008-12-08T19:35:00.003-06:00

We're looking to build a new sugar shack at work and that made me think about making maple syrup. When I teach my programs, I demonstrate the art of rock boiling. For rock boiling I build a fire and let igneous rocks (mostly basalt) sit in the middle for a couple of hours until they glow orange. I then transfer the rocks from the fire to a hollow log full of water to show how people boiled maple sap before they had metal buckets. The heat of the rocks transfers to the water and it goes into a furious boil. It is really cool but one of the questions I always get asked is how hot are the rocks? I knew they were over 212° F since they made the water boil and I figured they were way over 212 since if you put rocks in boiling water they don't start to glow. I tried to find a website with a reference to how hot rocks have to be before they glow but found nothing. Then I tried a new approach and found the following on a website about volcanoes.

(emphasis mine)

"By way of its color, incandescent rock gives a crude estimate of temperature. For example, orange-to-yellow colors are emitted when rocks (or melt) are hotter than about 900 degrees Celsius (1,650 degrees Fahrenheit). Dark-to-bright cherry red is characteristic as material cools to 630 degrees Celsius (1,165 degrees Fahrenheit). Faint red glow persists down to about 480 degrees Celsius (895 degrees Fahrenheit). For comparison, a pizza oven is operated at temperatures ranging from 260 to 315 degrees Celsius (500 to 600 degrees Fahrenheit)."

So there you have it. Glow will persist in rocks down to 480 Celsius which means they will start to glow around there too. I've gotten them hot enough to do more than just faintly glow but a faint glow is pretty typical. 480° C equals 895° F and from what I gather, hardwoods in a fireplace burn around 900° F so that jives with the number above.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, "Hell no I'm not picking that rock up with my bare hands."

~Kirk

The Barred Owl Returns...

2008-12-04T14:43:00.005-06:00

Last year I posted about a barred own that showed up outside my work window. It's that time again.

Here's a photo I took today from inside the building looking out across the yard and septic field.

Can you spot the owl?

How about now?

How about now?

I'm guessing this is the same owl. Go back and check out the photos from last February, that's the same tree, but the owl is on the next branch down.

This is a nice opening in the forest so the owl must be hoping to spot some small mammal running under the snow. On the other hand. About 75 feet away on the opposite side of the field is the mew with our female captive barred owl. We are getting near mating season.

Alkaline Food

2008-12-01T09:13:00.003-06:00

I spoke with my friend Awe lately about food as he used to be a food scientist. We were musing over hte fact that while there are a lot of acidic foods in our diets there are relatively few to no alkaline foods. This is easily explained by two important factors. First off, we like the taste of acidic foods. Foods with a low pH are acidic and create a sour taste. While in the extreme, sour is overwhelming, in moderation it provides the tangy bite in ketchup (acetic acids from the vinegar) and the tangy refreshing bite to lemonade (citric acid in the lemons.) The second factor to consider is a bit more practical. A low pH environment is good for food preservation. This brings up the interesting evolutionary question, "Do humans prefer acidic foods as an adaptive evolutionary strategy because tangy acidic foods are less likely to harbor pathogens?"

When trying to think of foods that are basic or alkaline, the only food he could think of was Lutefisk which is slightly alkaline. Not surprisingly, many people do not like the the taste of alkaline foods. Think soap.

I did a quick web search for alkaline foods and came up with this website.

This is a marvelous example of why you should always assume websites are written by hacks who understand very little science. This person recommends eating lots of vegetables which is probably a good thing but then goes on to say how fruits and vegetables are good alkaline foods. Want some examples? Here's what he has on his chart for foods that are "High Alkaline."

Lemons, Watermelon, Limes, Grapefruit, Mangoes, Papayas

Really? Really? LEMONS! LIMES? Lemons are one of the most acidic foods you can possibly find. Lemons have a pH of 1.8 to 2.3. For comparison, Battery Acid has a pH of 1.0 Any citrus fruit has a low pH due to the citric acid.

Moral of the story? Anyone can make a web page but that doesn't mean they know anything about science.

~Kirk

Fireball!

2008-11-25T20:32:00.002-06:00

A few years ago I posted a short video of a fireball meteor/meteorite caught on film over Australia. Astronomy Picture of the Day has posted a new and much more recent video that blows that one out of the water. Imagine driving down the road and seeing this.

The video was caught on the camera of a police cruiser November 20th in Canada. What an unbelievable thing to capture. They are trying to figure out if it hit the ground and if so, where. It is incredible how it lights up the whole sky.

~Kirk

Crossing the line

2008-11-21T10:29:00.000-06:00

We humans enjoy breaking things up and dividing them with sharp lines, day night, black and white but these are arbitrary lines we etch upon the reality of the thing. There is no line between day and night; no sharp terminus moving from east to west at 733 miles an hour as observed from space. We slide into night slowly, the sun's light fading away until no light bends around the curve of the earth by illuminating the atmosphere with faint stray rays alighting upon stratospheric clouds. The true night comes when the sun dips eighteen degrees below the horizon, then it can get no darker.

So too it is with winter, it slides in upon us. We can come up with dates on a calendar we can draw our little lines but they are merely milestone to mark the passing of time. They are hours on a clock that bring us comfort and order but they are meaningless when we stand alone in the woods confronted by the reality of seasons. This morning it became winter to me. We've been sliding toward it, the shadows growing long for months now. I've seen snowflakes in the skies here and there for more than a week now but it still was not winter, I could not feel it, I could not hear it and I could not taste it.

This morning though it was winter. I stood in the woods and I heard the wind blowing a lonely sound. There was not the familiar soft flutter of quaking aspen, there was not the warm breeze upon my face. A cold moan drove through the trees with a breathed whisper, a cold stinging white noise putting the world to sleep. In the fall there was a crackle of life left, autumnal discussions between leaves and wind. It is gone now, replaced by a cold monotone meditative drone. The trees do talk some but only a talk of cold. On this day, a solitary oak sounds out in the forest as it creaks with a lonesome song as it moves hundreds of years worth of fibers in the wind. These same trees creak in the summer but it somehow sounds different now. Lonelier and plaintive.

Gone are the bird sounds of summer. I am greeted by the solitary woodpecker who's call sounds otherworldly borne on the cold dense winter air. The call is brief, mechanical and to the point. There is no time, no energy for the bird songs that float almost languidly though the verdant green summer woods where time seems to stretch on forever. We have crossed the imagined line. I suppose it happened during the night. One day it feels like fall and the next like winter.

There are only hints of snow on the ground, pockets of fluffy water, it too is sleeping, unable to move on its own. It must obey the wind and in doing so it betrays the serpentine movements of the wind across the land. The heavy cold air moved from the north to me, it dances about my feet in spirals as if examining this bit of warmth in a cold land. It steals what heat it can then moves on. I can feel the feeble heat of the sun as it tries to warm my face. It holds power still but every day it has lost some grip. It will not gain the upper hand for yet another month at the winter solstice but just as it took months to wring and wrest the heat from the land it will take months to bring it back.

I will bide my time, I will wrap up in layer upon layer, trapping heat in insulative pockets of warmth against my skin and I will keep the wind from tearing loose my hard fought warmth stored away from summer. I will bring the sun's heat out from the core of the trees where it was transformed decades ago into fiber. I will let it burn in the fireplace while I sit on the hearth and feel the heat of the sun once again. I will venture out into this cold land and explore it as though it as the new and wondrous world that it is. A new planet has appeared out my door. I don my space suit and explore, discover, revel in my warm core as I see the transformed and transformative sometimes blinding beauty of crystalline water. I will howl at the sun dogs in the sky who watch over me in the day and I will remove my layers one by one as I slide closer and closer to an imaginary line that I will someday step over and find myself in spring.

Pine Siskins

2008-11-18T18:17:00.001-06:00

I figured there might be Pine Siskins showing up one of these days at the feeders at work but when I checked this morning there were just goldfinches on the thistle feeder. This afternoon I checked again and sure enough there was a lone pine siskin (that streaky fellow on the right) mixed in with the American Goldfinches.

~Kirk

Icing Over

2008-11-18T18:16:00.000-06:00

Today at work we went down to check on the lakes. Terrapin lake appeared to have frozen over some time during the day today. We took turns throwing rocks out onto the ice to hear that wonderful ping pa pa pa pa dut dut dut dut dit dit dit di di di sound as they skittered across the ice. Here's Paul with a good throw.
Kathy walked out a few feet and thought that near the shore it was a couple of inches thick. We could see it was really thin further out.

I threw a large rock as hard as I could against the ice off the dock and didn't break through. It did produce this cool impact pattern and I noticed a cool rainbow effect along where it cracked.

We turned around to look at the deeper Mays Lake and it was completely without ice. I spotted the Tundra swans a good distance out but they were hard to see through the strong cold wind. This photo is cropped in as far as possible. There are two adults and two younger swans in this shot and there were two other swans on the opposite shore. These appear to be the same group that were on Terrapin lake last week.

~Kirk

It begins

2008-11-04T09:16:00.002-06:00

Done.

Halloween Approaches

2008-10-27T12:00:00.000-05:00

Halloween is certainly coming. Yesterday there were snowflakes in the air and I finally had time to carve up my pumpkin. I'm pretty happy with the results even though I had none of my pumpkin carving tools. Where's they go?

~Kirk

Ancient Colors in the Valley

2008-10-18T12:03:00.001-05:00

Walking outdoors in the St. Croix Valley under autumn trees I can't help but notice the colors. I'm talking, of course, about the colors of the rocks. Glaciers deposited layers of rocks and sand over the existing bedrock thousands of years ago and as a result we can even find every color of rock imaginable.

On a hike with the rest of the staff at the Lee & Rose Warner Nature Center this fall I kept my eyes open for a particular kind of rock. I wasn't finding my quarry but our naturalist intern Jen, also interested in geology, picked up a palm-sized rock and commented on its beauty. She had unknowingly found exactly what I was looking for. Red and black bands streaked across the irregular dirty surface. (see photo above, it is about 4 inches across.) It looked pretty unassuming but this is a rock with a spectacular history. I took a deep satisfying breath as I turned it over in my hands examining it closely. In a way, I had this rock to thank for the oxygen in that deep breath I took. Not only is it one of the oldest rocks on earth, about 2 billion years old, it's also a fossil.

The red stripes are form of chert called jasper and the black stripes are either hematite or magnetite. Stripes are often a sign of a sedimentary rock laid down slowly layer-by-layer. Residents of the St. Croix Valley are no strangers to sedimentary rock. The limestone that pokes out around the valley is sedimentary rock. As their name suggests these rocks are usually sediments compressed together into hard rock by time and pressure. This sedimentary rock is different though and not just because it is more than 1.5 billion years older than the limestone of the valley.

This rock is called a stromatolite and it is evidence of one of the earliest and oldest forms of life on earth. Billions of years ago, shallow seas harbored colonial cyanobacteria. Scientists think we have these cyanobacteria to thank for the formation of an oxygen rich atmosphere on Earth. When these creatures gave off oxygen from photosynthesis they helped change the atmosphere but some of the oxygen combined with dissolved iron in the water and these new iron oxides fell out to the bottom where they got stuck in the slimy coating of the cyanobacteria. Slowly, layer-by-layer, the mats of cyanobacteria got thicker and thicker forming banded layered stromatolites. The iron impurities in silica created the red bands of jasper and the silvery hematite is simply iron bound to oxygen, one of those iron oxides formed long ago. There are massive deposits of these iron rich rocks in northern Minnesota and we know those formations today as the Iron Range. The work of these tiny creatures billions of years ago helped us by creating not only the atmosphere that sustains us but also the iron in our cars, buildings and cookware.

Glaciers pushed this chunk of rock here from up north during the last ice age a mere 10,000 years ago. I ground and polished the rock we found that day until the red jasper glowed the color of blood (which is also red because of iron) and the hematite shined like polished aluminum. The reds of autumn have faded but the bands of red jasper in my hands will last for millions of years more and serve as a reminder of the beauty and complexity of our ancient planet.

~Kirk

Rusty Goodness

2008-10-16T12:24:00.004-05:00

We were excited to have two rusty blackbirds in the nets today at the Warner Nature Center. I think these are gorgeous birds but of course to some they are exceptionally plain. Sorry, if you think these are boring birds you are mistaken.

The bird on the left if a HY (hatching year) and the bird on the right is an AHY (after hatching year.) Both are males. Rusty blackbirds have a definite cut-off for male vs. female when you measure wing cord so we're sure these are males.

Here's a close-up view of the hatching year bird. The photos don't begin to do the subtle variations in color justice.

Check out his chunky size 2 band. The yellow eye is very striking set against the black underneath and the yellowish wash above. The supercillium didn't seem as yellow on the after hatching year bird.

Here's the after hatching year bird for comparison. Everything has darkened up. Still beautiful.

A wider shot of the older bird.

I'll part today with my favorite shot. Drink in the autumnal rusty goodness.

~Kirk

Fall Hike

2008-10-09T21:05:00.000-05:00

Ahhh, time for a posting. I finally have a spare moment here in the evening. Being a dad makes blogging a slower process. These are just some quick photos from a staff hike we took on Monday. That would be Paul Smithson, Me, Jen Ester and Kathy Feste. Julie Grecian took the photo. We headed out into the lesser explored western half of the nature center. The field we're standing in is one we rarely go to. It is an important part of the nature center from a land perservation perspective but we don't use it for programming.

I was really impressed by the amount of milkweek on the western side of the property. It seemed to be in pretty healthy abundance.

One of the interesting things we saw was more tornado damage from the Memorial Day weekend storm. This is the tornado entrance into the woods on the westernmost side of the property. When you get up close you can see trees go in every direction due to the rotation.

Below is the view from inside the woods. The camera is looking West, the diretion the tornado came from. Click to see a much larer version. You can see some mature trees with the tops missing. That takes at least 110 mph winds. It can be had to appreciate the damage from a simple photo like this but here's something to consider. This is a mature forest with a closed canopy. See how much sky you can see in the photo? Before the storm you couldn't see sky like that. You can follow where the tornado went bymentall drawing a line through the sky from the right side of the photo to the left. I wish I had taken a photo but one uprooted tree already had a young buckthorn tree growing in the hole left by the root ball. That's depressing.

On a more beautiful note, I spotted this cool Milkweed Tussock Moth Caterpillar. That's all for now!
~Kirk

Sarah Palin for President?

2008-09-05T10:32:00.000-05:00

Ahhhhhhh! Time for a political post! Can you smell the excitement?
John McCain picked Sarah Palin for his Vice President. This person will be one heartbeat away from leading our country. Is she ready? Is she qualified? What are her values?

Let's explore together!

1. Sarah Palin supports the secessionist Alaska Independence Party who's goal is for Alaska to split away from the United States. She attended their convention in 1994 and her husband was a registered member of the Alaska Independence Party until 2002. He changed his party affiliation to "undeclared" in that year when Sarah decided to run for state office. Six months ago, Sarah Palin told members of the group to "keep up the good work" and "wished the party luck on what she called its 'inspiring convention.'" You can watch the video below that she recorded for their convention.

2. She's inexperienced. She was the mayor of Wasilla, a village with a population of 9,780 (that's one 20th the size of Obama's Illinois congressional district!) and she has been governor of Alaska for less than one full term. Alaska is the 48th most populous state and not exactly a hotbed of international politics. She has only been out of the United States once in her life. (okay, twice if you include Canada.) She didn't even have a passport until last year.

She apparently doesn't even know what a Vice President is supposed to do.

3. She's anti-free speech (a pretty fundamental liberty) as she supports banning books. According to TIME:

"As mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

4. She fires or threatens to fire people who don't agree with or aren't intimidated by her. She asked for the resignation of Mary Ellen Baker, the librarian above as well as the police chief Stambaugh when she became mayor.

Both Stambaugh and Emmons publicly supported Palin's opponent, long-time mayor John Stein during the campaign last fall. When she was elected, Palin questioned their loyalty and initially asked for their resignations. (from the Anchorage Daily News.)

What a wonderful concept of how government power should work.

5. She thinks people who are raped should be forced to give birth to their rapist's child. Wow that looks ridiculous when I write it out but it is true. Now I know this is a touchy issue for people and there are those who believe that a life is a life and that even a mass of two cells is a life and it is wrong to choose when you are ready to start a family. Most people will make an exception though for women who are raped and not force them give birth to their rapist's child. We may not all agree on the issue of abortion but Sarah Palin is more concerned with the possible future of a lump of cells than she is with ruining the life of a women who has been raped. She wants a raped woman to have to see a living reminder of her rapist every day. That's sick.

6. Palin doesn't believe that humans contribute to global warming. Speaking about climate change, she said, "I'm not one though who would attribute it to being manmade." This shows a reckless disregard for science. We've already had eight years of an executive branch that either doesn't understand science or willfully chooses to ignore it because it goes against their corporate money interests. It isn't surprising she denies the cause of global warming considering that...

7. Palin has close ties to Big Oil. Her inauguration was even sponsored by BP. Hmm, yes, an executive branch with close ties to Big Oil. That sure has served us well the last eight years. We don't need another Bush in the whitehouse.

8. Palin opposes comprehensive sex-ed in public schools. She's said she will only support abstinence-only approaches. Hmm, seems to have worked well for her 17 year old unwed pregnant daughter. Her preaching of abstinence at home probably didn't hold any weight as Sarah herself was a month pregnant with her first child when she got married. This woman is supposed to be a moral leader for our country?

9. Palin wants to teach creationism in public schools. She hasn't made clear whether she thinks evolution is a fact. This shouldn't really surprise us. She denies the best science of the day on global warming too. Look, if you want to teach creationism fine, do it in a church. Schools teach science and the scientific method. If Palin is against the concept of evolution then there is no need for her to ever use any new antibiotics. Bacteria can't evolve so multiple drug resistant staph and TB must be myths. Does anyone currently infected want to go give her a big hug and kiss? She's welcome to use all the antibiotics God created 300o years ago but none of those new ones. Those are only for people who understand science.

10. She's not only ignorant when it comes to science, she wildly ignorant of American history too. She apparently thinks the Pledge of Allegiance was written by the founding fathers. When asked if she found the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance offensive, Palin replied, “Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me.” Uhh, Sarah, “Under God” didn't appear in the Pledge until 1954. The rest of the Pledge was written in 1892. That would be over 100 years after the founding of the country.

Migration Begins

2008-09-02T12:00:00.000-05:00

It has been a long while since I posted about birds. I have three birds to add to my yearly list. Two of them are just late additions. I saw a belted kingfisher on the same river trip where I saw the spotted sandpiper that put me at 200 life birds. Since that time, at the beginning of the summer, birding as been slow. The great fall migration has begun though. While working the state fair I saw a flock of blackbirds, they could have been either brewers blackbirds or rusty blackbirds. They were too far away to tell. On my way to work this morning I saw a flock of Red-necked Grebes. They took me a while to ID as they were in their non-breeding plumage already. They were in this small pond near work.

View Larger Map

It is usually a pretty good place to spot water birds.

2008 Running Bird Tally

127 Belted Kingfisher
128 Spotted Sandpiper
129 Red-necked Grebe

Photo-rama

2008-08-18T23:09:00.000-05:00

A blog post is long overdue but teaching summer camp has drained me of all energy. I taught two photography camps this summer and here are

some photos from one of them. I took some photos with the kids while we were out and about. I'll try to post more later.

This gray tree frog was hanging out on the railing outside the front door.

The coneflowers in the prairie are gorgeous and I could take photos of them all day long.

This is a fairly pale four-spotted skimmer.

Here's a groovy shot of a Halloween Pennant dragonfly.

Here's a cool shot of a four-spotted skimmer eating an insect he caught. Click on it to see the larger version and check out his meal. This is a good time to point out that I love my new camera.

This is a cool photo. I've posted photos of female pondhawks before but I finally got a photo of a male. They look really different than the female.

Hail and Storm Photos

2008-07-24T18:30:00.000-05:00

It looks like some of my photos of hail and rain made it onto Chikage Windler's weather blog over at KSTP. Scroll down to see them in the second slideshow.

Hail to thee

2008-07-16T18:30:00.001-05:00

We had a surprise hail storm at work today. Well, it wasn't a total surprise, we saw it coming on radar. The strom cell was moving at 16 knots and had cloud tops at 36,000 feet according to radar. There must have been some pretty serious updrafts to keep this hail up in the air and growing . Quarter sized hail was pretty common. There are a few small dings in most of our cars .

And now for something completely different

2008-07-12T07:56:00.003-05:00

My blog has been taken over as of late by birds. Here's something completely different. Last night a big storm blew through and as the front approached there was the great little band of mammatus clouds. I didn't have a wide enough lens on my camera to capture a really spectacular photo but you get the idea. The weather turned nasty after these clouds pushed on.

200!

2008-07-04T21:33:00.001-05:00

Wednesday, July 2, I went for a canoe trip on the St. Croix River with Paul and our new summer naturalist Jen. While we were there to make sure Jen was familiar with that part of the river, I also had my eye out for a lifer bird. I've been hovering at 199 birds for quite a while now. I thought I might spot a prothonotary warbler or a cerulean warbler or the like. A bank swallow would have even done the trick. We had almost finished with our short paddle and hadn't seen many birds. Just was we came up on the landing for Franconia I spotted a small sandpiper on the shore. It was a spotted sandpiper! Excellent. I didn't have one on my list yet.

I'm pretty sure I had seen one before. I saw what I thought was one while tubing down the Crow river on the fourth of July weekend years ago but at the time I wasn't totally sure about the ID so I let it pass. This one was for sure. It had the spotted breast and was doing the little bobbing up and down thing.

200 birds has been fun and pretty easy without really trying to hard. Seeing 300 is going to actually take some looking! I think I need to go on vacation though so I can rack up some numbers faster. Seeing another 100 birds in Minnesota would be difficult.

Here's some target birds though that I have not seen in Minnesota that shouldn't be too hard. This list would take me about half way to 300.

Grey Jay
Eared Grebe
American Bittern
American Black duck
Green-winged Teal
Snow Goose
Tundra Swan
Northern Goshawk
Ruffed Grouse
Black Tern
Forster's Tern
Herring Gull
Lesser Yellowlegs
Yellow Billed Cukoo
Eastern Screech Owl
Long Eared Owl

Short Eared Owl
Northern Saw-whet Owl
Snowy Owl
Great Grey Owl
Northern Hawk Owl
Whip-poor-will
Black-backed woodpecker
Three-toed woodpecker
Boreal Chickadee
Alder Flycatcher
Willow Flycatcher
Philadelphia Vireo
Purple Martin
Marsh Wren
Sedge Wren
Gray-cheeked Thrush

Veery
American Pipit
Brown Thrasher
Bohemian Waxwing
Bay-brested Warbler
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Cerulean Warbler
Prothonotary Warbler
Pine Warbler
Dickcissel
Brewer's blackbird
Orchard Oriole
Rusty blackbird
Evening Grosbeak
Red Crossbill

Well, time will tell which of those I will see this year. Out of the 200 lifers so far I really liked the tufted puffin I saw from the very edge of the olympic pennisula as well as the American Dipper taking a bath in glacial runoff on Mt. Rainier. I have print photos of both of those and I'll get around to posting them some day. It was only two years ago after all. The birds in Norway were cool too like the Great Spotted Woodpecker on top of the Stavkirke or the Pied Wagtail. My first woodcock was memorable and there were many more. I could spend all night thinking and writing about the adventures with these birds. That's part of what makes it fun!

Dragonflies on the Bog

2008-06-27T20:05:00.001-05:00

I went down to the bog today, camera in hand, for a little professional development. I need to work on my dragonfly ID. The first I came upon was a male Common Whitetail. I only got this one photo before it flew off. I then immediately saw a very different dragonfly. As you can see in this second photo it looks different but it is actually the same species. This is a female Common Whitetail.

Next up was this Eastern Pondhawk. I photographed one in the bog a few years ago as well. It is a common resident. This one was actively chasing or "hawking" some species of what I think was a bee fly.

Very close by I spotted this immature male willow skimmer. It is hard to tell an immature male and a female apart but you can see some white smoky color appearing in the wings just to the outside of the black patches. On an adult male these patches are more apparent and the abdomen will turn gray.

The next species I spotted was a Calico Pennant. It can be identified by the yellow heart shapes running down the abdomen. Since the hearts are yellow this is either an immature male or a female. They would be red on a male. The yellow stigma (that's those solid yellow rectangles on the leading edges of the wings) though tells me that this is a female. They would be red on a male.

The next one isn't the best picture as I could not get a good shot of the abdomen. It is a juvenile or female twelve spotted skimmer. It isn't possible to tell them apart. It looks a lot like a female common whitetail shown in the second photo of this post but as you can just barely see in this photo the lateral yellow stripe on the abdomen is continuous whereas on the common whitetail it is a broken yellow line.

The sixth species I spotted was interesting in that it was the only species that returned to a perch as it hunted. I couldn't get a good shot from the boardwalk so I crawled out on a log in the moat and simply waited for the dragonfly to return to the perch. It still isn't the best diagnostic shot but this is a four spotted skimmer.

The last dragonfly I saw in the bog was a really cool one. It flew so different than the others. It was a Racket-tailed emerald. The two yellow semi-circles at the top of the abdomen are diagnostic.

To be really dorky, I can show it is a Racket-tail emerald for sure because the triangle in the wing shown below has no veins though it which is also diagnostic of this species. That's not something you can spot as it flies by!

Well, not too bad for a short hike though the bog!

~Kirk

Mystery Butterfly

2008-06-26T19:56:00.004-05:00

I took this photo down by the lake today at work. I thought it was a red-spotted purple at first but when I looked closer at the photo there seems to be a few things different than usual. The red seems to be in the wrong place on the top of the wing. A classic red-spotted purple should have those red dots up on the edge of the fore wing not the hind wing. The under wing seems too black and lacks the red spots typical of this species. A lot of the other details are correct though. the two larger white spots on the tip of the fore wing, the white tips leading to two light blue dots then a light blue crescent then black then light blue turning to purple...all of these things are correct but those darn reddish spots! The red-spotted purple IS supposed to have red dots exactly where they appear on this butterfly but they are supposed to be on the underside of the wing, not the top. I vaguely recalled that red-spotted purples hybridize with white admirals, maybe this was a hybrid? I decided to investigate.

Here's a link to a butterfly someone is calling a red-spotted purple and a white admiral hybrid. Looks pretty similar. You can just see some light red spots on the hind wing. But, here's a photo of a butterfly someone in Wisconsin is calling a red-spotted purple and it looks exactly like the one in my photo. The red dots on the hind wing are exactly like those of a white admiral and this butterfly looks like a combination of a white admiral and a red-spotted purple. As it turns out there is a lot of confusion over these butterflies.

Because red-spotted purple and white admiral butterflies freely interbreed, some scientists have decided that they are in fact the same species. This gets into the sticky debate of "What is a species?" In 2001, the white admiral and red-spotted purple were re-classified as subspecies of the newly created species red-spotted admiral.

So, I can safely say this is a red-spotted admiral. Check out this wonderful page of photos to see the variation in this species. Scroll down and the first few photos look just like mine. So, this is one of many variations of red-spotted admiral butterfly created by interbreeding of the two sub-species, red-spotted purple and white admiral.

We all clear now?

~Kirk

Scoot Scoot

2008-06-23T17:30:00.000-05:00

For many years Chelsey and I have talked about getting scooters. It really isn't very practical in Minnesota so it has always been just a dream. With gas prices rising that dream seems at least a little bit more realistic. Scooters are still too expensive to ride just six months a year and the US dollar is so weak that scooter prices are though the roof so there probably isn't a scooter in our future for a little while longer. It's fun to dream though. Here's some pretty pictures. Perhaps my ultimate dream bike right now? A 1966 two tone metallic blue and grey/white Vespa 150 with chrome edging and white sidewall tires. Drool.

Now, the price on something like this, an actual restored 66 vespa with chrome and a custom paint job is astronomical. What Chelsey has long wanted is a Stella, imported by The Genuine Scooter Company. The Stella is made in the same factory in India that made the Vespa PX from 1978-2005. When Piaggio (the manufacturer of the Vespa) decided to no longer make the PX, LML decided to keep making it for themselves and the Stella was born.

Now Chelsey likes the red, and I do too but what about getting a Stella and doing a custom paint job like that Vespa at the top? I did a quick photoshop job. I can't really recreate the shiny metallic paint and I didn't bother with the tires but you get the idea. While this would be gobs less expensive than the 66 vespa a new Stella is still over $3000 and that wouldn't include the cost to make it look something like this. We're probably looking at something like $4000. Still way out of my price range.

Genuine Scooter company does make some of their own scooters and I think this one is okay. It is the Buddy International 150. This is a nice scooter but the front end looks a little undersized. It has some classic styling but is all new. Nice tires. Sticker price is still too high though. I can pick one up locally for $3400. Ouch. Let's try again.
Now here's something different. This is the Charming from Lance Powersports. I really dig this style but it is only made in a 50cc scooter which would be cool for swinging on down to the movie theater but not practical for going to work. I need something that can do 55 mph. I don't plan on going on the highway but the back roads to work are 55 mph roads.
I like the two tone paint jobs available and the handlebars with the non-integrated speedometer. The light is built into the front instead of the handlebars which is not ideal but at least it is cool looking and not ugly like many other scooters with weird shaped front lights. I think this is actually a rip off of a Honda Metropolitan.

While looking at these I discovered the 150cc Lance Vintage. This is really cool. The body is a ripoff of the Honda Joker which is a scooter I liked five or so years ago when I last looked at scooters. Here it is in red. It has chopper style handlebars with the light attached and nice instruments in three clusters. They aren't encased in a plastic dash like many of the other scooters. There are a lot of versions of this bike out there by different companies but Lance seems to have the nicest details. Retail price seems to be $1995 and climbing by the week. They are in demand and the price keeps going up. That makes them pretty unattractive to me. The price has gone up about $500 in the last month! I would save less than $500 per year in gas because my car is so efficient so the dealors have essentially added more than a year to the time to pay this off which makes it impractical. I haven't sat on one of these but it is one of the bigger vintage looking scooters out there which I think is important since I am 6 feet tall and would look really weird on a scooter that was too small. I think I would remove the box on the back as it is kind of lame.

There may be one more option. At the bottom of the barrel (which is more my price point) I can get a bike like this. I'm not wild about the handlebars but they are okay. I can probably get one of these for around $1200. I don't think I like this quite as much as the Vintage but I would want to see one in person. I'm afraid I would look too big on it. The only way to get that low a price is to have one drop shipped to my house and then do some of the assembly myself. I'm not totally opposed to that. I think I would learn a lot about how the bike goes together and be able to fix more down the road.

Reality Check

All of the bikes in this post are 150cc bikes. In reality that isn't enough power for my commute when I need sustained speeds of 55 mph. Sure, some of these bikes can do 55 mph but they aren't meant to sustain that speed and it is hard on the engine. Hills are a problem. That leaves me with few choices. The new Vespas come in a 250 cc model.
You're looking at a $6000 bike. Forget it. I maybe could pick one up used for $4000, still too much or maybe used and dented for less.

Dreaming's free.

Between the 5's

2008-06-20T09:57:00.004-05:00

At Birds and Beers last night someone asked how long it would take for hummingbirds to find a new feeder. My answer, between the 5's. It takes somewhere between five minutes and five years. I'm pretty comfortable that that is an accurate albeit less than useful assessment.

Chelsey and I put up a feeder a few weeks ago when we spent a gift certificate her parent's had given her for the garden center down the street. We bought some roma tomato plants too.

Some time within the next five years I hope to report that hummingbirds have found the feeder.

I'll go ahead and update my bird tally for the year. I added a eastern meadowlark at Afton State Park on Father's Day. Chelsey took Cam and me there and we all went birding. Note in the photo we're both sporting our new organic 2008 Warner Nature Center summer t-shirts. The logo this year is a swallowtail butterfly. I had seen a meadowlark on a telephone line weeks ago but as I didn't hear it so I couln't say for sure it wasn't a Western Meadowlark. We were only there for a short time and only hiked along the path on the prairie but we saw 15 species of birds which wasn't too bad for a casual stroll though the park. Chelsey enjoyed hearing the clay colored sparrows as she had just told me that she and Camden had been playing with my bird sounds book and was surprised how many birds sounded like insects. We heard and then spotted the buzzing clay-colored sparrows just down the trail so that was fun.
Here's Cam lounging in his car seat before we headed home.
2008 Running Bird Tally:
127 Eastern Meadowlark

Almost a Milestone

2008-06-07T20:02:00.001-05:00

This blurry picture is a milestone. I'll explain why in a little bit.

I've been actively watching birds now for three years. I'm a naturalist so I've always had a general interest in birds but I've only taken a greater interst in the past few years. I was more of a plant guy in the past as they don't move. A few years back my co-worker Paul mentioned that he hadn't gotten his hundred birds yet. I asked him what we was talking about and he said that he had set a goal of trying to see 100 species of birds by June 1st each year. I thought it sounded hard but he encouraged me and said that if I stopped to count I was probably half way there already. I started to count up the birds I had seen that year and sure enough I had seen a bunch. By the end of 2004 I had seen 85 birds without really even looking.

The next year, 2005, I was hooked and thought this thing counting thing was fun. I ended up with 109 birds for the year. Most people ignore common birds because they are so, well , common! Starting fresh at a count of ZERO each year means that there are hundreds of birds to get all excited about again. I have a reason to be excited to see a crow or a rock pigeon. I think as a naturalist it helps me as well as I am more in tune with the phenology of the world around me and I pay closer attention to changes in not just species but also to weather patterns. After all, a good strong wind out of the south can either bring in new migrants, help them leave or just encourage them fly right on by and not even stop.

The third year, 2006, I finished out with 126 birds thanks to a trips to Arizona, Washington State and Norway. In Washington I saw a pelagic cormorant, a tufted puffin, clarks nutcracker, an American dipper and more. Norway brought European Magpies, great crested grebes, graylag geese, grey herons, carrion crows, european robins, pied wagtails, and, of course, great tits. Yes, I'm talking about the birds.

The fourth year I ended up with count of 143 helped by one of the volunteers Jane Wicklund who frequents the nature center. She's a snow bird who heads down to Arizona each year and we met up at that famous Arizona bird hot spot Boyce Thompson Arboretum where we saw 22 new species before lunch. I got to see a vermillion flycatcher, a bell's vireo, inca dove, and a handfull of other birds I'd never seen in my life. I also led the fossil hunt out in North Dakota where I picked up a western meadowlark, swainson hawk, lark bunting and lazuli bunting.

This year is different. With the arrival of my son, there are no trips out of Minnesota planned and birding time is mostly restricted to hikes at work. I'm happy with my progress though. Halfway through the year I have 126 birds and plenty of time to find more. A few weeks back I saw a Cape May Warbler which was a lifer for me, i.e. a bird I had never seen before in my life. Now I haven't keet a life list in the past, I just started counting birds a few years back since it was a fun way to learn birds and look forward to seeing them. The Cape May Warbler made me wonder though. What would my life list number be? I had also just finished reading The Big Year in which people compete for how many birds they can see in North America in one year. Nevermind life lists, these guys year lists are more than I will probably ever see in my life. I decided to total mine up.

I copy and pasted all of my blog entries for birds into an spreadsheet and then and removed doubles. To my surprise I was only 6 lifer birds away from the milestone of 200! That's a far cry from my first year of seeing only 85 birds total. A couple of days later I saw a Wilson's warbler bringing me closer and then there was an incredible day with three lifers, Blackpoll, Blackburnian and Canada Warblers bringing me to 198.

Today while getting ready to leave work I called my wife Chelsey on the phone to let her know I was coming home and I saw a bird fly by my office window. From the behavior, flying out from a perch and returning, I could tell it was a flycatcher. I peered out the window with my binoculars and was greeted by the sight of a large flycatcher and I wasn't sure what it was. It had distinctive markings though. I looked in my trusty Sibley guide and sure enough, the flycatcher with the dark vest and light breast is the Olive-sided flycatcher. The blurry photo at the beginning of the post was taken at an odd angle through a window with a screen. Of course it is a blurry photo but not only is it bird 126 of the year but more importantly, I'd never seen one before. That's bird 199 on my life list.

One more to go!

A couple more birds

2008-05-31T17:49:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, May 31st, I took a few minutes to hike down to the bog while some glue dried on a work project. The Great-crested Flycatchers were going crazy down there! I did end up seeing two new birds for the year. I finally got a good look at an ovenbird and just before seeing the ovenbird I heard the long call of a Winter Wren. Sure enough I spotted him just a little further up the trail.

124 Ovenbird
125 Winter Wren

The Storm

2008-05-29T15:27:00.005-05:00

The sunday before Memorial day a tornado ripped through the community of Hugo, Minnesota. It has been well covered in the media. What most people don't know is that the storm next visited where I work at the Lee and Rose Warner Nature Center. The photo below shows where we believe was a tornado entered the forest along the edge of the prairie. If you look closely, the enormous oak tree on the right has no top, it has been completely sheared off. We're looking at a one hundred foot around hole in the forest. The trees were toppled in a clockwise direction in the circle.

The path of destruction continued in an easterly direction and through the middle of a garlic mustard study area set up by graduate students from the University of Minnesota. Many of the study plots were crushed. Here I am by one of the trees in the study area for size reference. There were actually three swaths of destruction through the center as near as we can tell. Interestingly they all seem to converge at one point down by the lake. That are looks particularly bad.This third photo is from the area where all the paths of destruction converged. You can see the incredible forces involved as this enormous oak tree was literally twisted apart.
In the long run, this sort of thing is totally natural. Large old inflexible trees fall while young trees tat can bend more easily survive. The big canopy hogging trees are felled and new young trees that survived will begin the race to fill the gaps in the canopy. There's a catch though. We've mucked around with the natural order of things. The forest is infested with invasive european buckthorn. It is often kept in check under the canopy of trees deep in the forest but when a large tree falls it creates ideal conditions for the buckthorn and it crowds out native species for the light. The native trees can't compete. It will be interesting to see how the forest copes with this latest hit.

More photos here.

Bird-a-palooza

2008-05-28T21:35:00.001-05:00

Here's a quick bird update for the week. It was a good week! Sunday I swung by Lake Como while Chelsey and Camden we on a play date and I saw a Northern Rough-winged Swallow.

Monday at work Paul pointed out that the Blue-gray Gnatcatchers were back. He always seems to be keyed into their return. They were all over the tops of the trees right outside the front door.

Tuesday, May 20th I helped set up some mist nets in the morning with Paul and a volunteer. We walked past the area where we usually see Blue-winged Warblers and sure enough we could hear the buzzy electric like call. The bird flushed across the street but we were setting nest there too and we soon spotted the bird. I had a few minutes at the very end of the day so I swung by the bog to see who would be there in the afternoon. I didn't even have to go down onto the boardwalk. In the afternoon the sun shines on the north end of the bog and I spotted a little bird taking a bath in am open spot near the edge of the bog. He flew up into an alder bush and I could see right away that it was a Chestnut-sided Warbler. There were many redstarts around as well. Wednesday morning I headed to the bog for a quick look around and saw a Wood Thrush on the hill on the south side. Coming back across the boardwalk I could see a small bird in a maple tree leafing out. I took a look and it was a very yellow warbler. I watched for a few minutes as he madly hopped from branch to branch and soon I could see a little black cap. It was a Wilson's Warbler! Woo hoo, that's a lifer. On the way home I saw my first Eastern Kingbird on a barbed wire fence along Norell ave just south of work.

Thursday I escorted a group down to the lake at work and on the way back I saw my first Scarlet Tanager of the year. They are always breathtaking. I could hear a lot of Red-eyed Vireos as well and finally got a good look at one. That was also a first of the year. On the hike back I also saw American Robins, Great-crested Flycatchers, White-breasted Nuthatches, and a Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

Over the Memorial Day weekend I went to my inlaws house in Wisconsin and saw a Tufted Titmouse and House Wrens in their yard. Both first of the years. The little wren was taking nesting material into a nestbox.

Sunday, May 25th a likely tornado or possibly straight line winds ripped a swath of destruction though the nature center. Tuesday we went out as a staff to assess the damage on the trails. I'm post more about that later but the good news is that during the hike I spotted a wealth of new birds including three lifers. I saw a Blackpoll warbler, a Blackburnian Warbler and a Canada Warbler. For my year list I also added Mourning Warbler and an Eastern Wood-pewee. It was the best view of a Mourning Warbler I'd ever had and it was gorgeous. The Blackburnian Warbler was breathtaking as well.

2008 Running Bird Tally
106 Northern Rough-winged Swallow
107 Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
108 Blue-winged Warbler
109 Chestnut-sided Warbler
110 Wood Thrush
111 Wilson's Warbler
112 Eastern Kingbird
113 Scarlet Tanager
114 Red-eyed Vireo
115 Warbling Vireo
116 Swamp Sparrow
117 House Wren
118 Tufted Titmouse
119 Blackpoll Warbler
120 Mourning Warbler
121 Eastern Wood-pewee
122 Blackburnian Warbler
123 Canada Warbler

Birds of 2008 (104 & 105)

2008-05-17T18:00:00.000-05:00

Today I was back out at work to teach a birthday party. One of the bird banders caught a yellow-throated vireo, the same species that I saw at the tops of the trees on Thursday. Here it is.

My afternoon group canceled so I went for a short hike on a beautiful day. I wanted to see a field sparrow. As soon as I got to the field I heard thunder and the wind picked up. The day turned dark and I knew I wasn't going to see much. I saw song sparrows, a robin a common grackle. I headed over to the farm property we own across the street to look for a swamp sparrow and check on things. I discovered someone had stolen the pump well. I didn't see a swamp sparrow. I did however spot a beautiful male American Redstart. Yea!

As soon as I got back to the building to do more work inside, the weather blew over and it became beautiful again. Typical.

I heard the banders caught a golden-winged warbler so that's another species I'll have to keep an eye out for on the property. While I worked at my desk I could see a little bird flitting around in a tree out the window so I put up my binoculars and sure enough, a Cape May Warbler.

2008 Running Bird Tally.

104 American Redstart
105 Cape May Warbler

103 birds!

2008-05-15T20:37:00.001-05:00

I went down to the bog at the end of the day and saw my first in the wild common yellow throat. I had already seen one from bird banding but I don't count that. Just before I took the above photo a gray catbird landed in front of me but I didn't get the camera on him fast enough! Speaking of fast moving hard to catch with a camera birds, here's a female western palm warbler. You can see she has a leg band. I wonder if we banded her or if someone else did?

I could hear great tailed flycatchers and did eventually catch a glimpse of one. I also photographed this least flycatcher (below) after I phished a little to draw him in.

I posed a really poor photo of a northern waterthrush last month. The new photo below is still not great but it looks like a masterpiece compared to the old one.

I got a decent photo of a myrtle warbler. They are everywhere this year!

I was really hoping to see an american redstart but that will have to wait for another day.

On Thursday I took a brake at work from some intensive computer time trying to plan 2008-2009 program schedules to hike down to the bog. I saw a Swainson's Thrush which was nice though the photos I took are not worth posting. I did get this decent shot of a black and white warbler.

At the end of the day I could hear a bird up in the trees above my car. I was hoping it might be a scarlet tanager but figured it was a robin. It was singing awfully lazy though. I saw a little tiny bird forty feet up and pointed my binoculars. Sure enough he was the one singing. It was a yellow-throated vireo. Man I need to work on bird call ID more. That put me at 103 birds for the year. It feels good to be over 100 before June!

2008 Running Bird Tally
98 Common yellow-throat
99 Gray Catbird
100 Least Flycatcher
101 Great-crested Flycatcher
102 Swainson's thrush
103 Yellow-throated vireo

The Return of an Elusive Bird

2008-05-13T18:15:00.002-05:00

Saturday, May 10th I saw an Orange-crowned Warbler at work while I waited for an afternoon group to arrive. While down at the lake teaching canoing a Ruby-throated Hummingbird whizzed over the kids heads while I explained strokes. That was my first hummingbird of 2008. I could hear ovenbirds as well but didn't see them.

Sunday was mother's day and I saw my first House Finch of the year at their feeders. Returning home that evening I heard the first chimney swifts of the year as I got out of the car and quickly looked up to catch of glimpse of them.

Today, Tuesday May 13th seemed like a pretty dreary day but it wasn't too bad for birds and I didn't even leave the building! While I worked on 2008-2009 schedules I could see birds flitting around in a maple tree out my office window. I looked though my binoculars and they were Nashville Warblers. A beautiful yellow bellied sapsucker landed in the same tree while I watched. I looked again a few hours later and I'm glad I did. The birds I saw later were Tennessee Warblers! That's a first of the year for me! Woo hoo. A while later I was curious if anyone had recorded Tennessee Warbers on our bird tally at work. I strolled into the classroom and looked out the window at the feeders. Wow, there were a lot of birds in the drizzly rain. There were nuthatches, and lots of beautiful American goldfinches, ohh there's the Baltimore Oriole and a Rose-breasted Grosbeak and . . . what's that on the ground? Holy sh*t! I ran full speed across the building, flung open the office doors and shouted "RED HEADED WOODPECKER!!!" while I grabbed my new SLR camera off my desk. Everyone in the office poured out behind me as we ran across the building and then slowed as we approached the windows. It was still there! Some of my co-workers had never seen on in their lives so it was really fun. While I shot photos, a number of turkeys showed up too.

I haven't seen a Red-headed Woodpecker at Warner in six years. There was one there my first year but they haven't been around since then. He was having a grand old time with the trees so hopefully he'll stick around all summer and nest. I shot a lot of photos but the lighting conditions were horrible. The shots look better if you click on them to view the larger sized images. I threw in a shot of the Baltimore Oriole I really like and the female Rose-breasted Grosbeak as well. Enjoy!
While driving home I also saw an indigo bunting which was a first of the year for me. Sorry, no photo. I saw it for about half a second.

2008 Running Bird Tally
92 Orange-crowned Warbler
93 Ruby-throated Hummingbird
94 House Finch
95 Chimney Swift
96 Tennessee Warbler
97 Indigo Bunting

Phoebe Webcam up and running

2008-05-09T18:00:00.000-05:00

Paul and I got the Phoebe webcam up and running this week at work. New cables and adapters arrived on Tuesday so I hooked it all up and when I looked at the computer I could see there was an egg. Two days later there was still only one egg so I was a little worried. We went to change the angle of the camera to get a better image of the nest but it didn't seem to make a difference until we realized the images were not refreshing. We reset everything and poof, there were magically three eggs! That means by a stroke of luck I got the camera up exactly on day one of egg laying! The second egg must have been laid yesterday the third this morning. The photo above is of the three eggs. We thought we had it all working but at about 3:45 yesterday it lost signal again. Paul re-set it at 8:00 in the morning today and there was a phoebe on the nest! It was there for maybe 30 seconds and when it left there were four eggs! We can't say for certain that it laid it right then but it seems likely as she doesn't seem to ever return to the nest unless she is laying eggs as she is not incubating them yet.

The photo below is a live shot it is updated every 20 seconds and the blog just grabs the current image. It will not refresh unless you re-load the blog or go to the actual Cornell website and watch there. We are doing this in collaboration with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Hopefully the plague of bad technology that cursed us last year will not continue.

Grosbeaks and Orioles

2008-05-08T18:51:00.002-05:00

Look who's back. Tuesday I saw my first Rose-breasted Grosbeak the the feeders. Look at that beak! Chomp!

Thursday the Orioles showed up. We put the feeders out one or two days ago. Good timing. Look at this bird. He KNOWS he looks good. At the end of the day I went along on our new traditional Thursday at 3:00 hike. Paul spotted a blue headed Vireo and I got a good look too. There were many chipping sparrows and song sparrows but we could hear clay-colored sparrows and field sparrows. The clay colored make a buzz-buzz-buzz call that you might mistake for an insect. The field sparrows make a call that our former director Tom Anderson described as someone dropping a ping pong ball. It is a series of rapidly ascending notes and the frequency between them increases as well. I eventually saw the clay colored sparrow and probably saw the field sparrow. Paul saw one and I got my binoculars on it but I could never have told what it was from the look I got so I'm not counting it. There will be plenty of opportunities to see field sparrows.

2008 Running Bird Tally
88 Rose-breasted Grosbeak
89 Baltimore Oriole
90 Blue-headed Vireo
91 Clay Colored Sparrow

Birding Carlos Avery

2008-05-05T19:16:00.001-05:00

I had a great time birding at Carlos Avery WMA on Monday, May 5 with my co-workers as a staff development morning. Here's our bird list for the entire day. A couple of these birds were seen offsite of Carlos Avery.

Red-winged Blackbird, Canada Goose, Blue-winged Teal, Mallard, Song Sparrow, American Robin, Hooded Merganser, Great Egret, Great Blue
Heron, American Crow, Brown-headed Cowbird, Eastern Bluebird, Pied-billed grebe, Tree swallow, American Goldfinch, House Finch, Common Grackle, Myrtle Warbler, Palm Warbler, Chipping Sparrow, American kestrel, Bufflehead, Downy Woodpecker, Black-capped Chickadee, Blue Jay, Common Loon, White-Crowned Sparrow, Northern Flicker, American Coot, Swamp Sparrow, Yellow Warbler, Northern Shoveler, wood duck, Northern Cardinal, Gadwall, Northern Harrier, Cliff Swallow, Barred Owl, Red-tailed Hawk, Common Merganser, Lesser Scaup, Mourning Dove, Ruby-Crowned Kinglet, Wild Turkey, Song Sparrow, Sandhill Crane, Ring-necked Duck, Bald Eagle, Ring-billed Gull, Slate-colored Junco.

That's 50 birds for the day. I did manage to get some photos with my new camera. I got this shot of a "butter butt" aka the Myrtle Warbler. It isn;t the best shot ever but I live the water in the background.

I had a chance to get some great shots of Great Egrets. There were two of them who posed for some fun shots. I'll probably post more later but I don't have a lot of time to look through them all right now. Be sure to click on them for the larger view. you can see some beautiful breeding plumage.

Two other fun shots. There were lots of blue-winged teal but I only managed to capture this one half-way decent shot as they were very shy.
The last shot is this long view of a sandhill crane. Maybe I'll try to crop it in later. Click for more detail. It is hanging out in a recently burned area.
That's all for now! It was a good day of birding and nice to try out my camera. I need more practice with it but it was a good start. That morning I also caught a passing glimpse of a Red-headed Woodpecker on Co Rd. 15. It flew out and landed on a street sign just as I passed.

2008 Running Bird Tally
82 Red-headed Woodpecker
83 Palm Warbler
84 Yellow Warbler
85 Cliff Swallow
86 White-Crowned Sparrow,
87 Northern Flicker

TOWHEE!

2008-05-01T14:33:00.005-05:00

One day after I saw an elusive eastern towhee in the woods on out on our highway clean-up, guess who showed up at work? I didn't have my new camera yet but I got this decent shot anyhow. Today I was at Lake Calhoun for the Great Strides walk for Cystic Fibrosis (more on that later). Almost as soon as I got out of the car I saw a little bird on the ground. It was a black-throated green warbler! It was so close I didn't even need binoculars. I guess being at the lake it was used to people. Being a migrator you wonder if it spends time near people in the south as well. The barn swallows were in full force at the lake and I also saw several pairs of horned grebes. There was a raft of coots hanging out on the west side of the lake.

2008 Running Bird Tally
79 Black-throated Green Warbler
80 Barn Swallow
81 Horned Grebe

The Birds Keep Coming!

2008-04-28T09:35:00.007-05:00

Last weekend I headed up to Audubon Center of the North Woods for a work retreat. The birds were a treat. At first we saw the same of suspects. There were downy woodpeckers, black capped chickadees, grackles, mourning doves, red-breasted nuthatches, song sparrows and juncos. LOTS of juncos. When we started to hike around we also saw hermit thrushes and took a closer look at some of those sparrows that were everywhere. True, lots of them were song sparrows but not all of them. I noticed one looked very orange. I knew it was something different. Paul Ron and I identified it as a La Conte sparrow. There were a number of them around the property. When people heard that we had seen one they came out to look with us as no one had ever seen one. Some of these folks were life-long birders so it was fun to see them get so excited. We soon realized that there were also savanna sparrows around the buildings as well. While up the I saw an osprey hovering while looking for food and a yello bellied sap sucker. Both were firsts of the year. On a hunch I scoped out a litter ephemoral wetland after lunch and saw my first Black and White Warbler of the year. There was a female Northern Shoveler in the pond but sadly no male. I was bummed to not see a Harrier (aka marsh hawk) at the marsh that another group saw. Luckily we spotted two of them on the drive home! We also saw several cormorants flying near a rookery along Hwy 35.

Yesterday, Tuesday April 29th I saw an eastern towhee while doing a roadside clean-up for work. No, photos, sorry. Great news though, my new digital camera arrives this week! Look forward to lots of photos!

2008 Running Bird Tally
71 La Conte Sparrow
72 Savanna Sparrow
73 Osprey
74 Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker
75 Black and White Warbler
76 Harrier
77 Double Crested Cormorant
78 Eastern Towhee

70 birds

2008-04-25T09:06:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm a little embarassed by the photos in this post. It looks like I may buy a new camera soon so hopefully that will help. The other problem is brown birds in a brown landscape. These photos explain camouflage pretty well. As usual, click on them for larger photos.

Wednesday April 16th I swung by Lake Como on the way home for approximately 3 minutes. That was all the time I had before I had to be home to take over baby care duties. Think of it as speed birding. I mostly wanted to see how much ice was out. I saw a number of different types of waterfowl which was nice. The gem of the three minutes though was a pair of Red-Breasted Mergansers (first of the year) in the middle of the open water. There was still some ice but lots of open water too.

Thursday, April 17th was the day of my saga with the Great Horned Owl. I had technically already seen one this year but what an up close view! When I left the school there was a Killdeer walking around in the front yard. I had the camera in my hand as we had taken photos of the owl so I figured I might as well get a shot of the Killdeer. It was only about 10-15 feet from my car. I set my other gear down and right then a car pulled into the lot and scared it off. Oh well. When I returned to the nature center I saw a golden crowned kinglet and a white throated sparrow. My co-worker Paul had pointed out a white throated sparrow that morning under the feeders. The golden-crowned kinglet, white throated sparrow and killdeer were all first of the year species sightings for me.

I did finally manage to get a half-way decent photo of a hermit thrush while on a lunchtime hike. Still a little blurry though.

Somewhere around this time I spotted a Common Loon at Keller Lake while I drove by at high speed.

On Monday I had the day off so I headed to the bass ponds for some birding. I had never been there before. I ended up with a pretty impressive list of species for the day. I saw lots of American Coots, Canada Geese, Blue Winged Teal, Pied billed grebe, Hooded Merganser, Red-winged Blackbirds, Black-capped Chickadees, Turkey Vultures, Mallard Ducks, American Robins, tree swallows, white throated sparrows, wood ducks, White Pelicans, a Great Blue Heron, Northern Shovelers, Brown Headed Cowbirds, Northern Cardinals, Song Sparrows, Eastern Phoebes, a Downy Woodepcker, Yellow Rumped Warblers (Myrtle), and what I thing was a greater-yellow legs but couldn't be sure. I will definitely have to go back there when I get my new camera.

After the bass ponds I drove though the refuge on Black Dog road and stopped at the east outflow. I'm glad I did as I spotted a Nashvile warbler! There were also song sparrows, coots, mallards, and robins. I also stopped off briefly at the visitor's center (which was closed being Monday) and saw a cooper's hawk.

That was a good morning of birding. I saw 7 first of the year species. The Northern Shoveler and the Blue Winged Teal were lifers for me as I had never seen them!

April 22 the first chipping sparrows showed up at work.

April 24th I headed out for an outreach event at work and on the way back I saw a Green Heron in a pond along Norell Ave/Co. Rd. 5. That makes for an even 70 bird species spotted so far this year.

Running Bird Tally 2008
59 Red-Breasted Merganser
60 White-Throated sparrow
61 Killdeer
62 Golden-Crowned Kinglet
63 Common Loon
64 American Coot
65 Pied-billed Grebe
66 White Pelican
67 Brown Headed Cowbird
68 Nashville Warbler
67 Northern Shoveler
68 Blue Winged Teal
69 Chipping Sparrow
70 Green Heron

NSA Hard at Work

2008-04-24T18:10:00.004-05:00

Here's a screen shot from my traffic statistics program that tracks who visits my blog. Looks like someone at the NSA was reading my blog yesterday. First off, what does my blog have to do with National Security? The person landed on my page by googling the word "cephelopod." I'm proud to say my page comes up a respectable 9th on google. Still though, what do cephelopods have to do with national security? I can only assume someone was bored and surfing the web at work. Don't you think if you worked for the biggest electronic spying agency in the world you would be a little more careful with how you use your time on your computer? I mean come on, if I can tell this person is screwing around at work don't you think his or her bosses can figure it out to? Such is the quality of our national security I guess. Good to know the government is keeping tabs on cephelopod fossils and not wasting time keeping us safe. So, to user with IP address 63.239.69.1 in the MD Procurement Department thank for for visiting my site. You might want to consider doing it from home.

~Kirk

Another Day at the Office

2008-04-17T18:17:00.006-05:00

I got a phone call a little after 9:00 this morning. Marine Elementary, which is about a 10 minute drive away and one of our partner schools called to say that an owl was caught in their net batting cage at the school. "Is it a big owl I asked?" Yup. Sounded like it was a big owl. I was picturing an owl caught up in the air but luckily they told me it was down on the ground. It could have been tangled since yesterday evening and hanging upside down would be pretty hard on it.

No one there knew what to do and we're the closest people with any experience with raptors. I grabbed a pair of gloves and a raptor toolkit and jumped in my car. When I got to the school I proceeded down the hallway to the back door and I could see the owl through the window in door. Even from about 50 feet away I could immediately tell it was a Great Horned Owl by the size and "horns" raised high. Lucky me. The largest owl in North and South America. Great horned Owls have a 44 inch wingspan and needle sharp talons over an inch long. All of the teachers came out to watch as it was conference day and there were no kids in school.
When I approached the owl it struggled just a little but I think it knew at this point it wasn't getting away. It only hissed once. I did a quick assessment. I'm looking at the bird in the photo above and I have my big blue gloves on. The owl has backed away from the netting a little. The towel on the ground was in case I needed to wrap the owl up to keep it calm while I worked on it or if I had to transport it.

One of the Owl's feet was caught in the netting pretty badly. It had made things worse by struggling. It looked like the bird had gotten a foot though the netting and then caught. Parts of the net were tightly wound around the foot and leg. It probably tried to fly away at some point and did some spinning around. There was about a foot of netting twisted around below the foot and then bird was holding onto that. I could have easily cut this away but my primary concern was not letting the bird go with netting still wrapped around the foot cutting off circulation. This was clearly a gloves off job. I removed the gloves and set to work cutting one strand at a time. I felt along the birds leg to make sure I got them all hiding under the feathers. I couldn't see them so I was going by touch. I didn't look the owl in the eye to help keep it calm but you can see it was staring at me the whole time. There was some abrasion to the foot but not real bad. I added some styptic to the foot to help the wounds heal up but there wasn't any actual bleeding. In the photos above and below I am cutting away at the net. There is a mini van in the background in the lower photo. Word must have gotten out about the owl as there were people in the van watching and there were some neighborhood kids on the playground as well. I was pretty focused on the task at hand so I didn't even notice the kids.

Once I was sure the foot was free of entanglements I was ready to help it let go of the net. I slipped the last few loops off and the owl just laid there not sure what to do. I realized that the owl was going to have trouble getting out. I thought one side of the batting cage was totally open but it turns out there is only a small hole. What are the odds he/she would fly in though that hole? I lifted the net and pulled it back behind the bird so it would have a clear flight out. It sat there for a moment and then took off. It flew a few feet and then did a 180 toward a wetlands to the south. The second it was off the ground it was being chased by crows. A small chorus of cheers from the staff and kids on the playground went up when it flew. It looked like it was flying fine. I was glad I could help it out and glad that I felt comfortable enough to work around the owl since I have the honor of working with raptors at work. Just another day on the job!

~Kirk

The First Warbler!

2008-04-14T13:23:00.013-05:00

Monday April 14th I took a quick lunchtime hike around the bog. On the hike I spotted two firsts of the year. There was a Hermit thrush and a Northern Waterthrush. Sorry, no photo of the hermit thrush, I forgot I had a camera in my pocket!

I did snap a photo of the waterthrush and this is a sad sign of things to come. I don't have a good telephoto lens so pictures end up looking like this. This is cropped too! I know you're looking at it thinking, where's the bird? Click to see the larger version. The bird is right in the middle. Great camouflage. Technically the waterthrush is in the warbler family so that's the first warbler spotting of the year!

On Tuesday, a strong wind blew all day and I knew some birds would be riding in into the nature center. While walking through the downstairs I spotted a bird in the trees through the windows. I was a good distance from the windows but something told me to take a closer look. Bingo. Hello my prettie. Myrtle is back! The Yellow Rumped (Myrtle) Warbler. I grabbed a camera and luckily he kept coming back to the same tree. The autofocus was driving me crazy though and I have a LOT of photos of a blurry bird with really crisply focused branches. An Eastern Phoebe also landed on a branch about six feet away but of course the autofocus completely messed up the photo. Bah!

2008 Running bird Tally:
56 Hermit Thrush
57 Northern Waterthrush
58 Yellow Rumped Warbler (myrtle)

A couple good days for Birds

2008-04-09T17:51:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, April 5th I headed out to work to teach a Girl Scout Try-It program. On the way there I passed boot lake and there were one or two muskrats at each little hole in the lake. It was like they had just come out of hibernation and were worshiping the sun. It was a very cool sight and there were lots of them on the lake.

When I arrived at the nature center in the morning, the American robins were calling loudly and I saw the eastern phoebe singing while perched on the tripod for our weather station. Inside, I quickly worked to set up the program and noticed a female turkey at the feeders. Just behind her was a large make turkey strutting around with his feathers all fluffed up in full mating display. I sadly had to interrupt their little courtship to go outside to fill the feeders. I grabbed the camera on my way out but only managed to snap this shot of the male turkey taking evasive action against me.

Part of the Try-It I was teaching was to watch for birds. Great! We all grabbed binoculars and hit the windows. We saw downy woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers and red bellied woodpeckers. There were white breasted nuthatches and black capped chickadees. We saw a brown creeper and American goldfinches. There was also a flock of slate colored dark eyed juncos (about 20). This has been an interesting flock. It showed up after the big snow last week. There have been a number of birds mixing in with the flock. On Saturday there was a fox sparrow (click picture to left for larger view of the fox sparrow) but also another bird I at first thought might be the American Tree Sparrow I had seen with them a few days earlier. It wasn't a tree sparrow.

It was actually a song sparrow! Woo hoo, my first of the year. You can click this photo to enlarge it as well.

We decided to go for a hike and take our binoculars with us. When we reached the prairie I had the kids listen for birds. Sure enough, there was some honking and a Canada Goose flew over. Within seconds I heard Sandhill Cranes and one flew right over our heads at tree top level. It was a fantastic view and the kids were fascinated by this enormous bird. That was just the first of many great views of Sandhills we got that morning as multiple birds made slow fly-bys. Just a little ways further, a large Turkey Vulture came over the rise in the prairie and showed of his flying technique. While we talked about it, one of the parents asked how I could tell it wasn't an eagle. Well, I explained, you usually only see bald eagles in Minnesota and (at least the adults) have white feathers on their heads and tail. It tends to stand out, well, like THAT I said as I pointed to the large bald eagle soaring 40 feet over our heads. Nice.

We later spotted a kettle of bald eagles and when I looked more closely, circling up with them was a red-tailed hawk.

We hiked up though the prairie and looped back when suddenly we were surrounded by swirling birds. Ah ha! The Tree Swallows are back! The second new bird of the day! Just for good measure, we also saw a crow before we left the prairie.

That was all the birds we saw that morning but my afternoon group also saw a red-shouldered hawk. That made for a total of 20 different birds that day. I cleaned up and headed home. On the way home I spotted a female American Kestrel along Norell Ave (likely the mate of the male I saw a few days ago) and I saw a Great Blue Heron in the marsh on the corner of Norell and Co. Rd. 7. Carefully watching the ponds, I slammed on the brakes and pulled over on Co. Rd. 7 when I came upon the only open pond. There were 3 ducks in it. 2 males and one female. That could get ugly later! They were scaups. But which one? Lesser or Greater? They look almost identical but thanks to my trusty Sibley guide in my car I was able to tell after studying them for a while that they were lesser scaups. I had such a great view. It is times like this that really makes me want a good camera and lens. My old film camera is pretty good and I like my lens pretty well but I would have a hard time going back to film now. For one thing, it is so expensive to develop!

To top off the day I saw some mallards, red-winged blackbirds and starlings so that put my final bird count for the day at 26 species (3 of which were new for the year) which isn't too shabby for this time of year!

Wednesday morning (4/9/08) on my drive to work I saw lots of gulls flying about. They seemed to come back starting last Friday. I'm assuming they are ring-billed gulls but I will hold off on counting them until I can verify. At the marsh on the corner of Norell Ave and Co. Rd. 7 in Washington county I saw white in the now slightly open water and pulled over. Trumpeter swans! There were two of them. One was swimming and another was nestled back in the dried vegetation. Through my binoculars I also now could see that the open water was covered with ring necked ducks. That's two new species for the year at once. Nice!

I pulled down the driveway at work and immediately noticed the water in the "peeper pond" directly across from the building was now open. Sure enough, there was something on the surface. I slowed down and raised up my binoculars. There were a couple of mallards but lots of wood ducks. They were beautiful! Oh, and what's that on the other side of the pond? Why a male hooded merganser! That's two more firsts of the year. Four new species in five minutes.

On my way home I stopped at the same marsh on the corner of Norell and 7 and spotted a bufflehead in with the ring necks. I also saw a great egret in the marshy area next to Fleet Farm on Hwy 36. That was first of the year sightings for both of them.

2008 Running Bird Tally

47 Song Sparrow
48 Tree Swallow
49 Lesser Scaup
50 Trumpeter Swan
51 Ring-necked Duck
52 Wood duck
53 Hooded Merganser
54 Bufflehead
55 Great Egret

SPRING!

2008-04-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

On April first I started out the month by seeing my first Great Blue Heron of the year in stream along County Road 7 in Washington County. They'd been seen on the river in Stillwater for a few weeks now but with water slowly starting to open up elsewhere I finally spotted one.

Wednesday, April 2nd I saw my first Turkey Vulture of the year on the way home from work. I thought I saw a wood duck too but I thought better than to slam on my brakes on a busy road and flip a u-turn. I had done exactly that about 10 miles back where the road was more rural but I was only a mile from hwy 36. The reason I turned around before was that I caught a glimpse of a large hawk on the passenger side of my car and in the rear-view mirror I could see that it had landed on a fence post. The hawk looked HUGE and at first I thought there was no way it could be a red-tail. It flew off though and sure enough, there was a big old red tail. It must have been a large female.

Since I made great time with traffic, I also stopped in quickly at Harriet Alexander Nature Center for a quick stroll. I saw cardinals, robins and red-winged blackbirds but I was even more excited to get a pretty good look at a northern shrike. Out in the middle of the wetland area I also came upon a beautiful flock of common grackles. When I looped back past the building a heard a noise back out near the edge of the wetland and brought up my binoculars. I saw a blue jay. The sound didn't seem right though. I soon found out why. The northern shrike was in the same tree and he was pissed off about the blue jay. He keep chasing him out of the tree. Blue Jays are big but he kept his distance. Don't mess with shrikes. Funny thing though. He kept on coming back. The fight between the two was really interesting.

The next morning I had to run some work related errands and saw a pond in Stillwater full of geese, gulls and two-tone ducks I am assuming were ring necks but I only caught a glimpse and there was no where to pull over. Just as I arrived to work I got a good look at a pair of sandhill cranes in farm field by the entrance. They looked funny pecking at hte ground with their showy plumage sticking up in the air. Not the "classic" sandhill pose to be sure.

Before lunch I had a meeting in the library at work and I realized after the meeting I had left my laptop computer behind. I went back in the room to get the computer and when I looked up I saw a bird land on a branch outside the window. I immediately recognized it. The Eastern Phoebe! We've been waiting for this bird to show up for weeks. We all guessed and were terribly wrong. My guess was that it would return on March 22 (same day as last year) but it was much later this year. It was lunchtime so I quickly made my lunch and went over to the windows to watch for the bird and snap a photo. It didn't show but this bird did!I had to really crop and zoom as this camera isn't the best and it isn't really in focus either. You can still tell it is an Eastern Bluebird though. Wonderful! Paul had spotted one last week so I was excited to see it. The colors were fabulous. I love spring! He flew off right away and I only got this one photo.

A little later in the day I saw yet another first for the year. A lone pine siskin was hanging out with the goldfinches at the feeders. It really threw me for a loop. I was thinking, "that's way too small for a female purple finch." Paul suggested pine siskin and it all made sense. What a great day for birds. They seem to know spring is finally here. We also pulled hte last of the maple taps today. I have photos and I'll post some in a couple of days.

2008 Running Bird Tally

41 Great Blue Heron
42 Turkey Vulture
43 Common Grackle
44 Eastern Phoebe
45 Eastern Bluebird
46 Pine Siskin

Come to the Feeders my Pretties . . .

2008-03-31T19:45:00.002-05:00

Thursday, March 27th I noticed there were suddenly no birds at the bird feeders at work. I quickly scanned the trees and spotted a coopers hawk. It was really neat to see the downy woodpeckers hiding on the back side of skinny little trees. They stayed still and pressed up to the tree directly opposite the side the hawk was on. They didn't move until he flew off. Earlier that day, I caught a glimpse of a purple finch at the feeders. I've been hearing them sing amongst the din of American goldfinch songs but hadn't seen one.

After a run to the grocery store on Sunday, March 30 I spotted a coopers hawk in my neighbor's tree. It is so nice to see some birds in my neighborhood. I've been seeing a coopers around every summer. I wonder if it is the same bird or just one moving through.

Monday there was a heavy wet spring snow and all the birds crowded at the feeders so I was able to get some shots with the camera. They aren't spectacular but the idea was to just get some shots this year of the birds I see. The driving snow made for less than spectacular shooting conditions.

The first thing I noticed when I looked out at the feeders was all the Juncos. These "snow birds" are still around so should we be surprised we have snow? This little guy is cute though a tad blurry through all the snow. There was a whole flock of juncos that had come in to the feeders from somewhere. Probably the side of the road. When the snow started to fall so quickly they needed food and their regular haunts were buried. I noticed a few birds mixed in with the juncos. It is not unusual for them to be in mixed flocks. Here's an American Tree Sparrow surrounded by Juncos looking around and wondering "Where'd all my peeps go?"

Here's a size comparison of the American Tree Sparrow and the Junco. At first glance though the snow I thought the American Tree Sparrow might be the first chipping sparrow of the year. All I could see was the red head. Nope. There's a soft breast spot and the coloration on the head (aside from the red cap) is all wrong.

Pretty much with the juncos (but being hassled a bit) was a lone Fox Sparrow (my first of the year.) He was doing his little hop-scratch technique at the bottom of this wooden post. This is really pushing the limits of this camera and the snow had picked up even more at this point. Can you spot the downy woodpecker in the photo?

I was taking these shots while watching for the school group's bus out the window. I stepped away for a few moments to talk to some volunteers and our site manager, Dave, asked if I had seen the Turkey out the window. What? I was just looking out there! Sure enough, this young Tom Turkey wanted a little snack.

Last but not least, I finally got a photo of the very elusive purple finch that has been coming to the feeders very infrequently the last week. He never stays long. This time, he spent the entire time on the back side of the feeder. In the photo he's just peeking around the side. I'll have to capture a better photo later. If I think this is bad, wait until I try to get shots of warblers! Maybe I'll just take shots of the ones the bird banders catch.

2008 Running Bird Species Tally

38 Purple Finch
39 Cooper's Hawk
40 Fox Sparrow

Working the Sugar Bush (and a little birding)

2008-03-26T18:05:00.000-05:00

March 25th was a good morning for telephone wire bird watching. On the two miles or so of County Rd. 7 (Square Lake Trail) that I travel in the morning, I spotted my first red-winged blackbird of the year as well as a mourning dove and an American Kestrel. Then, while sitting at my desk around 9:00 in the morning, I heard sandhill cranes out my window. I first heard sandhills on March 20th but hadn't seen them yet. I ran out to the deck and saw a pair of sandhill cranes heading west over the bog.
As red-shouldered hawks flew overhead and I could still hear sandhills, it was time to check the maple syrup progress. Sharp eyed observers will note that the photo above is NOT from this year as there is no snow on the ground. The sap saks look the same every year though. We had a good sap run finally on the 25th and 26th. At the end of the work day on the 25th we had about 60 gallons of sap ready to boil. Our storage container only holds 32 gallons so we had to store the rest in 6 gallon buckets. Today, the 26th, I could hear the sandhill cranes in the air as I lit the stove at 8:00 am. We started to boil our sap and we got through a lot but not all of it by the end of the day. Here I am adding sap from a 6 gallon bucket in the afternoon. We boil out in the open on a custom wood burning stove. We collected an additional 25 gallons of sap during the day and we had 15 left gallons left at the end of the day that we hadn't even gotten onto the stove. When we start tomorrow we'll have 40 gallons of sap (15+25) ready to boil plus whatever runs this evening!

The theoretical ratio of sap to syrup for red maples (which is what we use) is 40 to 1. If this holds true we'll get about two gallons of syrup from these two days alone. That doesn't sound like a lot when you consider we collected 85 gallons of sap but when you buy syrup in the store you often buy 16 oz bottles. There are eight sixteen ounce bottles in a gallon so we'll have 16 bottles of syrup from just two days worth of sap run. Not too shabby.

~Kirk

2008 running Bird Tally

36 Red-winged Blackbird
37 Sandhill Crane

Pileated and Downy Size Comparison

2008-03-19T18:00:00.003-05:00

I took this photo on 3/18/08 at work at the Lee & Rose Warner Nature Center. I especially like this shot because you can compare the size of the downy woodpecker and the pileated woodpecker. I'm slowly trying to photograph some of the birds I see this year. The ones that come to the feeders are easier than when the warbles show up. I may resort to shooting photos of birds we've banded instead of the birds I actually count on my list that I spot in the wild. This great photo of a pileated was one we caught while bird banding two years ago.

In other news, I've added to my bird list with the return of the raptors to the nature center. Saturday I saw a kettle of bald eagles right above the building at work while waiting for my afternoon group to show. Fellow naturalist Paul Smithson had heard Red-shouldered hawks on Friday said he had seen one Saturday morning. I didn't see one Saturday but did finally see one today. There were at least two flying around making quite a racket. Their calls were a welcome addition to the sounds of the forest. I saw them then I went out to check on the maple sap which is finally flowing. We collected about 10 gallons today. If all of the trees run at once we could in theory collect about 150 gallons in one day but that has never happened. Today was slow at 10 gallons but we're finally underway. Still no sign of the Phoebe. My prediction in the office pool is for the first phoebe to show up on Saturday.

On my way home I pulled out on to Norell Ave and headed south. About two miles from the center I saw a bird on a power line and slowed down. Sure enough it was the first American Kestrel I've seen this year. It was a beautiful male.

Here's the running bird tally for 2008. The great-horned owl is from last week. I stopped to see the one nesting near imation (35E and Hwy 5.)

33 Great-horned Owl
34 Red-shouldered Hawk
35 American Kestrel

The Morning Meal

2008-03-18T11:53:00.000-05:00

When we arrived at work this morning the trees were covered in snow and it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Our intern Jessie went out to fill the bird feeders and excitedly came back upstairs telling us she had spooked an owl. Yes, the owl is back. It really likes hanging out at the building. This isn't surprising as some animals got into the seed we keep under the deck and she had staked out a branch just above the deck. She's in the upper right in the above photo looking at the area under the deck where the seeds are stored and where a red squirrel was hiding out. We watched her from the windows in the lounge. Here we all are gathered at the window so you can see how close she really was. Click any photo for a larger view. After some time a red squirrel started dropping snow on the owls head. In this photo the owl is looking up at the squirrel. What happened next was too fast to catch with the camera. The owl flew up and chased the squirrel trying to pull it off the tree. The squirrel headed down and the owl chased it around the tree in the spiral. The squirrel got away and immediately after the chase the area was full of woodpeckers chirping loudly. It was thrilling to watch the chase and we're sure we'll be seeing more of this owl.

~Kirk

Red backed vole

2008-03-12T11:30:00.000-05:00

I've been seeing this little guy since yesterday as he scurries from tunnel to tunnel near the bird feeders. The bounty of food must seem wonderful. He better watch out for the owl that's been hanging around though. He's smaller than a mouse and you can see his short tail in the photo. Not surprisingly, the red-backed vole has a red back.

Also today I noticed for the first time this year real numbers of Canada geese moving through. There was a pair standing on a frozen pond near the nature center looking around like, "Now what?"

Today I heard a male cardinal singing at work for the first time this year.

~Kirk

The birds of March

2008-03-05T18:00:00.003-06:00

The March birds have arrived! Wednesday March 5th I noticed some birds on the side of Co. Road 7 very close to work. They looked bigger than sparrows or juncos. The weather was foul with snow and ice. I decided against slamming on my breaks. I took the same route home and luckily spotted the flock of birds. Part of the flock seemed to be snow buntings. They were hard to make out in the corn stubble and they were very shy but their bellies were very white and you could make out a dark bar running the length of the body on the wings. I had a feeling there was more to be seen as the birds I saw in the morning had a black necklace. At least I imagined I had seen that dark band in the glimpse of bird I saw though the snow at 40 mph. I'm getting pretty good at taking a mental snapshot of a bird as it flies across the road. Sure enough, some of the birds were braver and hanging out on the side of the road as I crept along on the shoulder, foot on the brake. I took a look through the binoculars and sure enough, Horned Larks. At one point I was close enough that I could see the yellow on their necks with my bare eyes. Sorry, no camera. I'm going to go ahead and make a prediction for the next four birds I will see. I'm thinking American Kestrel, Red-shouldered hawk, Eastern Phoebe, Sandhill Crane. Time will tell.

Running Tally for 2008
31 Snow Bunting
32 Horned Lark

I love Meet the Press

2008-02-24T19:10:00.005-06:00

Here's meet the press showing Hillary doing the exact thing she criticized Obama for doing. What's more, she did it as part of the same debate in which she criticized him for it. I don't have a lot of patience for hypocrisy but I love when Meet the Press calls people on it by playing these types of clips. Too bad Hillary wasn't there to respond but even when people are there they usually just answer with more doublespeak.

Barred Owl and a Brown Creeper

2008-02-21T19:42:00.000-06:00

Now that I'm at 30 birds for the year I'll probably have to wait until March to see new bird species. In the mean time. Here's some fun photos.

March 18th the barred owl once again showed up at the building right outside the classroom windows. We saw it almost pull a red squirrel off a tree trunk. The owl hung around about four hours so there were plenty of opportunities to get photos. Here's two.

Check out that camouflage!

Speaking of camouflage. Check out this small brown creeper. They have this fantastic camouflage that makes them very hard to see while they cling to a tree trunk like a nuthatch.
Right as I took this shot of the creeper, a downy woodpecker came in for a landing. Click for the full size image.

This third one is probably my favorite shot. The brown creeper was spooked and flew off when a downy woodpecker came to feed next to it. What a lucky shot!
~Kirk

30 birdies for the year

2008-02-18T12:17:00.003-06:00

Thursday, February 7th I finally saw some mourning doves. They were sitting on the telephone line on County road 7.

Monday, February 11th I saw mallards in pair flights. I had seen flocks earlier this season but these were the first pair flights. I saw them on the way home over hwy 36. The bald eagles are also consistently at their nest on Keller lake now.

Tuesday, February 12th I went to the St, Croix Watershed Research Station for a strategic planning retreat for work. At lunch some of us walked down to the spring feed creek and ponds. We were hoping to see black ducks or snipe that are sometimes there but there were only mallards. We could hear the high pitched call notes of robins from the trees. Once we looked a little harder we spotted them in groups of three and four. A single male northern cardinal flew past us as we turned to go in. Those were my first robins and cardinals of the year so it was a pretty good little hike.

Saturday, February 16 I came into work for a morning snowshoe program and I took a stroll past windows to see what the feeders looked like. I could see a lot of birds from across the building so I knew it must be a busy morning. even before I was to the window I could see a bird sitting on a branch and my brain told me something wasn't right. That female American goldfinch looked funny. Suddenly it hit me. That's not a goldfinch at all. Look at the black under the beak and is that red on the head? It's a redpoll! That's a life lister for me. I ran for my binoculars and I had a camera on my desk so I snapped this photo. There were four or five redpolls mixed in with the goldfinches. Looking at the photos I'm sure these are common redpolls and not hoary redpolls. How do I know? This gets pretty nerdy.

I got this shot of a redpolls back. If you look at the right hand side you can see the white wing bar. The feathers above and slightly to the right of that white line are the scapulars. They are pretty hard to distinguish from the mantle or cape across the birds back in this photo. On a common redpoll the scapulars are dark while on a hoary redpoll they would look frosty or hoary. Happy now?

Here's a shot a male as he comes in for a landing at the feeder.

Since I had the camera in hand I snapped a few other photos. I got this fun one of a downy woodpecker flapping a wing. There were a number of them in the area.

I also took several shots where you can really see the golden mating colors of the male American Goldfinches coming in. I've been noting this for a few weeks already.

I'd already seen one in passing earlier but I also spotted a pair a Blue Jays that same morning. These birds get a bad rap because they can be a bit of a bully but I think they are one of the most gorgeous birds I have ever seen. They really are spectacular and if they lived somewhere more exotic I'm sure people would fawn over them and dream of the day they could see the hallowed Blue Jay. As is, people tend to ignore this beautiful resident of Minnesota.

Sunday the 17th I had some free time (a rare thing these days) and I decided to make the most of it by heading down to Black Dog Lake. I first stopped at the west outlet and there was a group of mallards and some other waterfowl that flew away when I arrived. I pushed on until there was open water on my right from the power plant discharge. I quickly pulled over when I saw a flotilla of birds. There really wasn't a good place to pull over but I quickly identified them as common mergansers. There were about 50 of them. I then moved on to the eastern outlet just before the power plant and as soon as I stepped out of my car I could hear bald eagles. I quickly spotted a pair of eagles in the top of some trees on the northern side of the road (actually across the pond). I couldn't see a nest anywhere.

I headed out onto the trail on the west side of the outlet and saw a small group of mallards. That appeared to be all there was. I decided to scan the water with my binoculars just to be sure. To my surprise, the water was full of hundreds of common mergansers further out. A rough count pin the number around 200. This was a separate group from the group of 50 I spotted earlier on the other side of the power plant. Leaving the area I saw more mallards in the small stream just east of 77 and then a strange hawk flew over my car and landed in a tree when I got to the top of the bluff. My best guess was an immature red-shouldered hawk. The breast was awfully white. I couldn't be sure and I soon realized I had pulled to the side of the road right next to a no parking sign. I had to move on. I hiked the trail on the other side of Black Dog but all I saw was the smaller group of mergansers but this time from the other side. A sign said that goldeneyes are common in the winter but I sure didn't see any. So, with the sighting of the common merganser's I'm officially at 30 birds for the year. Not too bad for mid-feburary.

26 Mourning Doves
27 American Robin
28 Northern Cardinal
29 Common Redpoll
30 Common Merganser

For your viewing pleasure . . .

2008-02-17T12:00:00.006-06:00

This is one of the most fantastic things I have viewed in a long time. I just randomly stumbled upon it while looking for something else on YouTube.If you don't have the patience to watch the whole thing skip ahead to 2:20 that's when it gets especially choice.

Enjoy.

The view from my window . . .

2008-02-07T17:34:00.000-06:00

This was the view out my cubicle window today at work. Notice anything interesting?
Look closer.

That's a barred owl. He (or she) is trying to blend in with the broken off branch on the oak tree. It didn't fool the chickadees who were quite unhappy about him being there. They chirped loudly and dive bombed him. He was there for a couple of hours and was still there when we left for the day. Can you find him in the wide view photo at the top?

~Kirk

Birds of 2008 (21-25)

2008-02-06T15:18:00.001-06:00

Getting the first 20 birds of the year wasn't so bad. I knew though that getting 10 more by the end of February would be tough. There just aren't that many birds here and I don't have time to drive all over the state looking for birds when I have a three month old at home. Here's how it played out.

Friday, January 18th I came into work late as I was working an evening program. I stopped by the Stillwater Town Hall on the way in as my co-worker had spotted a rare Townsend's Solitaire there the day before. I didn't see anything but I learned later I was looking in not quite the right spot. I had a little time before I had to be at work so I did the drive around the Warner/Wilder acreage. I only found two species of birds and they were both in the same spot. I saw a flock of dark-eyed juncos and while watching them I noticed a red-tailed hawk sitting in the tree above them. I hadn't seen a junco yet this year so I was thinking my drive paid off. Turns out Juncos showed up at my house on Saturday and then Monday at work.

Monday the 21st I headed once again to Lake Elmo Park Reserve for a program. I saw three female pheasants, a junco, a white breasted nuthatch and a crow at the park. On my way back to the office I saw a couple of red-tailed hawks and crows. I slowed down as I approached Stillwater Town Hall knowing Paul had spotted the Townsend's Solitaire there and sure enough there was a lone bird up at the top of the trees. I pulled over and pulled out the Binoculars. It was the Solitaire! Tally Ho!

February 1st I started the month off right with a new species. I stopped on norell ave about a mile from work when I saw birds on the side of the road. I grabbed my binoculars and sure enough there were American Tree Sparrows. While stopped there I also saw a white breasted nuthatch, a black capped chickadee and juncos. A huge flock of pheasants also crossed in front of my car. There were a least a dozen of them. On my way to an outreach event around lunch I saw my first Blue Jay of the year in this same spot. I also again saw the Townsend Solitaire across from Stillwater Town hall on my way into and again on my way out of town.

Just as I was leaving for the program I heard one of the school groups had spotted a Barred Owl on one of the trails. I set out with my camera when I returned from the program and he was still there.

Sunday, February 3th I heard a Cardinal singing from my neighbor's yard but didn't see him. The lack of mature trees in my yard pretty much keeps most birds away. There are blue jays, cardinals and woodpeckers just across the alley but they don't dare come pay me a visit.

Wednesday, February 6th I was surprised when two Canada Geese flew over my car. I was especially surprised a I was on Hwy 94 right in the heart of Downtown. Never the less, that's bird number 25 for the year.

21 Slate-colored dark-eyed junco
22 Townsend's Solitaire
23 American Tree Sparrow
24 Blue Jay
25 Canada Goose

~Kirk

Morning Mallard

2008-02-05T09:48:00.000-06:00

This morning at work a female mallard showed up right next to the building. This photo was taken through the window, that's how close she was. She appeared to have some frozen mud and ice on her bill so we were afraid she was sick. The nearest open water is about 5 miles away at the St. Croix River. When we approached her she flew a short distance, maybe 50 feet and quacked. We were then sure she could fly and her bill wasn't frozen as she quacked. . We're not sure if there is really any thing wrong with her but her behavior seems very odd. We hope she makes it to open water soon.

~Kirk

A Brief Pause for Mammals

2008-01-21T11:28:00.000-06:00

I'm stepping away from posting about birds for a moment so I can present to you, The Fox Squirrel.

I hadn't seen one of these guys for a while until one showed up today at work. Fox squirrels are much more solitary than their gray squirrel cousins. There can be 16 gray squirrels under the feeders at once but only one fox squirrel ever shows up. Given their size, they are bigger than gray squirrels, you would think they are bruisers but they are pretty shy and retreat from conflict.

They are called fox squirrels because their fur has a rusty red wash to it similar to a fox. You can really see it on the face of this one but it is most noticeable on their belly. It isn't at all white like a gray squirrel's would be.

~Kirk

First 20 Birds of 2008

2008-01-13T21:22:00.000-06:00

January 1st would have been a sad day if I hadn't seen any birds. Luckily, I was not disappointed. Even though I was home bound I was able to add two birds to my new 2008 bird list. They weren't the most interesting or rare birds but I'm pretty limited when it comes to my still somewhat sad back yard. I took a look at the feeders on and off all morning and there weren't any birds. I looked in the afternoon and there were a bunch of house sparrows doing their best to deplete the feeders. There was also an adorable cottontail sitting under the feeders picking up whatever they dropped. I wish I had gotten my camera as it was a cool sight. That would have been my only bird sighting for the day but I looked up and happened to see an American crow flying overhead. So, that's two birds in the first day of 2008 and I know Thursday will net me a handful more on the drive to work and at the feeders.

January 3rd, I saw no new species on the way to work but I did manage to spot a hairy woodpecker, white breasted nuthatch, downy woodpecker, black capped chickadee, and a brown creeper a the feeders. The brown creeper was a nice surprise, I usually see one but not so easily. He wasn't using the feeders he was just hanging out near them. The photo on the left is the hairy woodpecker. I love how you can see he is just barely holding onto the side of the tree.

Downy woodpeckers look very similar to hairy woodpeckers only they are smaller.

Speaking of nuthatches, I took these next two photos of white breasted nuthatches on the feeders out at work.

On this nuthatch photo where he is upside down you can actually see the bird band on his leg from our bird banding program.

I strolled past the feeders after filling my coffee mug and spotted a Red bellied woodpecker in a tree and a red breasted nuthatch on the suet feeder.

The red breasted nuthatch was banded too. Okay so he's on the peanut feeder here. I took the photo another day. It is a little odd that he's hanging out at the feeders. We caught him in a mist net up in the prairie where there are some pine trees. He was released near the building and instead of going straight back to the prairie he discovered the bird feeders and we see him daily now.

A few hours later I peeked out at the feeders on my way downstairs and the goldfinches had arrived. Here's a fun picture I took with a goldfinch on the right and a black capped chickadee on the left. Later in the day I spotted a pileated woodpecker in the woods as well as twice at the feeders.

Sunday January 6th I taught snowshoeing at lake elmo park reserve. On my way to work to pick up the snowshoes I saw 5 red tailed hawks, and rock pigeons. Heading to the park I spotted a huge flock of turkeys in the corn fields along Norell Ave. Sorry, no camera. There were more than 30 of them. After snowshoeing I saw a pheasant just outside the park boundaries. I thought I caught glimpses of a blue jay and a starling as well but a good ID will have to wait.

Monday, January 7th I was thinking I was going to go the whole day with no new birds. I had an outreach event so I figured I would see something while driving. Nope. On the way home in the last rays of light I came upon Keller lake and wondered if the Bald Eagles would be checking out their nest tree on such a warm day in the winter. Sure enough, as I drove past I could make out the silhouette of an eagle perched high up in the nest tree.

Friday, January 11th on my way to another outreach program for work I spotted a bird on the phone line along Norell Ave and the turn to 61. It was watching over an evergreen plantation. I didn't expect it to be much but as I caught a glimpse passing by I saw a grey bird with black wings. It could only be one bird this time of year, the Northern Shrike. Very cool, I wish I had binoculars with me though I was on a tight schedule to get to my program so I probably could not have stopped anyhow. It was not there on the way back. As I left work for the day I spied a flock of birds on the shoulder of Manning Avenue. I had my suspicions and as I passed I saw they were indeed European starlings. That brought me up to 18 species in 11 days.

Sunday the 12th was a great day for birds in that I added a great and unexpected one to my list. While leading a hike I gathered all the kids around to look at some tracks in the snow and a little girl asked, "What's that white thing up in the tree?" It was a barred owl. How very cool. That same day I took the photos in this post at lunch. I was hoping to see the owl again but it was gone by the time lunch came and I could get a camera. I may try getting photos of some of the other birds I spot this year. It will make these long posts more fun to read. I know some of these aren't great photos but that really isn't the point. By the way, you can click on any photo to make it bigger.

Sunday the 13th I stopped at a pond near southdale mall that never freezes over. I saw tons of mallards but nothing else. I thought there was a chance of something else, maybe geese but no luck. Anyhow, the mallards count as species number 20. Not too bad. 20 species in 13 days.

1. House sparrow
2. American crow
3. Hairy woodpecker
4. White breasted nuthatch
5. Downy woodpecker
6. Black capped chickadee
7. Brown creeper
8. Red bellied woodpecker
9. Red breasted nuthatch
10. American goldfinch
11. Pileated Woodpecker
12. Red-tailed hawk
13. Rock pigeon
14. Wild turkey
15. Pheasant
16. Bald eagle
17. Northern Shrike
18. European Starling
19. Barred Owl
20. Mallard duck

Guesses for next 6 species: Canada Goose, Blue Jay, Northern Cardinal, American Robin, Junco, Mourning dove.

Chloroform for Kids

2008-01-04T10:48:00.000-06:00

I've embarked on a new writing project. I'm don't want to give away too much yet but I think it is a real marketable idea that I'm going to try to get published as a book. The book in part features some chemistry experiments and so I've been going through old chemistry books looking for good experiments no one does anymore. There are often good reasons they aren't done anymore. Check out this gem from a 1960s era book for kids.

"Sniff carefully" indeed. Chloroform is now considered to be a carcinogen and OSHA considers it "immediately dangerous to health and life." It can apparently cause fatal cardiac arrhythmia. Still, I'm not sure how much this would make and I'm not sure this experiment would produce enough to be of any danger. It would be interesting to know if it actually makes a dangerous amount.

Please don't use this information to trap-door-spider "chloroform sandwich" any of your friends.

~Kirk

Master bird list 2007

2008-01-01T23:39:00.000-06:00

Well, here they are. All the species of birds I identified in 2007 in the order I saw them. This was my best year ever for birds. Of course, this was only the second year I've done this so it wasn't too hard to beat my old record. I ended up with 136 species. That's not too bad for not really trying all that hard. I know I could have stretched that to around 145 if I had put more effort into it. Oh well.

I did add 46 birds to my life list. Some of them I had seen before just not since I started the list. 2008 doesn't promise to be easy for birding. I will be shocked if I make it to 136. A number of these species were from Arizona and I will not be heading out there this year. I also now have a baby at home so he will be taking up a lot of my spare time. As I write this I'm keeping my eye out for birds at my house. Being January 1 I'm back at a count of ZERO.

2007 Master List

1 Crow
2 Rock Pigeon
3 White Breasted Nuthatch
4 Black Capped Chickadee
5 American Goldfinch
6 Red-bellied Woodpecker
7 Downy Woodpecker
8 Hairy Woodpecker
9 Pileated Woodpecker
10 House Sparrow
11 Blue Jay
12 Northern Cardinal
13 Pheasant
14 Junco
15 Canada goose
16 Turkey
17 Brown Creeper
18 Red-tailed hawk
19 Mourning Dove
20 American Robin
21 European Starling
22 Mallard Duck
23 Tree Sparrow
24 Horned Lark
25 House Finch
26 Red-winged Blackbird
27 Rough-legged Hawk
28 Purple Finch
29 Eastern Phoebe
30 Ring-necked Duck
31 American Coot
32 Gadwall
33 Fox Sparrow
34 Sharp-shinned Hawk
35 Song sparrow
36 Hooded Merganser
37 Turkey Vulture
38 Great Blue Heron
39 Great-tailed Grackle
40 Green Heron
41 Yellow-Rumped Warbler (Audubon's)
42 Black Chinned Hummingbird
43 Gambel's Quail.
44 Gila Woodpecker
45 Pied Billed Grebe
46 Cooper's Hawk
47 Inca Dove
48 Broad-Billed Hummingbird
49 Anna's Hummingbird
50 Costa's Hummingbird
51 Black Phoebe
52 Vermilion Flycatcher
53 Bell's Vireo
54 Verdin
55 Hermit Thrush
56 Phainopela
57 Yellow Warbler
58 Spotted Towhee
59 Abert's Towhee
60 Black-Throated Sparrow
61 White Crowned Sparrow
62 Lesser Goldfinch
63 Killdeer
64 Golden Eagle
65 Common raven
66 Curve-billed Thrasher
67 Mandarin Duck
68 Wood Duck
69 Cedar Waxwing
70 Brown Crested Flycatcher
71 Northern Pintail
72 Violet-Green Swallow
73 Cinnamon Teal
74 American Wigeon
75 Northern Rough-Winged Swallow
76 Rock Wren
77 Peregrine Falcon
78 American Kestrel
79 Sandhill Crane
80 Great Egret
81 Bufflehead
82 Winter Wren
83 Yellow Bellied Sapsucker
84 Redhead Duck
85 Lesser Scaup
86 Osprey
87 Harrier
88 Trumpeter Swan
89 Tree Swallow
90 Eastern Meadowlark
91 White Throated Sparrow
92 Chipping Sparrow
93 Common Grackle
94 Yellow Rumped Warbler (Myrtle)
95 Brown Headed Cowbird
96 American Woodcock
97 Chimney Swift
98 Barn Swallow
99 Eastern Kingbird
100 Scarlet Tanager
101 Ruby-throated hummingbird
102 Swainson's Thrush
103 Rose-breasted Grosbeak
104 Gray Catbird
105 Baltimore Oriole
106 Common nighthawk
107 Eastern Wood Pewee
108 Indigo Bunting
109 Common Yellowthroat
110 Great Crested Flycatcher
111 Warbling vireo
112 American redstart
113 Bobolink
114 Yellow-throated vireo
115 Common loon
116 Blue-grey gnatcatcher
117 Clay-colored sparrow
118 Blue-winged warbler
119 Golden-winged warbler
120 House Wren
121 White Pelican
122 Western Meadowlark
123 Lark Bunting
124 Lazuli Bunting
125 Red Breasted Nuthatch
126 Swainson's Hawk
127 Barred Owl
128 Tennessee Warbler
129 Tufted Titmouse
130 Ring-billed gull
131 Ovenbird
132 Broad-winged hawk
133 Blue headed vireo
134 Swamp Sparrow
135 Redhead
136 Ruby Crowned Kinglet
AND, one I saw but forgot to record for some reason . . .
137 Red-shouldered Hawk

There is a Legend

2007-12-27T13:19:00.001-06:00

Click to Play

I put together this short film to test out my new camera and video editing software. I hope to post more videos in the future.

~Kirk

Guns for Christ

2007-12-23T10:07:00.000-06:00

Gentle readers,

For those amongst you who celebrate the christian holiday this season with the exchange of material possessions let me humbly suggest . . . weapons for the whole family. Nothing says, "Christ was born today and died for your sins by being nailed though the wrist and hung until he suffocated under his own weight" like the cool cold feeling of gunmetal! Why even mom can appreciate the good wholesome fun of weapons. Nothing makes her feel safer than knowing there are more guns in her home. Dad keeps one over the fireplace and two in the bedroom, might as well make sure the kids have them too.

The little town on Bethlehem may ring out with the roar of Qassam rockets and the screams of mother's who's children have been killed in the name of religion but your kids will scream with delight as they shoot red white and blue pepsi cans off the white picket fence in the back yard. When they tire of that they can use the new "away in a manger" shooting gallery to test their dead-eye holiday skills. 200 points for knocking the prince of peace right out of the cradle.

If BB guns aren't enough for your little redneck why not consider a .22 like this 5 year old is shooting? Real guns are even more fun and appropriate.

God bless America with a chicken in every pot and a gun in every kids hands.

space station animation

2007-12-19T12:52:00.000-06:00

Showing my dorkyness here. This is an animation of the international space station being put together. I think it is pretty impressive. It keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger . . . when do they add the space hotel module?

Space tourism is becoming real very quickly and all those tourists are eventually going to want someplace to go. It costs so much to get into space (current tickets are about $300,000) and shelling out that kind of money people are going to want to stay up there for a while. Thar's money to be made in a space hotel I tells ya!

~Kirk

Giant Cow Fever

2007-12-07T13:20:00.000-06:00

These photos are about a month late in getting posted but they are from a trip I took with my co-workers Paul, Bekah and Julia. We went to Steven's Point Wisconsin for a conference and on the way back we had to stop at this enormous roadside cow, Chatty Belle. How could we not? She certainly isn't as large as Salem Sue that Bekah and I saw on the way to our dinosaur dig last summer but they do claim she is the worlds largest talking cow. We paid our 25 cents but she refused to speak so I'm still skeptical. Odds are she was made by F.A.S.T sign (that's Fiberglass Animals, Shapes & Trademarks Corp) in Sparta Wisconsin.

Not only did she not speak she could not quench our thirst for milk.

~Kirk

Hadrosaur Mummy

2007-12-04T12:30:00.000-06:00

This story is finally breaking in the mainstream press. I had the opportunity to visit the site this dinosaur was excavated from when I went on the dino dig this past summer with Marmarth Research Foundation. I'm looking forward to seeing the National Geographic program this week.

This one fossil has the potential to change a lot of what we think we know about dinosaurs.

I guess my toy Hypacrosaurus (a Hadrosaurid dinosaur) pictured above is fairly accurate with those stripes. Of course who knows what color they were. I personally think the teal spots are a bit much.

~Kirk

Camden is born!

2007-11-20T21:03:00.001-06:00

My son Camden was born on 11/11/07. Read all about it at Adventures in DNA Mixing.

~Kirk

Republican National Convention Logo

2007-11-02T18:14:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to post this up. Chelsey forwarded this to my attention. This is the logo for the Republican National Convention here in Minnesota. Is it just me or does it look like the elephant is having relations with 2008? At the very least it looks like the republicans are looking forward to crushing 2008 with their out of control elephant just like they have screwed with our civil liberties and crushed our dignity and reputation in the world. I think the logo is perfect except that it lacks a slogan such as "The search for WMD's will continue!" or "Iran 08!"

~Kirk

Freezer of Excellence

2007-11-01T08:10:00.000-05:00

I put my frozen lunch into the freezer at work this morning and I just had to take this photo. This is a shining example of how the kitchen freezer at work should always look. Minimum three gallons of Ice Cream and 20 lbs of shade grown fair trade coffee (700 cups worth). The giant puffball mushroom in the orange bag is optional. We're going to freeze dry it for a fungus class next September. The only thing I would improve is that 2 gallons of the ice cream are sub-par-ice-crystals-on-the-top-bucket-style-abominations whereas they should be quality pints like those in the front row.

Fixing annoying "delete to go back" in Firefox

2007-10-29T22:02:00.000-05:00

One of the most popular posts here on my blog was where I explained how to get click -hold contextual menus back in Firefox 2.0 Why on earth they thought Mac users would enjoy having to hold the control key whenever they want to see a contextual menu is beyond me.

I love firefox but another hugely annoying feature is that hitting the delete key jumps you backwards though the browser history. Who thought that was a good idea? If you think your cursor is in a text field and it isn't then you're in for a nasty surprise when you hit the delete key to edit your text and you navigate away from your current page. What kind of power user is in such a hurry they can't take the two seconds to hit the back button? Who needs to rapidly speed backwards though their history like that. Even if such users do exist, why the delete key? (that's the Backspace key for you PC users)

There are lots of instructions online about how to disable this feature using the config menu. It is easy and anyone can do it if you can follow directions.

Open a new Firefox tab (apple+T) so you can work in one window and read these direction in the original.
Type "about:config" into the address field of the new window. Hit return and the config page appears.
Enter "browser.b" into the "filter" field at the top.
Click-hold the "Browser.backspace_action" Value column, and choose Modify from the pop-up menu. Type 2 for the new value.
Click OK.

You're done! Annoying problem solved.

~kirk

135 Birds and Counting!

2007-10-23T21:45:00.000-05:00

While on a visit to the St. Croix Watershed Research Station on Sunday, September 23rd I spied three broad winged hawks in the sky circling in a mini kettle. Someone suggested that with only 3 birds it should be called a pot or perhaps a cup instead of a kettle. har har har. Bird humor.

October 4th we had a naturalists' staff meeting at the nature center and while meeting in the lounge, Paul pointed out a blue headed vireo hopping up and down the bark of a large oak out the window. It must have been feasting on insects hiding in the bark. I had no idea they could hold onto the side of a tree like a nuthatch. Very cool to see.

The morning of October 18th I headed out to the George W. Mead Wildlife Area in Wisconsin as part of a conference we were attending. We expected lots of migrating waterfowl but were disappointed. We did find a pond with lots of American Coots (hundreds?) but the only other birds in the pond were five lesser scaups and a couple of pied billed grebes. We kept searching and found some red winged blackbirds, swamp sparrows, field sparrows and juncos. Just outside the wildlife area we stopped at a small pond and spotted a lonely redhead swimming. Hmm, if you don't know that a redhead is a kind of duck is sounds kind of bad that we watched a redhead swim in a pond though our binoculars! Just after we left the wildlife area I spotted a half dozen or so sandhill cranes in a farm field.

October 19th Paul and I woke up extra early to go on an early morning bird hike with other naturalists. I can't believe I got up that early to look at essentially the same birds I see at work everyday.

We left the conference October 20th and we spotted a ruby crowned kinglet though due to a momentary lapse of reason we could not figure out what kind of warbler it was. Duh, it wasn't a warbler. We kept on hearing kinglets so we should have put two and two together sooner than we did. I did spot a brown creeper as well which is always fun.

On the way home to Minnesota, co-worker Bekah spotted a white bird sitting up in a tree on the side of the road. I pulled over turned around ( something that NEVER happens unless I'm driving with other naturalists) and we were super excited to see that the bird was a Krider's Red-tailed hawk. It looks like an albino but it has the red tail. I'd never seen one so that was very cool. It is still a red-tailed hawk so I'm not counting it on my list.

131 Broad-winged hawk
132 Blue headed vireo
133 Swamp Sparrow
134 Redhead
135 Ruby Crowned Kinglet

Cool Dog Window

2007-10-16T22:14:00.000-05:00

I think our dog Odin would love one of these. This is a great idea I stumbled upon out there on ye old internete. Now, how to make one? Or, just buy one from pet peek.

~Kirk

Cephelopod Fossil

2007-10-14T22:08:00.000-05:00

I joked a few posts ago about bringing home a 10 foot long cephelopod fossil. Well, that has yet to happen. I did find a cephalopod fossil though. About a month ago I took some Girl Scouts to Lilydale Regional Park in St. Paul to look for Ordovician aged fossils. We found the usual suspects in the usual spots and after the group left I ate a quick lunch and headed back into the park to scope out some other sites. I've never had time to fully explore the site so I was looking forward to seeing if there were some other spots I could take groups. I also did a little more exploring in the stream bed and that's where I found this gem.

The kicker is that this is from a much much larger animal and the rest of it was nowhere to be found. It is either still in a hillside or more likely, broken into dozens of pieces and every piece has been found by a different person. Oh well, such is fossil hunting at this site. It is about as picked over as they come. It is still a really cool piece and I'm excited to have it in my collection.

~Kirk

Teach both sides!

2007-10-10T21:10:00.000-05:00

Consider this an addendum to my last post.

~Kirk

Where's the Beef?

2007-09-30T21:39:00.000-05:00

With all the posts about dinosaurs lately I thought this would be timely.

I recently happened upon one of the major creationist websites and read some of their mind-boggling "science." Creationists rail against evolution and complain that the fossil record is incomplete. They claim there are no transitional forms. They don't claim the transitional forms were not fossilized mind you, they claim they did not exist. The reason they claim they did not exist is that they do not appear in the fossil record and if they had existed they would have appeared.

Real scientists point out that the fossil record is incomplete because the creation of fossils is a sporadic event occurring over a long time period that requires specific conditions. Even given that, there are very few paleontologists and a LOT of ground to cover. Only a tiny fraction of the dinosaurs that are fossilized have been dug up and identified.

Creationists ignore this fact and prefer to believe that the fossil record was created by the great flood. Only animals that existed at the time of the flood could have been killed and buried and fossilized. Since we don't find transitional forms, they didn't exist.

Ahem, herein lies the rub for creationists. There are two huge logical problems with their argument.

First off, if the flood was the singular event that formed fossils and the flood only lasted one year then DUH there aren't any transitional forms because evolution doesn't happen in one year. You can't simultaneously say all the fossils were formed in one year and then claim evolution is false because the "snapshot" of animal life the flood fossilized in one year doesn't' show transitional forms. You can either have fossils being formed over millions of years and then you get to complain about missing transitional forms or you get fossils formed in one year by the great flood but then you can't complain about missing transitional forms. You can't logically have it both ways.

Choose one.

Secondly, Noah took two of each animal onto the ark right? Let's look at a fairly common animal. Deer. If he took two deer onto the ark that leaves, oh, let's say a few billion deer that didn't make it onto the ship. They died in the flood. So did all of the bears, goats, horses, chickens, wolves, kangaroos, squirrels, moose, cows, pigs, etc. that were not the lucky two chosen. The idea creationists but forward is that there are no dinosaurs now because they died in the flood. That is why we find them fossilized.

Hold on here a second.

Dear creationists, if Noah only took two of each animal onto the ark then there were millions of individuals from each species that DID NOT make it onto the ark and would have died in the flood. There are lots of dinosaurs that creationists and young earth believers think died in the flood. Please show me a fossil of a deer, a bear, a goat, a horse, a chicken, a wolf, a kangaroo, a moose, a cow or a pig.

Better yet show me hundreds of millions of them because hundreds of millions would not have made it onto the ark and they would have died right alongside the dinosaurs. They don't show up in the fossil record and you claim that animals that don't show up in the fossil record don't exist. That's weird because I could swear I've seen cows, bears, goats, horses, etc. yet they aren't in the fossil record with the dinosaurs.

You can't have it both ways.

Come to think of it where are the fossils of the millions of people who died in the flood? Why don't we find axes and houses and ox-carts and humans and dogs and sandals and cooking utensils mixed in with dinosaur fossils?

Bah! It isn't worth wasting more time on it. We don't find these things because the world wasn't formed the way some guys with no scientific understanding sitting in a tent thousands of years ago dreamed it was created. If you are a creationist and you read this please explain why when a transitional form can't be found it means the scientists are wrong but it is all hunky dory when creationists can't find a single fossil cow, pig, etc. when there should be millions.

~Kirk

Saprophyte No More . . .

2007-09-26T09:35:00.000-05:00

My knowledge is obsolete

The last week of summer camp I discovered some unusual plants in the forest with my campers. I immediately recognized them as saprophites.

Sapro: meaning obtaining nutrients from non-living matter and phyte: meaning plant.

Here's the problem. My knowledge is obsolete. I wanted to identify the exact species and apparently saprophyte is a term no longer used. It was explained to me years ago that a saprophyte is a plant that lacks chlorophyll and thus obtains nutrients from decomposing organic matter. The problem is that now scientists say no plant can do that. What is actually happening is that the plant is engaging in parasitic behavior. It parasitizes a fungi to steal nutrients and it is the fungi that are taking the nutrients from the decaying matter. You may think it is a technicality, the plant is stealing nutrients from fungi rather than taking them from decaying matter, however now scientists say the term saprophyte is technically incorrect and misleading.

They now refer to a plant such as this as a Myco-heterotroph. Great, the kids will really remember that. It isn't a saprophyte kids, it is a myco-heterotroph. I had a hard enough time teaching the word saprophyte to third graders. In reality, they will probably remember the name Ghost Plant, Corpse Plant or Indian Pipe better. I think that's what this is. I've seen it here before but this clump looks different. I think what you see in the photo is an already pollinated flower. The petals have fallen off and it is now standing up straight as opposed to nodding.

Either way, fairly elusive and very cool.

~Kirk

Dinosaur Dig (part 4)

2007-09-24T18:33:00.000-05:00

Ah, Thursday and Friday. We're almost at the end of our journey. I'm not posting anything about Friday as it was just our drive home.

After our rain day Wednesday we were itching to get back out in the field on Thursday.

We had a fantastic day. I drank over four liters of water in the field and I was still thirsty. I can see how if you were to run out of water out there it could be bad very quickly. It wasn't even that hot. The week before we arrived they were having temperatures in the 100s.

The arrow on the left shows the view of our van from where we ate lunch Thursday. That white splotch is an 18 foot long 15 passenger van.

Here's the same photo uncropped for comparison. We hiked though this basin and stopped atop this butte for lunch. The spot we're sitting in is relatively flat as they removed a triceratops from this site a few years ago. There were some bone scraps left behind and little pieces of plaster from making a field jacket for the beast. Can you imagine carrying the dinosaur back to where the van is in this photo?

I sometimes read complaints that the fossil record in incomplete. This sometimes comes from those who oppose the theory of evolution. They argue that there has been plenty of time for scientists to find all the fossils they need and transitional forms have not been found.

Have these people ever gone on a dig? The dinosaurs are embedded in hard rock. First you have to find one, then you have to have the time and resources to spend a year or more getting it out of the ground. This often involves taking off layers of stone many feet thick, one exacto blade scrape at a time. Imagine scraping away a whole hillside of hard rock with a dull exacto blade in blazing heat and humidity. Once you finally uncover the dinosaur you have to make a plaster field jacket and then transport it back to a lab (which in some cases means building new roads just to reach the site) It doesn't end there, you have to spend possibly years cleaning and assembling it. Once you see the vastness on an area like this and then realize there are essentially two or three people with a shoestring budget trying to find the treasures that have been battered by erosion and covered over for 65 million years and you begin to see how it may take some time to fill in our gaps in understanding. This is still a very young science and there are many millions of critters still waiting to be dug up.

Thursday was all about microsites. That means we spent a good part of the day sitting on the ground moving painstakingly forward looking for teeth and small limb bones. At the third site of the day I found two dromeosaur teeth but stupidly didn't take a picture. This particular site was still of scientific interest so we couldn't keep anything. It was similar to the teeth pictured here.

In the photo to the left we're heading home for dinner on Thursday. You can click on it (or any photo on the blog) to view a bigger image. The barbed wire fence on the left hand side of the picture marks the border with Montana. I could have spent many more hours in the field I was having so much fun. I inhaled a huge dinner of nachos and encheladas after the hour and thirty minute van trip back to Marmarth. I was very excited to not have hot dish.

I had a great time on the trip and I can't wait to return. I'll have to though. With a baby due soon I won't be able to sneak away for a week to look for dinosaurs next summer. We need to line up some funding as well. In the mean time I'll have to content myself hunting down an relatively complete ordavercian period cephalopod along the banks of the Mississippi or perhaps a complete crinoid. That should keep me busy. Chelsey will be less than thrilled if I do manage to find and bring home a six foot long cephalopod fossil. "Where do you intend to keep that?!"

Well, that's all for now. I'm sure the trip will generate a few more posts.

~Kirk

130 Birdies!

2007-09-21T18:21:00.000-05:00

I finally made it to 130 birds. What a milestone. While visiting Chelsey's parents in La Crosse I spotted several tufted titmice (bird 128) in the trees by their home. I figured I would see some there at some point. Every time she calls them in the summer I can hear PETER! PETER! in the background. It was inevitable I would spot one there. There were also female ruby throated hummingbirds kicking through.

On September 10th I attended the Metro Naturalist Training at the Coon Rapids Dam. There were lots of great blue herons and a couple of great egrets. For the record, there were also Canada geese, mallards and a cardinal. The new bird for the list there was a ring billed gull (bird 129). This is sort of a gimme I save for this time of year when the pickins are lean. I probably saw one earlier but I purposefully willed myself not to id birds in the cub foods parking lot.

At Warner Nature Center, where I work, we have weekly trail assignments to force us naturalists to get outside. It seems silly to have to force naturalists outside but you get busy and then feel guilty about going on a hike (which is just as important to our training as anything else.) We need to know what goes on out there if we're going to teach about it.

On my hike today I hiked the new Esker Trail. I spotted bluebirds and goldfinches in the prairie. Once I veered into the woods and hiked along the lake I spotted wood ducks and a flock of white throated sparrows. All in all by the end of my hike I counted over 50 wood ducks. I also saw a green heron and a small group of Myrtle (yellow rumped) warblers. Bird 130 came as a real surprise. A bird landed on a branch right in front of me and I peered through my binoculars. I instantly recognized it. It was an ovenbird. That's bird species 130 for the year. I heard overbirds all summer but was never able to see one. Now that they have stopped calling here one plops down in front of me. Figures. What will be next? I see shorebirds and water fowl in my future as I head to a conference in Wisconsin next month.

128 Tufted Titmouse in La Crosse (Holmen)
129 Ring-billed gull-at metro training
130 Ovenbird

Flying Sharks and Ray Surfing

2007-09-17T23:35:00.000-05:00

So my friend Andrea just got back from Japan and while she was there she took a photo of a completely bizarre sign. I cleaned up the image a bit to what you see above. Whatever it means it would make a great T-Shirt. Can anyone read Japanese?

~Kirk

DInosaur Dig (part 3)

2007-09-16T14:43:00.000-05:00

Tuesday night we heard a rumble in the air. No, it wasn't one of the two nightly coal trains that sped through town about 50 feet from my window, it was a storm. This is perhaps a good point to put in a picture of the "roads" we traveled on to get to the sites. These are not roads, they are two-track ranch trails through the Little Missouri National Grasslands. Rain is not a good thing for two tracks as it makes them impassable mud pits.

Even at their best, these two tracks are a crazy ride. The kids said it was more fun than Valleyfair. It was a lot of fun to drive and it felt a lot wilder than it really was. We paused to take this photo on what was a pretty typical slope. From inside the van it felt like this was an extreme 45 degree angle when in reality it was only about 18 degrees. Still, that's not normal.

It doesn't look that bad you say? Okay, okay, you'll have to check out the video. The first rule of two tracks is that each track does not need to be at the same height. This was not for people who get carsick!

Click To Play

Wednesday morning we headed into Montana to the little town of Ekalaka where locals drove by again and again to look at the strangers. I'm glad we could entertain them. Ekalaka is home to the Carter County Museum which has a nice small fossil collection including a large hadrosaur, a copy of the skull of Peck's Rex, and a triceratops skull. There were other nice small paleo items as well.

Being the county museum it also featured historical items. My brother would have appreciated the two headed calf. Now that's history we can all ogle at and appreciate. Here's a picture for you Erik.

We ate lunch at the historic and sacred native site the Medicine Rocks which locals have taken care of for the tribes by carving their names, two feet high, into the soft sacred stone. Way to go Montana. It was pretty disgusting not to mention horribly insulting. It would be a little like carving "Class of 95 RULZ!!!" into the crucified Jesus's chest over the altar in a catholic church. God bless America!

We finished up Wednesday by making some plastic replicas of dinosaur teeth and claws. We were supposed to get in some time in the lab but someone (who will remain nameless) decided even though we paid for the experience they should close up the lab early for the season. In the photo, I am showing kids how to add a little natural grit to their replica t-rex tooth to give it that fresh-out-of-the-ground look. Hopefully they aren't selling theirs on ebay as the real deal. Thanks to Doug for letting us work out of his garage as a temporary lab!

That's all for Wednesday!

~Kirk

What's Erik Mona doin?

2007-09-13T22:16:00.000-05:00

Friends sometimes ask, "What's your brother up to?"

Wonder no more.

~Kirk

Woodchuck

2007-09-12T22:00:00.000-05:00

Ah the woodchuck. (also known as the groundhog, whistle pig and woodland marmot)

I did this drawing a while back. It is just a little sketch and the photo of it isn't the best. I thought I would share it anyhow. Enjoy.

~Kirk

Dinosaur Dig (part 2)

2007-09-11T22:37:00.000-05:00

Here's post number 2 about my dinosaur hunting trip. I present, Tuesday.

Tuesday we headed out to the Triceratops site. This was very neat to see, though a bit confusing as the skeleton was not complete. I know what a sacrum and ilium are but I'm guessing the kids didn't. I would include a photo but unless you know what you are looking at it just looks like a shot of the ground.

The previous day, a group had made a plaster field jacket for the triceratops femur so we helped haul that out. It was very heavy. That's me on the back right getting ready to lower it down a small hill. I think the dark blotch on the horizon might be the truck we're carrying it to. The field jacket consists of a 2x4 for support, some foil and a lot of plaster strips.

While waiting to carry out the femur I did a little prospecting and located a rich trail of bone fragments coming down the hillside maybe 100 feet from the triceratops. I called the rest of the group over and we followed the pieces up to the top of the hill where they stopped. We dug a little but didn't find anything. The two experts with us looked at some of the pieces we found and could tell that they were triceratops frill. It was really cool to follow the trail and start looking for more even though we didn't turn up anything. They hadn't found the head of the triceratops they were excavating 100 feet away so perhaps it disassociated when it died and we were finding pieces of the head of the one they were digging up. Who knows.

Here I am doing a little cleaning up on a different piece of frill. You can see the lines from where the blood vessels were. If you think that triceratops were cold blooded then you think the blood vessels were there to help heat up the dinosaurs via passive solar collection. If you think they were warm blooded then the blood vessels may have helped it cool down. I'll leave that debate to the experts.

FYI: The stylish latex gloves are actually to keep paint and chemicals off my hands as we were making plastic casts of dinosaur pieces on the table in the background.

Later that day we climbed to the top of a butte and felt one of the strongest winds I've ever felt in my life. I took this clip of video but it doesn't do the force of the wind justice. You can get a good view of the basin we are about to descend into as I pan across the landscape. This is my first ever video in a blog post. I'll have better ones in the future!

Click To Play

Atop this bluff we collected some of the K-T boundary. This is the geologic boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. This layer of ash comes from the meteorite impact that slammed into the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago and almost ended all life on earth. The actual K-T boundary here is very visible, one of the best spots on earth to see it. You can even see yellow ribbons of iridium in the black. Iridium in this concentration generally only comes from meteors.

For reference, check out this satellite photo.

View Larger Map
The marker marks the exact spot we collected the KT boundary. Can you see why they call this the Hell Creek formation? It isn't a real hospitable location. The basin to the south of the butte is where we spent the day hiking and looking for fossils.

We headed down into the basin and scouted out several cool sites. We found many pieces of turtle shell. Most pieces were about the size of a quarter.

The pieces I found are from trionychid turtles such as this one. The complete one in the photo is a replica in the Warner Nature Center collection. For size reference, that is a standard countertop it is sitting on and the fossil takes up the entire depth of the counter. These large turtles are related to the soft shelled turtles that inhabit rivers today. The basic turtle design is evolutionarily very robust and has changed little over time.

At one particularly interesting site after lunch I picked up some broken pieces of fossil that had washed into a small wash coming off a hillside. Since the pieces were found close together (within a five foot stretch) and all appeared similar I put them into their own bag and asked our leader about them. He said they were from a turtle and that I could keep them as they were just broken scrap type pieces. I took them home and to my delight two of the pieces fit together. As I played with them a second piece fell into place and then a third, then a fourth. All in all there were 18 pieces and 9 of them fit together. That's pretty impressive.

What I can tell is that it is a portion of the anterior right plastron of a turtle. I have one piece of carapace as well. You can see the curved up portion where the plastron would have connected to the carapace of the turtle. It seems about twice as thick as the trionychid shell pieces we found so I need to do some digging to get and idea of what species I'm dealing with. My impression is that trionychid turtles did not have such solid plastrons. I'll post pictures at some point.

I had a great time putting all the pieces together. I just wish I had a whole turtle to work with! It was a like a fantastic challenging jigsaw puzzle but in the end, instead of a photo of a basket full of puppies or kittens, you end up with a fossil of an animal that lived 65 million years ago. Pretty damn cool.

We continued on our hike through the basin learning about geology and fossils until our water ran out and we needed to head back. We spotted a badly crumbled hadrosaur femur on the ground and noted it with GPS before turning for home. Maybe another group can look longer at this area next season.

That's all for Tuesday. More to come later!

~Kirk

Laser Magician

2007-09-04T22:27:00.000-05:00

I used to be a magician so I enjoy seeing how the art progresses. This one was new to me. I like lasers too so what's not to like. I get how he does this, it isn't anything too overly complex as but he does it so well! Enjoy the video.

~Kirk

Dinosaur Dig (Part 1)

2007-08-29T22:31:00.000-05:00

Last summer I taught my regular Fossils to Feathers summer camp and fellow Warner naturalist Bekah Dalen brought in some fossils to show me. She said she got them on a dinosaur dig while working at the Children's Museum. Hmm, we thought, why don't we lead a dinosaur dig though Warner?

Here were the two selling points.

1. Digging up dinosaurs
and
2. Getting paid to do it

Need I say more?

We offered the summer camp this summer and a little over a week ago we took seven kids on a 10 hour van ride to the far nether regions of North Dakota to root around in the famous Hell Creek Formation. (Okay, famous to other geeks, geologists and paleo-types.)

We worked with Marmarth Research Foundation and the week was tons of fun. Fossil wise we found many pieces of trionychid turtles and parts of another species of turtle I need to identify. We found champsosaur bones, a hadrosaur femur, a triceratops femur, a triceratops tooth, a dromeosaur tooth, fossil trees, crocodile teeth, freshwater ray teeth, triceratops frill and more. The pictures tell a good story so let's start there.

We set out on Sunday for the 10 hour ride to Marmarth, ND. The highlight of the trip was of course stopping at the Middle Spunk rest stop in Minnesota (purely because of the name) and stopping to gawk at Salem Sue the world's largest holstein cow statue in New Salem, ND. That's six tons of reinforced fiberglass in the shape of a cow up there on that butte. She's actually the world's largest fiberglass animal. Okay so the picture is awful. Follow the link for up close giant cow bliss.

We arrived in Marmarth just in time for some Tater Tot hotdish. We found this quite hilarious as we were joking with the kids that dinner would be tater tot hotdish and there it was like culinary destiny. Little did we suspect at the time (how foolish) that hotdish would grace our lips at several dinners. The only one that was vile was the chow mein hotdish, the rest were edible. Oh I now wish I had a photo of the tater tot hotdish! There were some folks there from the east coast who were completely perplexed by the hotdish phenomenon. The term casserole was only slightly less alien.

That night we got our room assignments in the Marmarth Bunkhouse. The bunkhouse was built for railway workers back in the old days. As far accommodations for a dinosaur dig this was posh. Most digs involve sleeping in tents so this was nice. There was a phone, showers, private rooms and satellite TV. Weirdly, the kids all wanted to watch shows about serial killers while I preferred spongebob. Go figure.

Monday morning we headed out to a site where kids a few years ago uncovered a hadrosaur femur. There is still probably more of the dino inside the hillside but a LOT of rock would have to be removed to get at it. Maybe someday, but for now there are easier quarry. I found one of my first cool things here. It was a little piece of a trionychid turtle. It was thrilling but little did I know I would be seeing thousands of such parts in the next few days. This site was also home to many many modern rodent bones as a large owl roosted in the area and the ground was littered with bones and owl pellets. Our leader, Doug Hanks, showed us a profile of the rock in the area and taught us how to read the record of what had happened there.

Monday afternoon we headed out to another area to work on a site rich in turtles. It is apparently one of the richest turtle sites in the world. We didn't see any. I used an exacto knife to slowly carve out a one foot square area. In an hour our so I went down about four inches. This is the very unglamourous part of field work. Carefully looking for nothing. The area I worked in was where they had just removed six complete turtles so it was important to keep searching. It was too bad we didn't uncover anything but that's part of the job too.

Dinner Monday was meatloaf hotdish. When I say meatloaf I mean many many pounds of ground beef tossed into a pan, covered in ketchup and baked. I think there may have been a can of "cream of something" soup mixed in. Welcome to flavor country. Why didn't I take any pictures of the food?

That's it for the first installment. I'll post up the rest of the week soon.

~Kirk

Improve Blogger

2007-08-22T12:55:00.000-05:00

Here's an excellent script that makes your blogger edit box much bigger. The box used to edit posts in Blogger is way too small but this Greasemonkey script fixes that.

Get Firefox, Install Greasemonkey, Install this script, be happy.

Rinse lather, repeat.

~Kirk

Birds while I Blog

2007-08-22T00:18:00.000-05:00

I've got some cool blog posts I am working on but they will take a while to finish up. The big post is about the dinosaur dig I was on two weeks ago. I promise to post something soon. It will have video and clickable satellite photos and be worth the wait.

In the mean time it is time for a simple bird count update. I saw five new species in North Dakota and two new species since I returned home. That means I have broken my personal best record for number of birds spotted in one year. Of course, this is my second year so one would expect that.

I wasn't in North Dakota to bird so all sightings were almost accidental. For example, two of the birds I spotted and identified for sure only when the van we were in stopped to open a cattle gate as we crossed through the Little Missouri National Grasslands. Here's the North Dakota list.

121 Western Meadowlark
122 Lark Bunting
123 Lazuli Bunting
124 Red Breasted Nuthatch
125 Swainson's Hawk

Yesterday while I was locking up the building at work I head a barred owl in the distance. I called to it only to be surprised when an owl answered from les then 100 feet away. These two birds called back and forth until the jays came and chased to owl away. I was surprised how rapid a call the owl in the distance used. I've never head the "who cooks for you, who cooks for you-all" spit out in three seconds like that.

Today I arrived at work and Paul told me there were Tennessee Warblers in the bog. I grabbed my binoculars and headed down. Sure enough they were dripping off the trees. The warbler migration has begun. I also spotted a beautiful great crested flycatcher and a catbird. The flycatcher was hunting close to the ground as the entire bog was etheiral nad filled with fog this morning.

So, for the numbers game that's:

126 Barred Owl
127 Tennessee Warbler

The Baby Blog

2007-08-20T22:58:00.000-05:00

So I can't believe I haven't posted this yet.

If you want to follow my adventures into fatherhood you can read up on my other blog, Adventures in DNA Mixing.

~Kirk

Would you believe birds?

2007-07-17T18:11:00.000-05:00

It seems like it has been a long time since I posted about birds. Such is the middle of summer. It gets hard to find new birds for my list. I did finally manage to creep up to 120 birds this week.

On June 20th I added two birds. I added the clay-colored sparrow and a blue-winged warbler. I was one of the few people at work that day and no one had gotten the mail yet so I hiked out to the mailbox. I spotted a blue-winged warbler along the driveway on the way to the mailbox. Rule number one. Always bring binoculars, everywhere.

On the way back I cut through the prairie/savanna restoration and could hear the distinctive call of the clay colored sparrow. Paul had taught it to me earlier in the month and while I had heard it everywhere the actual birds had eluded me. Sitting on top of a big slash pile was a little brown bird. With my binoculars I thought I could tell it was the one singing. I crept closer and sure enough it was the clay-colored sparrow.

The nest week was the first week of summer camp and I lead a trip of kids down the St. Croix river. The first night we heard but didn't see a whip-poor-will. The second night we camped out at Goose Creek and a pair of sandhill cranes flew right over our heads. They landed on the opposite shore to eat. We got a great view. As I remembered, the goose creek campsite is thick with American redstarts and the wood thrushes were singing beautifully from the woods. The second morning (June 29th) I arose early and birded along the quiet shore as mist lifted off the water. I saw another blue-winged warbler but there was another bird hanging out with it. I finally got a good luck and to my delight it was a golden-winged warbler. There was another misc. vireo about that morning. It looked like it was probably a red-eyed vireo but I'm going to hold off on counting it since I didn't get a great look.

Bird 120 was a pleasant surprise. I don't get to add many birds to my list from my treeless suburban back yard. I've done a lot to encourage birds including feeders and a new pond. The improvements have brought in cardinals, robins, house sparrows, chickadees, goldfinches, and chipping sparrows but I kept on saying where the hell are the house wrens! I have two next boxes up that would be suitable but I don't so much as see a single sign of the wrens. Then, just the other day (July 15th)there were two of them hanging out on my back porch and playing around in the mulberry bush. Believe it or not they were the first ones I had seen all year. I really hope they see what a nice place my yard is and decide to stick around.

Woo hoo, 120 birds. I'm going to beat last year.

117 Clay-colored sparrow,
118 Blue winged warbler
119 Golden-winged warbler
120 House Wren

~Kirk

Something Skinky

2007-07-11T07:02:00.000-05:00

While out in the bog with the kids in the photography class I'm teaching we found a skink at the last minute. We didn't have much time before we had to be back to the building but I managed to snap a quick picture of this elusive creature. Most people don't realize that we have lizards in Minnesota and might mistake a skink for a small snake. We actually have three species. We have the five-lined skink, the northern prairie skink and the six-lined racerunner. I am pretty sure this is a northern prairie skink.

~Kirk

Open Letter Calling for Impeachment, Conviction

2007-07-02T17:56:00.000-05:00

This is the full text of the letter I just sent to my representative in the House of Representatives, Betty McCollum.

Dear Representative McCollum.

This evening I learned that President Bush commuted the jail sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. In doing so he insults the Congress and circumvents the independence of the judiciary. While he has the right to pardon as President, he must also answer for the actions he chooses to take.

While I have not called for it in the past, I now request as my representative that you draft articles of impeachment for George W. Bush as he is not fit to be President of the United States and has certainly committed "high crimes and misdemeanors". I ask that you do so in a timely manor so that the Senate can vote to convict. I believe you would be able to secure a simple majority of representatives to support this effort.

The President and his staff intentionally misled and defrauded Congress with regard to invading Iraq in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371. He also conspired to commit torture of prisoners in violation of the "Federal Torture Act" Title 18 United States Code, Section 113C. He has also openly admitted to ordering the NSA to illegally wiretap American citizens in violation of Title 50 United States Code, Section 1805.

These are all impeachable offenses, in fact, violation of Title 18 United States Code, Section 113C is actually punishable by death so it surely qualifies as a "high crime."

Your predecessors in the House impeached President Clinton for far lesser charges and I ask that you do your duty to begin the removal of an unfit, criminal president who flaunts the laws of our country and believes he and his friends are immune from the law.

That's my letter. Where's yours?

Next up, a letter to my Senator asking to convict when the articles of impeachment are sent to the senate.

~Kirk