Halloween Approaches

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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