Natural Connections: Recent Episodes
Emily Stone
Natural Connections is a weekly newspaper column created by Emily Stone, the Naturalist/Education Director at the Cable Natural History Museum in Cable, Wisconsin. In each episode, Emily reads her fun and informative weekly column about Northwoods Nature.
The flower head looked odd. Pearly everlasting—with their beautiful flat-topped cluster of white flowers with yellow centers—had finally bloomed. And now the petals would dry out and hold their shape for many months. Except, as I walked past the small patch of native plants between the Museum and the Forest Lodge Library, I noticed that one of the flower clusters was a shapeless blob of petals. Peeling open a corner, I spotted yellow stripes, red dots, and multi-tipped black spikes. Yikes! That's what this American painted lady caterpillar wanted me to think…and then to leave them alone.
Some gardeners might be frustrated to lose a few flowers, but hosting native insects is exactly why we plant native species in our gardens, instead of importing species from all over the world who don't play a positive role in our local ecosystem.
Walking slowly, I scanned the flowers for anything out of place, any disruption to the normal patterns. On the dark center of a black-eyed Susan, I found a small green anomaly. Crouching down, I found myself face-to-face with the fierce scowl, long horns, and serrated edges of a jagged ambush bug. Some people fly halfway around the world to witness the dramas of nature play out on the African savannah. I found plenty of action walking halfway around the yard.
Katherine Woolley is about to start her senior year as an environmental education major at Western Colorado University. When Katherine arrived for her second round as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, she announced that she hit a certain age and suddenly became a birder! This week she shares a neat ornithological observation.
"'Peep peep peep peeeep PEEP PEEEEEP peep peep' I rolled over in my bed and groaned. Spring had come early to Colorado's Gunnison Valley where I attend university. A flash of yellow on my window bird feeder caught my attention. There perched a male house finch sporting banana-colored belly feathers where the red normally is."
The Wild Wonders Summer Camp kids chattered away as they dug into their lunches, oblivious to the yellow-bellied sapsucker who skirted up and down the bark of the tree just a few feet away, in search of their own lunch. I watched as the sapsucker took flight, their speckled wings flapping quickly through the trees, until they landed on the bark of another tree and disappeared! It took me a second to realize that they had entered into a small hole hidden in the bark of the tree. Had I not watched them enter, I never would have noticed the hole high up in the bark, or learned of the nest inside. But I could not focus on the yellow-bellied sapsucker nest for long. My campers had finished lunch and were getting restless.
From a distance, the forests of July look like a lush tapestry of green. But when you step into the loosely woven strands and take a closer look, the leaves are etched with feeding trails, dissected by holes of all shapes and sizes, and covered with the debris of life. It's a principle of ecology, of course, that every Being is food for someone else.
Feeding styles vary. Some invertebrates are "leaf folders," while others are "leaf rollers" or "leaf tiers." All of these insects and spiders use silk that contracts as it dries to shape leaves into shelters. I set out to find examples of all of the leaf architects.
I barely caught the flash of brown out of the corner of my eye, but Kevin had a clear view. He followed the flight path of the bird until they landed on the far side of a small channel lined with arching sedges. Despite the bird's pinstriped camouflage blending seamlessly with the tall grass, and having never before seen one in the wild, his identification came instantly: American bittern!
Bitterns hunt alone, mostly at dawn and dusk, and are said to be easier to hear than to see. Their deep booming, gulping calls travel far across marshes, but the male "thunder-pumpers" are vocal only during their spring mating season, and so it's not even that easy to hear them. Add to that bitterns' decline in parallel with the decline of their wetland homes, and we'd resigned ourselves to admiring their mystery instead of enjoying an encounter.
My heart raced as I reached my hand into the bag. What if I broke them? What if I let them escape? Then my fingers found a familiar grip, and before I knew it, I was holding this bird just like I had the warbler. Now that I was the bander and not just the releaser, the vibration of their heart felt different. Their safety was in my hands. My own heart slowed, and I took a steadying breath.
Maneuvering the veery so that I could grip their right leg in my left thumb and forefinger, I slipped the open band over their leg. Now they were ready to contribute to science!
"This bird will be forever connected to you," Jim reminded me after we'd sent the veery flying back into the brush. My heart fluttered happily
The sound of boots crunching on sandy sediments and excited chatter filled the air. The first day of our Wisconsin Master Naturalist training had begun, and twenty people from all walks of life were eager to learn about the ecology of the Northwoods. Over the next five days, these participants would be exploring sites all over Bayfield County, and learning from experts across multiple natural resource fields. Our goal was not to instantly train experts in Northwoods ecology, but rather to spark curiosity and connection with the natural world. Whether coming from a natural resource background themselves, or simply wanting to learn more about nature, our participants were eager to dive into the knowledge of our experts. And we were jumping right into the geology of the Northwoods at our first field trip location–an esker left by the glaciers around 11,000 years ago.
Dappled light, mosquitoes, and the roar of a chainsaw filled the humid air on a morning in early June. Guided by skilled hands, the blade sliced through pale wood. Lacey green leaves trembled against the blue sky before tipping toward a gap in the canopy, brushing past the twigs of neighbors, and easing quietly onto the earth exactly where the feller intended. If a black ash tree falls in the forest, must it land with a crash?
Deep in the woods east of Lake Namakagon, I'd gathered a small team of volunteers on an urgent mission.
While staying in Boulder Junction, Wis. to take a Wilderness First Responder course last week, I made time for a bike ride on the Heart of Vilas County Bike Trail. This wonderfully curvy, scenic, paved trail is a favorite of mine. At this junction between spring and summer, I delighted in the profusion of flowers.
Lois Nestel, the Museum's first naturalist and director, might not have joined me on a bike ride, but I know I would have loved to walk attentively through the woods with her. This week, I'd like to share her description of the residents of woods and fields as summer begins to bloom. Slow down a minute with me, we'll smell the roses, and I think you'll find it rewarding.
I sat on the tan, dusty ground of the quarry in north central Iowa, fingers grasping at the shell that lay halfway buried in the chalky clay and limestone. Wiggling it back and forth, I gently pulled it up from the ground that it had been resting in for millions of years. The ridged shell was almost perfectly intact, painting me a detailed picture of what the animal looked like. I had found a brachiopod fossil, a marine invertebrate who used to live in the warm, shallow sea of the Devonian Period, roughly 380 million years ago. As I sat examining my find, I couldn't help but think about how special it is to find something so ancient, to hold the remnants of their life in my hand, and glimpse what life on Earth was like millions of years ago.
In just the last week or two, new life has exploded in the Northwoods. To my brain, it feels like a burst of fireworks. Instead of embers sparkling in the darkness, there's been a surge of colorful blossoms, an eruption of vibrant baby leaves, a cacophony of birdsong, and a buzz of movement everywhere I look.
The shiny resin on balsam poplar buds turns to airborne molecules during spring leaf-out. Those molecules contain a myriad of chemicals that are useful to the tree -- and beneficial to us! Thriving in the far north -- farther than any other broadleaf tree in North America -- balsam poplar is poised to make drastic changes to the tundra as summer temperatures warm. Read more about this amazing tree in this week's Natural Connections, or listen to the podcast.
426 - A Prairie-Dweller Moves North
A lump of gray fur in the middle of the trail pulled us up short. The small mammal was about the size of a gray squirrel, but with cute, round ears tucked below their silhouette. I'd never seen a Franklin's ground squirrel before! On various websites I read that these are a species of tallgrass prairies, although they've declined as the prairies have declined. In the southeastern part of their range the squirrels are barely hanging on in grassy roadsides and railroad right-of-ways—the same places where a few native plants have escaped the plow. Several sources suggested that they belong only in the southern and western portions of Minnesota.
So what was this little prairie dweller doing in Northeastern Minnesota?
My companion gasped in the middle of a sentence as a pine warbler darted over my head and landed on rough spruce bark a few feet way. Then he swooped to a rock wall and paused mid-hop to belt out a trill. We watched his stout beak open and his white wing bars vibrate with the effort. Pine warblers are aptly named, as they are rarely spotted anywhere but in pine trees.
First, we squinted, then we peered through binoculars, and finally I zoomed in with my camera to make sense of the dark shapes. The ducks had a funny conehead and a gracefully swooped patch of gray on their side. The pale ring around their dark beak was the most distinctive character. I'm not good at waterfowl, so I wracked my brain for a likely ID…were they ring-billed ducks? That would be logical. But no, a quick peek through the Merlin app's helpful photos confirmed that these were ring-necked ducks. Huh?
Just having returned from a week of birdwatching on the Atlantic coast, the plump-bodied, long-billed silhouette of this "hokumpoke" reminded us of the sanderlings, dunlins, and willets we'd watched scurry ahead of the waves. It's a strange fact that despite their preference for damp thickets instead of beaches, woodcocks are the most numerous sandpiper in North America.
The fish appeared to be a striped mullet, a common species of coastal waters. At first, the mullet appeared to be winning. They flopped and slipped father through the herons bill, surely about to escape the final grip on their head. Then the heron's plan became apparent. All the movement was maneuvering the fish's head to aim aerodynamically into the heron's beak. With one last toss of their head, the fish disappeared.
It was well before sunrise as we drove into the Namekagon Barrens Wildlife Area and parked the truck. Moving as silently as possible, we grabbed our chairs, a much needed thermos of coffee, and started the walk to the viewing blind, its white silhouette barely visible in the distance. Once to the blind, we crawled inside, set up our chairs, and unclipped the blinds windows. I stared out into the dark of the early morning, feelings of excitement and anticipation buzzing through me. Afterall, it's not everyday that I get the chance to watch sharp-tailed grouse dance on their lekking ground.
On the inside, turkey vultures' intense stomach acids can kill the microbes that cause botulism, anthrax, cholera, tuberculosis, salmonella, and rabies. How appropriate that the birds' scientific name—Cathartes aura—means "purifying breeze." Their digestive system is so powerful that it even destroys the DNA of their food. As of March 27, I still haven't seen a turkey vulture in the Northwoods, but soon they'll be showing up on the wind and helping us out with a little spring cleaning!
From the top of a leafless oak tree commenced a steady stream of whistles and warbles that sounded as if an entire flock of flickers, vireos, titmice, cardinals, and wood thrushes were all taking turns. Just one robin-sized bird perched there, though. Brown thrashers are "mimics" who increase their repertoire of songs and show off their skills to the ladies by copying from other birds. Across the Southeast are brown thrashers who will soon be migrating north, just a little bit behind the loons. Their concert tour continues! Plan to attend one of their performances at dawn in your local shrubbery.
Scientists used to think that almost all our Common Loons spend the winter on salt water. From across the northern lakes, loons migrate to both coasts and the gulf each fall to avoid ice-up. Now we know that more than 100 loons spend each winter on a large freshwater lake in South Carolina. In this relatively small area, it becomes easier to carry out research on loon behavior.
As mother nature slowly begins to tease us with the occasional warm day, and longer periods of sunlight, I can't help but dream of warmer days spent exploring outside, underneath the forest canopy. One of my favorite things to do while exploring the forest is to take in the intricacies of the forest floor, and discover the diverse life that inhabits that space. Between the litter layer, growing mosses, and decaying logs, a utopia full of life is waiting to be unearthed.
Seeing a moth seemed to signal that evening was coming, and our thoughts turned to owls. Sax-Zim Bog is famous for hosting rare owls. Last year was an incredible irruption year when great gray owls, boreal owls, and snowy owls visited from their homes farther north. This year has been much quieter. A few great gray owls nest here, but lately they've been secretive. We'd heard that a northern hawk owl was hunting at the edge of a field on some of the private land that makes up the patchwork of ownership in Sax-Zim Bog Important Bird Area in Northern Minnesota, so off we went!
The Canada jays swooped from the feeding station, back over my head, and disappeared into the forest behind me. Were they taking peanut butter to their chicks? These intrepid birds nest in February and March! That's one reason their food caches are so important.
Early spring is when male fishers travel widely in search of mating opportunities. I often see their tracks in the softening snow as they tour their 9-15 square mile home ranges that overlap the smaller territories of several females.
I stared open-mouthed in disbelief at the cat crossing the neighborhood street in front of my new house in Silver Bay, MN (I'll be moving up full time in 2027). Trotting purposefully on long legs, with a body almost three feet long, this was no housecat. "Bobcat!" I exclaimed, eyeing the black tip on their short tail and dark blotches on gray-brown fur. Bobcats are common in Northern Wisconsin where I've been living for the past 15 years, and are often spotted around homes and roads, so that was the most likely identification my startled brain could find.
But as the cat climbed up the pile of dirty snow on the curb and into my neighbor's yard, the size of their huge, furry feet came into full view. That, along with long black ear tufts visible against the white, confirmed their identity: Canada lynx.
Evening grosbeaks are colorful members of the finch family. These bright birds travel widely toward the best food sources in movements known as "irruptions." In 2016, the evening grosbeak was cited as the steepest declining landbird in the continental United States and Canada. Together, networks of scientists and legions of bird-lovers are working to make sure that the Sun isn't setting on evening grosbeaks.
How can you help? If you see grosbeaks, post your photos to iNaturalist or eBird where scientists can use them as data to determine where the birds are and what they are eating. Or if you're lucky enough to see one with a colored band, report it to the USGS Bird Banding Laboratory. Learn about ways to prevent birds from colliding with your windows from the American Bird Conservancy. Keep cats inside. Keep your bird feeders clean and take them down if you notice sick birds. Support the Finch Research Network and other conservation organizations with your donations. Scientists have come together in an Evening Grosbeak Working Group to fill the knowledge gaps across priority areas like diet, causes of death, migratory and population dynamics, habitat, and climate change. Among other things, scientists are outfitting grosbeaks with satellite and radio transmitters and colored leg bands to help track their movements.
As my boots crunched and sunk into the snow, the trees were shedding bits of snow that littered their branches, dispatched by the wind. In my attempts to avoid getting showered by falling snow, I found myself walking among scattered giants. Standing next to the old eastern hemlock, staring up at the towering trunk, I began to feel very small as I imagined what this tree has lived through and the things that they have seen. How many generations of songbirds have nested in their branches, or found food in their cones? How many generations of deer, bears, wolves, and other wildlife have they seen treading beneath their branches? How have they seen us change, and do they like what they see? How have they watched the world change around them, as they stand rooted in place?
"'I know the moon,' said the fox"
My colleague read this title line aloud from a children's book recently, as part of a staff training. At first, I was just as enchanted with the story as she was. The fox goes on to describe how the Moon is like a rabbit that he can chase across the night. The moth disagrees with the fox, though, as does the owl, the mouse, and the bullfrog. The animals start bickering about who's right. They decide to visit A Man of Science, and each Being hopes that he will confirm their perspective. But the Man of Science declares that the Moon is made of sand, and nothing more.
I sensed that the author was trying to make some point about how the facts and figures of science are out to squash wonder in the world. How horrible that would be! I realized that the author had constructed a strawman argument by setting up a simplistic imagined opponent that's easy to knock down. Giving children an incorrect view of science and scientists isn't going to help them navigate our changing world. It isn't going to help them to know the Moon.
Here's a few fun links to info about the Moon: https://www.amazon.com/I-Know-Moon-Stephen-Anderson/dp/039923425X https://radiolab.org/podcast/the-moon-itself/transcript
https://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/2021/06/whip-poor-will.html
https://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/2018/09/stranger-than-we-can-imagine.html
https://www.sciencealert.com/our-moon-is-curiously-lopsided-and-a-massive-impact-could-be-to-blame
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/meteorite-impacts/on-the-moon
https://science.nasa.gov/moon/tidal-locking/
https://science.nasa.gov/moon/weather-on-the-moon/
https://science.nasa.gov/moon/formation/
https://science.nasa.gov/moon/composition/
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/moons-insides-still-hot-hot-hot-after-billions-of-years-of-formation-study
The idea that a woodpecker's tongue provides cushioning for their brain as it wraps around their skull has come into question. The newest calculations, made with the most accurate modern technology, refute the idea that a woodpecker's brain is cushioned at all!
Of course, any of these conclusions might be proven wrong or incomplete as scientists discover new information in the future. The beauty of science is that it requires us to be able to change our minds in light of new evidence. One thing that doesn't need to change is the magic we feel when we watch a great black bird with a flaming topknot spread their broad wings and with a few swooping beats disappear into the forest.
Brown creepers are cute little bits of camouflage with white bellies. This one moved upward in staccato motions, a bit to the side, around to the back, back to the front, and up some more. Pausing, the bird used their thin, downward-curving bill to explore a bark furrow. Perhaps they had spotted an overwintering insect larvae or antifreeze-protected spider for their lunch. Near the limit of my view out the window, the creeper suddenly launched off the tree and fluttered downward toward another tree trunk, out of sight.
As snow continues to blanket the ground, and the plummeting temperatures cause the air to bite at exposed skin, I can't help but reminisce on warm summer day adventures. One adventure in particular had me exploring local wetlands, those special places where water and land blend together to create exquisite, diverse ecosystems. One wetland gifted me with a memory I won't soon forget, and reminded me just how beautiful even the simplest experiences in nature are.
This is the season for lists highlighting our most-listened-to or best-of-whatevers at the end of the year, so I decided to dig into the stats on my Natural Connections blog. To my surprise, the most-read article in 2025 was one I wrote in February of 2016 about a plant called mullein. In August 2025 it spiked in popularity, far above my normal readership. I have no idea why. I recently told someone the story of finding the chickadee-cached seed in the mullein stalk, but I'd forgotten about the rest of the article. It's fun! And appropriate to this season. So, I hope you enjoy it as much as the 1.24K other readers did, too! Happy New Year! –Emily
Bohemian waxwings are known for their ability to find a tree full of berries in the middle of nowhere, descend on it en masse, strip every edible fruit from the twigs, and then disappear to their next meal. That's exactly what they did as I watched.
Heading north on Highway 63, the beautiful scenery never fails to keep me entertained as I drive through the picturesque nature of the Northwoods. While my thoughts wandered, a large dark spot high in a distant tree caught my eye. At first, I thought it might be a squirrel drey–a large nest of twigs and leaves built high in a tree. But as I got closer, I realized that it was a porcupine! Once my excitement calmed down, curiosity began to take its place. I began to wonder why exactly this porcupine was high up in the tree on this late fall morning. The answer may lie within the feeding strategies of the North American porcupine.
As winter's first snowflakes drifted through the dark, some landed on top of dead plants, fallen leaves, twigs, and other detritus of the forest floor. In many places, snow never fully reached the ground. That was surely true for the protected hideaway of my thermometer. By dawn, it was buried under six inches and counting.
Despite falling temperatures, the relative warmth of the cold rain and the residual heat of summer were still radiating from the soil. At sunrise, when I checked the weather station, the air temp had dropped to 24 degrees Fahrenheit, but the sensor cozied up to the earth under a fresh blanket of snow read 33 degrees. After two winters of thin snow, the Subnivean Zone has returned!
Read all about it in this week's Natural Connections or listen to the podcast. Find links to both at https://www.cablemuseum.org/connect/ or in our profile.
Check out Emily's third book, hot off the press! Natural Connections 3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available at several local bookstores, at the Cable Natural History Museum, or at cablemuseum.org/connect!
The arching stems, decorative berries, and warmly hued, persistent fall foliage of barberry, plus the complete lack of deer browse on their twigs, are why they were brought to the U.S. as an ornamental plant in 1875. That was fine, until in the 1980s they started to spread out and displace native plants. Now Japanese barberry is considered invasive in 17 states, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.
A barberry thicket also provides a safe, fox-resistant haven for mice, and a shady, humid home for ticks. Deer ticks feed on mice, who are reservoirs for Lyme disease.
The shallow water in Northwoods marshes and bays began to crackle with a skim of ice recently, gently reminding everyone that winter is on the way. Ice-up is a firm deadline for many beings who migrate to travel at least a little bit farther south. I got caught up in the flurry of activity and soon found myself in the Mississippi River Flyway swooping around the hills and corners of the Great River Road with other Northerners heading south.
Check out Emily's third book, hot off the press! Natural Connections 3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available at several local bookstores, at the Cable Natural History Museum, or at cablemuseum.org/connect!
Beside the trail stood a spreading shrub with a few rays of sunlight illuminating tiny yellow flowers that looked just like sunbursts themselves. Witch-hazel! The flower-dappled shrub twinkled like a reminder of spring. While they do bloom near Halloween, witch-hazel's name is probably a misspelling of old English words wicke or wych that meant "lively" and "to bend." They refer to the use of a forked branch of witch-hazel as a dowsing rod, which purportedly would bend downward to point out a good location to dig a well.
In a bit of reverse-dowsing, rain showers helped me see the leaf, and sun rays helped me see the witch-hazel. On that fall day, I found a deep well of beauty.
"Turn here, they're heading north!" I directed my fiancé as we navigated the gravel roads of Crex Meadows Wildlife Area near Grantsburg, WI. We'd spotted a line of sandhill cranes flying through the sunset sky, and were following them toward what we hoped would be a spectacular evening of birdwatching.
The air shimmered as I walked through the forest, the heavy mists encompassing me in a damp blanket. As my shoes trod on soggy leaves, I took in the quiet serenity of the forest. Many of the trees had begun their annual changing of the colors, painting the canopy in shades of yellow, orange, red and green. Their discarded leaves were already beginning to dot the forest floor in late September. But fallen leaves weren't the only contributors of color on the ground–the fall mushrooms were popping in the Northwoods.
At first, a flutter at the edge of my vision made me think that an autumn leaf had somehow managed to fall half a mile to the middle of the lake. A closer look revealed the dark purple wings of a mourning cloak butterfly. In late September?
Weeks later, a flutter at the edge of my vision caught my attention just in time to watch an autumn leaf come to rest on the ground. Small quaking aspen leaves carpeted the trail in a mosaic of yellow and green. They were evidence of yet another way that a Lepidopteran (butterflies and moths) survives the winter.
Colorful leaves and colorful wings flutter on fall breezes, all getting ready for winter.
"Just hold her like this," Kurt told me. So I carefully nestled my first two fingers into the soft, warm feathers around the neck of this tiny northern saw-whet owl, cradled her soft, warm torso in the palm of my hand, and secured her brown and white wings with my thumb and other fingers. My heart stopped for a moment, but under those soft, warm feathers I could feel her smaller heart racing.
Learn more about the volunteer opportunities with Mike and Kurt's saw-whet owl nest box and MOTUS tower research on the Museum's iVolunteer page: https://cablenhm.ivolunteer.com/saw-whet-owl-research
Finally, within sight of the next lake, movement near the toe of my boot startled me almost to the point of disaster.
Big black eyes with golden rims stared up at me from the slope of a rock. Crooked toes gripped the rough surface, and long hind legs braced for a quick escape. The green frog who had jumped out from underneath my boot perched motionless, as if that made them invisible.
Last week I wrote about acorns clattering across my roof. As it turns out, nuts are raining down on many of your roofs, too! Commiserating over the loud, foot-rolling acorns makes me feel like part of an extended community. Are the oaks part of a similar community? And why are they suddenly attacking us with acorns!
Oaks are mast species, which means that all the trees in an area will produce a bumper crop of acorns at the same time, but only every two to five years. From mice to owls to chatting neighbors, oaks, and the mystery of their mast years, are at the center of our Northwoods community.
The pontoon bobbed in the water as I stepped onto the deck, clutching binoculars and trying to contain my excitement. Since moving to the Northwoods in the middle of winter, I had been waiting for the chance to see a loon, and my chance finally arrived in late May. The sunlight danced across the water as our boat left the dock, and we began our search. It wasn't long before we spotted the silhouette of a loon off in the distance, and headed for a closer look.
Crack! Rumble, rumble, rumble. Crack! The sound of hard objects pelting my metal roof shot through my open bedroom window, rousing me from the last wisps of sleep. Then silence. I braced myself as a soft hush of wind drew closer. Crack! The wind triggered a new spatter of noises. The house was under attack—by acorns.
Two large red oak trees reach the edges of their canopies out over the roof of my house. Each fall, they create a racket as acorns drop on the metal roof, tumble down the steep slope, and launch out over the driveway. Some years are worse than others, since oaks are mast trees who will produce a bumper crop in one year, then spend subsequent years rebuilding their stores of nutrients and not producing as many acorns. This is clearly a mast year.
Shades of Rot and Life (This essay is a chapter from Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, which will arrive in November 2025!) In the dim light, under the thick, hardwood canopy of the forest, death was everywhere. Of course, life was everywhere too.
We’d only been watching for a few minutes when suddenly one of the loons took off running and flapping down the bay toward the main lake. Huge, webbed feet splashed at the surface. As soon as the first loon rose above the water, the remaining loon followed in a flurry of flapping wings and feet. What had just happened? The group looked around at each other in amazement, feeling lucky to have witnessed this fascinating bit of loon behavior.
Although the temperature plummeted and rain ran off our jackets, our excitement and determination could not be dampened. Rubber boots tromped over soggy leaf litter, and hands grasped at every fallen log, flipping them over as we searched the forest. The Wild Wonders campers and I were on a mission, seeking out an animal who thrives in rainy conditions–the salamander.
I was just about ready to round up the group and move on from the old quarry when someone exclaimed over a pretty white flower among the weeds. Five luminous petals, each with translucent lines arcing gracefully toward the nectar reservoir in the center, provided the backdrop for a ring of delicate eyelashes tipped with glossy yellow spheres. I could barely believe my eyes! I first met bog star, or marsh grass-of-Parnassus, during my summer in Alaska while assisting with a snowshoe hare study in the Brooks Range. This little beauty captured my imagination immediately.
Guest writer Katherine Woolley is about to start her junior year as an environmental education major at Western Colorado University. This summer, as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, she taught our Junior Naturalist programs and showed a real talent for finding and appreciating the oddest parts of nature.
I spotted the male first. He was sitting on the highest point of the mushroom shelf like he was the king of the hill. Then I spotted his mate, who to my surprise, looked like she was sitting up. I knelt down and cocked my head to the side to get a better look. For beetles who usually crawl on all six legs, this was an unusual position. Was she laying eggs?
Guest writer Katherine Woolley is about to start her junior year as an environmental education major at Western Colorado University. This summer, as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, she taught our Junior Naturalist programs and showed a real talent for finding and appreciating the oddest parts of nature.
A walk along the Forest Lodge Nature Trail is never boring. I was reveling in this fact as I took my evening meander through the large trunks of towering trees. To my left, I spotted a shelf fungus clinging to the bark of a half-decayed paper birch stump. Creeping closer to investigate, I squealed with delight. There they were! Two forked fungus beetles were nestled in the corner of their polypore home.
Guest writer Kylie Tatarka is about to start her senior year as an environmental science major at Rochester Institute of Technology. This summer, as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, she taught our Junior Naturalist programs and spearheaded the creation of the online “Becoming the Northwoods” exhibit.
Seeing the aspen-covered ground reminded me of a tree that is more common in my home state of New York, the eastern cottonwood tree, which is a relative of the aspen with similar cotton-tufted seeds. I grew an affection for these trees while leading a seed dispersal hike. With the kids, we discovered examples of seeds that are dispersed by wind, water, animals, gravity, and bursting. Now I’m always on the lookout for plants with interesting methods of seed dispersal.
The Boundary Waters is beautiful, but that’s only part of it. What really keeps people coming back, I believe, is the way this place helps us to challenge ourselves. When you cut out the excess, the superfluous, and the mess, and fit everything necessary for a week or two of life into a single, green pack, life becomes simple. There is an incredible sense of freedom in this knowledge of self-sufficiency. This freedom feels all the more sweet when it comes with manageable challenges and a means to test our mettle.
Upon spotting the green dragonfly resting close enough for me to capture, I knew I had to try. With my kayak nestled into the grassy bank of the Namekagon River, I snapped a few photos of my target and began to reach my hand out slowly. But when my fingers gently grasped the dragonfly, I was horrified to find that it was squishy rather than the typical hard feeling of an exoskeleton. My hand shot back to my side in an instant, repulsed. My first thought was that the dragonfly was dead and waterlogged.
The calm waters of Lake Superior glimmered in midday sunshine, and dozens of families enjoyed the sandy beach of Big Bay Town Park on Madeline Island. I hiked past them all, my steps echoing slightly on the boardwalk that winds through pine forest behind the beach.
In the lagoon where decomposition has slowed and organic matter has accumulated over time, a floating mat of Sphagnum moss and sedges holds numerous treasures in a type of wetland called a fen. Treasures I was hunting!
If an elk calf can make it through their first year, they have a 92 percent chance of surviving each year after that. The DNR is in year two of a three-year effort to understand the survival rates and mortality factors of that first perilous year. Do the young do better where there’s been a recent timber harvest or other disturbance? How important is it for the maternity habitat to have a view? To answer these and other questions, they attempt to locate and deploy a GPS collar on 25 calves as soon as possible each spring.
Something small and bright caught my eye. Stopping mid-stride and mid-conversation, I bent down to look at a small jumble of legs and exoskeletons in the tread of the Ice Age Trail. The yellow mantle behind the head of a black carrion beetle is what I’d noticed first. They are quite striking, even when rooting around in the decaying flesh of a recently dead animal, looking for a place to lay their eggs. The adults eat dead stuff, too, hence the bear hug this one was giving a shiny brown, but unmoving, carcass of a Junebug.
Something small and bright caught my eye. Stopping mid-stride and mid-conversation, I bent down to look at a small jumble of legs and exoskeletons in the tread of the Ice Age Trail. The yellow mantle behind the head of a black carrion beetle is what I’d noticed first. They are quite striking, even when rooting around in the decaying flesh of a recently dead animal, looking for a place to lay their eggs. The adults eat dead stuff, too, hence the bear hug this one was giving a shiny brown, but unmoving, carcass of a Junebug.
Excitement and nerves were at an all time high as my car crept down the gravel road, the sun having just slipped below the horizon. I was on the hunt, following clues to lead me to my prize. My treasure was the somewhat elusive American woodcock, and I was hoping to catch a glimpse of their infamous skydance.
Although I often hear their rattling bugle calls echoing across the lake and through my open windows, having cranes nest where I could see them was a new treat. For a few weeks, every warm afternoon found me biking along that stretch of road with my camera at the ready. Each time, the evening sunlight spotlighted the face of a crane on the nest.
Last Sunday I was asked to give the message for the Chequamegon Unitarian Universalist Flower Ceremony. Everyone brought a flower, they were admired in a bouquet, and each person left with a different flower. This symbolized the unique value of each person and the way we came together to create a beautiful bouquet. To illustrate this idea, I chose to talk about ghost pipe (previously named Indian pipe), a plant whom I’ve been puzzling over for a while. In preparing the talk, I realized that I’d learned a lot from ghost pipe.
Scientist E.O. Wilson’s book Biophilia hypothesized that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. He wrote, “To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion, our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises on its currents."
I watched as the Wilson’s Warbler bounced like popcorn through the narrow, willow-ish leaves of an unknown desert shrub. While this bird was named for a different Wilson, he certainly satisfied E.O. Wilson’s Biophilia.
I apologize for the weird audio quality this week! I'm traveling -- as you'll hear -- and my audio editing program did an update that takes out breath noises, etc, automatically. But that also changes how my voice sounds and seems to reduce enunciation. If it's too annoying to listen to, you can read the article at: https://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/
At the trailhead, the woods were set alight by the sunshine reflecting off the melting snow. While my boots crunched down the trail, my eyes wandered to the trees where life was starting to awaken. Lichens, mosses, and mushrooms decorated the bark in a burst of bright greens, yellows and oranges–a welcome sight against the backdrop of the forest.
“What sweet ode shall we write to spring? Soft and tremulous one minute, tempestuous the next, she proffers her gifts with one fair hand and with the other snatches them away.” –Lois Nestel, Wayside Wanderings II
A faint string of birdsong filtered through closed windows on a recent morning. It was well after dawn, but thick gray clouds made it feel like the Sun had yet to rise. “Song sparrow!” I exclaimed. “They must have arrived overnight!”
The grouse drummed again; thumping slowly at first, and then crescendoing into a rapid-fire blur. As his last vibrations dissipated into the still air, another grouse answered from a neighboring territory. The low-frequency sounds are audible from up to a quarter mile away. I’m always amazed by how much I feel their sound instead of hearing it.
For three days in the summer of 2018 we worked on this mark-recapture survey along a pipeline access road in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska, gathering data that would help scientists at the nearby Gates of the Arctic National Park estimate snowshoe hare population numbers for this year. Our opinion? The population was high. Almost every trap was full, which meant a delayed lunch, and that sense of relief to find an empty trap.
Listening to a pair of wood ducks explode from a tiny patch of open water in a woodland pond and woo-eek through the woods is a distinctly springtime experience. Wood ducks are uniquely adapted for life in the forest, with strong claws on their webbed toes that allow them to perch on tree branches. Scaring up a pair of wood ducks together is common, because these ducks find a mate on their wintering grounds and arrive home together.
The first ice cave was a wonder to behold. Crouching low, we shuffled into the crack that was the cave entrance. The light from our headlamps danced across the cave walls and highlighted the mass of clear ice that extended from the ceiling to the surface of the lake. As other tour guests took pictures with the glowing ice, I was marveling at the cave formation. Sitting under a low-hanging section of the cave, I began to think about how these caves along Chequamegon Bay are formed.
For recording time-activity-budgets for loons, Jay has an app on his phone that is set to beep at 2-minute intervals for an hour. At every beep, the binocular-wielding observers help the recorder mark down the behavior. Was the loon resting, locomoting, preening, foraging, or being aggressive? And was the loon within 25 body lengths of another loon? How many loons? One of the main goals of this research is to compare how loons on the salt-free waters of Lake Jocassee spend their time, versus loons who spend their winter on the ocean.
The first day of Loon Camp begins with a count of all the loons on Lake Jocassee, which is why I was now puttering through the upper lake on a pontoon boat with Jay, Brooks, and seven other “loonatics.” With eyes scanning and binoculars at the ready, we spotted solo loons fishing in the deep water, rafts of loons preening near shore, and gaggles of smaller waterfowl like horned grebes, too. Jay kept the tally on his data sheet, and we were free to be amazed by the loons.
As the snow melts and I enter the melancholy often brought on by mud season, I find myself seeking comfort in the words of Lois Nestel, the founding naturalist, director, and curator of the Cable Natural History Museum. She wrote:
“Now there seems a desolation and bitterness in the wind as though it mourns the sadness and injustice in the world. But the wind is not governed by political upheavals, poverty or crime. It is as it has always been. Only the listener, the endurer, has changed."
Note from Emily Stone: I’m so excited that Heaven has joined our Museum team! In between teaching MuseumMobile programs in schools, organizing spring field trips, and leading Junior Naturalist Programs, Heaven will be guest writing for Natural Connections about once a month. I’m looking forward to following her journey of discovery in the Northwoods!
Heaven in the Northwoods: "The wonders of nature have fascinated me from a young age. Now I strive to understand the intricate natural workings of each place I live or visit. Cable, Wisconsin, is my newest place of interest. As the new Educator/Naturalist at the Cable Natural History Museum, I will get to use my fascination with the environment to connect both myself and the public with Northwoods nature."
I hardly needed to zoom in to see the bird’s black head, white face with black stripe, black-and-white barring on their flanks, and solid black back. Five years ago I’d seen an almost identical woodpecker in this same bog, but that one had a stripe of white down the middle of their back identifying them as a three-toed woodpecker. This was their cousin, a black-backed woodpecker.
The wind can be a symbol of unity, freedom, eternity and balance. It is as true ecologically as it is metaphorically. As the winter winds swirl around you, take moment to appreciate the wind’s role in encouraging balance and unity in our sometimes stormy world.
It wasn’t long before someone keyed in on an adorably squiqqly line snaking up the length of a tree. A frost crack! Long ago I learned that these cracks burst open with a noise like a rifle shot as a sunny day plunges into a frigid night. I couldn’t remember, though: was it the contraction of cooling wood, or the expansion of ice that caused the trunk to split? Both make sense. I pondered this as we hiked along, and also tried to spot more cracks throughout the forest.
You know it’s chilly when even Lake Superior can see their own breath. During a recent period of bitter cold, there was sea smoke drifting across the shining gray wavelets near Grand Marais, MN. Lake water had also formed ice on the rocks near shore, and we circumnavigated Artist’s Point to admire Nature’s sculptures. All the while, a small flock of mallard ducks bobbed on the waves in East Bay, behind the protective curve of Artist’s Point in Lake Superior. Then, driving home, something large swooped across the highway in front of us and several feet above the car. The blunt face and tapered silhouette were unmistakable characteristics of a Great Gray Owl—my first one in the wild! This day may have been bitter cold, but that made the beauty in it all the more sweet.
Murmurs of interest rippled through the classroom as I spread a rectangle of green felt on the floor at the front of the room. The murmurs became questions as I placed two lines of life-sized animal tracks, printed and cut out of white paper, onto the felt. When I finally invited the second graders to come up and gather around the felt, I was amazed by the almost instantaneous formation of a perimeter of kneeling children, totally focused on the scene.
On Christmas Day, I found myself driving from Lutsen, Minn., to Duluth with a very unusual package next to my skis and duffle bag.
To reassure ourselves that the owl was still alive, Christine opened one of the flaps on the box. Staring up at us were two giant yellow eyes nestled into satellite dishes of gray-patterned feathers that funnel sound into the owl’s hidden ears.
Gathered around a bonfire on the Winter Solstice, the hostess asked us each to share one moment from the past year that made us go, “Wow!” Despite the fact that my year had included rafting the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, my favorite “wow” moment happened on a river much closer to home. One lovely afternoon last May, I set out with a friend to paddle an upper section of the Namekagon River. Approaching a bridge, a burst of twittering, movement, and flashes of yellow in the alder shrubs drew my attention. Squinting, I thought I spotted a black cap on one of the tiny heads, and quickly pulled into an eddy.
Sure enough, our binoculars revealed a flock of half-a-dozen or more little birds, “yellow as a lemon, with a smooth, black cap…” as Mary Oliver described them. Laughing in delight, we felt like we’d just conjured these Wilson’s Warblers with her poem.
Chickadees cache as many as one hundred thousand food items per year. Not only do chickadees remember their seed cache sites, but they also remember details like which food items were the most favored and which seeds have already been eaten by them or by a thief. To support such an incredible memory, chickadees grow 30 percent more neurons in the fall when caching behavior peaks. Last April, researchers at Columbia University added to our understanding of chickadee memory. They discovered that chickadees create “neural barcodes” and essentially create their own system for inventory and checkout—just like at a grocery store!
While digesting one of the many rounds of holiday feasts and leftovers, with plates of cookies in between, a headline caught my eye: “Big brains or big guts: Choose one.” As much as the post-holiday-dinner-brain-fog is real, I don’t love the implications of those options. Luckily, the article wasn’t about humans. It was examining birds in cold, highly variable habitats, and their struggle to survive. Essentially, birds have two options: spend energy maintaining a big brain that allows them to find high-quality food, or spend energy maintaining a large stomach that can make low-quality food sufficient in high quantities. According to the research, if you are a bird who needs to survive cold winters, you must choose one. There’s no middle ground.
In a landscape of winter white, bits of color really pop. Recently I was on the North Shore of Minnesota when they received several inches of fluffy, wonderful snow. The forest seemed decked out for Christmas with clusters of bright red mountain-ash berries adding color in the woods along the ski trails, around town, and on the rocky shore of Lake Superior. Ruffed grouse appreciate them even more, I’m sure, as they perch in the dark purple twigs and nibble both berries and buds. And now the trees have given me a bit of a mystery to nibble on too...
In a landscape of winter white, bits of color really pop. Recently I was on the North Shore of Minnesota when they received several inches of fluffy, wonderful snow. The forest seemed decked out for Christmas with clusters of bright red mountain-ash berries adding color in the woods along the ski trails, around town, and on the rocky shore of Lake Superior. Ruffed grouse appreciate them even more, I’m sure, as they perch in the dark purple twigs and nibble both berries and buds. And now the trees have given me a bit of a mystery to nibble on too...
The lack of leaves in this “see-through season” reveals aspects of the landscape otherwise obscured. For example, “Check out that nest!” I exclaimed to my friend, and we admired the small cup suspended between a Y in the sugar maple twigs. The placement of the nest, plus the few pale strips of paper from a bald-faced hornet nest woven among grass, bark, and pine needles, told me that it was likely built by a red-eyed vireo.
On a recent hike in Virginia, a song burst out of a bush beside us. The white-throated sparrow riffed on their usual song, experimenting with a gravely “sweet can-a-NA-da can-a!” “Jazzy!” We laughed to each other. I don’t usually expect birds to sing in their winter habitat. Birds’ songs are typically used to attract mates and defend territories, and therefore are most useful in spring and summer. So, we figured we were hearing a young male practicing for the coming year. As it turns out, that was only part of the story.
Head down, I hurried toward the post office. Then, a spot of color made me stop and smile. A single yellow dandelion and its star of vibrant, toothy leaves nestled into the grass. I’ve always loved dandelions. And, the dandelion may be more useful than I ever imagined! The Kazakh dandelion, a relative of the one in your yard, is an excellent source of natural rubber.
Once upon a time, and by that, I mean 1.9 billion years ago, the atmosphere was filled with carbon dioxide and methane, and the first inklings of life had only just begun. Volcanic activity in the early oceans, and erosion off the few continents, enriched the water with iron and silica. Cyanobacteria bloomed in those mineral-rich seas, and they also produced at least one type of toxin: oxygen.
Light from the dining hall at Upham Woods Outdoor Learning Center spilled out, down the hill, under the pines, and onto the bank of the Wisconsin River, where a handful of environmental educators were waiting for a night hike to begin.
I almost hadn’t joined the group. This was the final night of the Wisconsin Association of Environmental Education annual conference, and I had a long drive home the next day. Being sleepy for that wouldn’t be ideal. But it had been years since I’d been on a night hike, and I didn’t want to miss out.
An odd series of hollow little clucks and rattles emanated from a patch of lichen-crusted rocks. Was there a friendly alien hiding nearby? Or maybe a Star Wars character that only Han Solo can understand? With short, jerking movements, the camouflaged chatterboxes revealed their identity: ptarmigans.
The wool of my favorite old rusty orange sweater felt warm and scratchy as I stuffed it into my backpack next to a jacket and camera. The low gray clouds hung onto their rain, but wind gusts flung water drops off the trees as I walked to my car. As soon as I turned onto the gravel road, though, I knew I’d made the right decision. The much-needed rain had washed dust off the autumn leaves and saturated their colors. This was a perfect day for a scenic drive through a rainbow forest.
Ever since I discovered how to read the glaciated landscape of Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, I’ve been fascinated by these massive forces of nature. Admiring them from afar, seeing them up close, paddling among icebergs, touching their ice…glaciers are even more amazing than I’d expected. This week I’ve been busy leading field trips, but I’ve been dreaming of a time when I was a participant on two field trips that involved paddling near glaciers in Alaska.
By Elliot Witscher with Emily Stone In the bright sunlight and heat of the afternoon, the cool, fresh, flowing water from a pipe in Prentice Park in Ashland, WI, was a welcome treat. I wasn’t expecting to find a unique geological feature in an unassuming city park. But walking down the hill from the parking lot, we found a plain metal pipe, surrounded by gravel, with water gushing from it. Standing in a circle with the 20 other people also taking the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training, I learned from Professor Tom Fitz that this was a flowing artesian well.
As our water taxi motored into the harbor, a gray-headed water bird floated around the corner of a barnacle-crusted rock. A Pacific Loon! Having spotted one new species of loon, my interest in seeing the others grew. The afternoon that I arrived at the Toolik Field Station to prepare for doing caribou research, I took a short walk around the base to get a feel for the area. The tremolo of a loon flying overhead sent a thrill down my spine, and I watched the large bird land on the far side of Toolik Lake. Were they a Common Loon? They sounded similar. But the logo for Toolik features a Yellow-billed Loon, and I was sure the scientists would have chosen them deliberately. Now that I’d seen the most similar loon to the ones I’d left back home, my last goal was to see the most different loon.
A small group of first graders nearly vibrated with excitement as they gathered in a circle on the carpet at the front of their room. They remembered me from last school year, when I’d brought tubs full of nature stuff to their kindergarten classroom. For those first Museum Mobile visits, we focused on exploring nature using our five senses. Now, as first graders, I explained, we get to practice those skills again…by using our eyes to make observations about spiders! I was heartened by the wave of enthusiasm – not fear – that rippled through the group.
Floating down the river, exploring the side canyons, relaxing around camp, I was always on the lookout for both the novel and the familiar. A giant insect I’d never seen before but knew immediately to be a Tarantula-hawk Wasp caught my attention just as easily as the glossy black feathers of a Common Raven. After a few days of pointing out something I’d noticed, or explaining the basics of a geological feature, I found more questions coming my way from the other participants. With each teachable moment, I felt more connected to both the canyon and my fellow rafters. I wasn’t surprised at the way this unfolded, and probably, neither are you.
Due to a stuffy nose, I’m not recording a new episode for you this week. I did pull forward this episode from 2023 about the elk herd near Clam Lake.
Morning mist hung low in the sky as a dozen elk ran across a clearing. A similarly sized herd of Museum members held our breath and grinned at our good luck. It was luck 3 billion years in the making.
Curtains of vibrant lights were moving just above the horizon. The aurora! My jaw must have dropped as I stumbled backward to lean against the car, and tears welled up as I tilted my head back for a better view. The moon hung full and bright on my east. To my west, spruce trees were silhouetted against the faint, rosy afterglow of the setting sun. And all across my southern sky, northern lights danced in curtains of green and white and pink. The curtains were woven of many wispy streaks, as if I was seeing the individual particles of solar wind blazing through our atmosphere. Northern lights are not just an awesome benefit to living on Earth; they are an absolute necessity to our survival. Our Earth defends us. And the result is unspeakable beauty.
With the rough, rolling, cold, wet ferry ride behind us, we disembarked gratefully at the Windigo dock on the southwest corner of Isle Royale National Park. Isle Royale, a 45 mile long and 9 mile wide bedrock island, is teeming with life that somehow made the treacherous journey. We hoisted our packs and started off down the trail. Before long, we met several pairs of hikers just ending their trips. We asked about their route on the island, their hometown, and which ferry they took. In essence, we asked “How did you get here?” Mostly they used the water route, but one couple arrived by air in a float plane. Historically, making winter crossings by dogsled was also common. Isle Royale is not an easy place to get to, or to get around, and yet life surrounded us on all sides. Soon I started asking “How did you get here?” to everything we saw.
Cliffs rose out of the lake ahead of us and soon towered a few dozen feet above our heads. Millenia of waves had worked their way into weaker layers of rock and then continued to enlarge them grain by grain. Some hollows were still tiny, but others formed deep alcoves. They spoke of the power of persistence. As we rounded one corner, a sea arch with one leg out in the lake framed our view. In another spot, multiple caves had coalesced into a maze we could paddle through.
After hours on the water, we returned to dry land to find food and shade. Taking our dessert to-go, we sat at a picnic table with a view of the lake and remarked about just how restful and healing the day had been. The combination of soaking in sunshine; gazing at and jumping in clean water; feeling awe at the ancient rocks; and admiring the beauty of life, had worked a special kind of magic on our moods.
Sarah Montzka is about to start their senior year as a wildlife education major at UW Stevens Point. This summer, as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, they taught our Junior Naturalist programs, assisted with live animal care, and showed a real talent for finding and appreciating the oddest parts of nature.
This week Sarah will tell you all about lampreys!
The main event of the moth workshop came after dark. Kyle hung a white sheet with a mercury vapor lamp across an old driveway. Then he painted fermented banana goo onto the trunks of trees along the drive. Until almost midnight, our little group walked from tree to tree to the sheet and back, with stops at patches of blooming milkweed in between.
From drab lichen mimics to shimmering green wings; micromoths smaller than a grain of rice to underwing moths the size of my palm; we were captivated by the multitudes of mysterious moths.
Butterwort, primrose, and eyebright are arctic disjuncts, or northern plants who have been separated from their main populations. “We're very interested in these species as the vanguard of climate change for the Arctic. Whatever is happening here is what we expect to see happening farther north, as the climate continues to warm,” said Dr. Briana Gross, an Associate Professor at UMN-Duluth.
I met a new friend this spring, and I’ve been heading up north to visit them every chance I get. We didn’t meet online exactly, but I did use an app to figure out their location. You see, I read about them over the winter, and just had to find out more about their life! They are a little odd – they supplement their diet with insects and make an unusual kind of yogurt – and they may not be hanging out this far south for very much longer.
Being a botany nerd, I call this new friend of mine Pinguicula vulgaris, a plant also known as Common Butterwort.
Keir, who specializes in moss, passed around tuft after tuft of green Dr. Seussian inventions. The scientific names he gave with each sample slipped through my brain in a fog of unspellable syllables. I admired each one eagerly, though, in awe of the kaleidoscope of leaf shapes, textures, patterns, and colors.
I was crouched down, admiring the round, glistening leaves of a unique moss sprinkled in a thick jumble across a small bowl between cedar roots, when Keir finally spoke words I recognized. “And here’s some spilled penny moss…” I couldn’t even see the specimen he held up, but I knew he’d just named my lovely, shiny friend.
I pretty much stopped fishing after my dad stopped untangling my line and tying my hook. The few times I’ve tried as an adult, I’ve come up empty-handed. So I have the utmost respect for osprey, who catch at least one fish for every four dives. How do they do it? Osprey, eagles, kingfishers, and green herons have adaptations that make them excellent anglers.
With a quick push from shore, my old green canoe caught the current and we swept downstream on the Namekagon River. The recent rains have filled the river with more water than I’ve seen in a couple of summers, and warm days have filled the river with life.
I’m not sure that we’d been searching for anything in particular when we decided to paddle on the Namekagon, but what we found was a river, that, in the words of Mary Oliver, is “touching every life it meets.”
Coggin and I followed Karen’s memory through the dark swamps in search of this rare flower. The dirt path wound around spruce, fir, birch, and cedars. A hint of color caught my eye. There, almost crushed by the tip of a spruce tree blown off in some strong wind, the white and pink of the Ram’s Head orchid glowed through the gloom.
Since the fungi, forest community, and pollination have to coalesce perfectly for an orchid to bloom, we felt lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
The old turtle scraped at the sand with her naily toes as the kids gathered in a wide circle around her. Sometimes I get questions about dinosaurs on field trips, but they don’t fit into the Museum’s focus on Northern Wisconsin species. Today, instead, the first- and second-graders got a close-up look at a creature whose species has existed on Earth for over 40 million years, with direct ancestors much older than dinosaurs.
The fleshy stem bore no leaves, just a sprig of beautiful little flowers on the upper half. Each blossom looked like a whimsical elf.
Coralroots exist underground for much of their lives, and their flowering stalk may not pop up every year, or in the same place. So, while widespread and not uncommon, coralroots can be hard to spot – or at least that’s my excuse for never having seen one before this year!
As I climbed back into my car with a camera full of more lovely wildflower photos, I smiled at my good luck. Here in Wisconsin and Minnesota, we have quite a variety of habitats and soil types in a relatively small area. I can explore rich soils and maple forests filled with trilliums, wild oats, and large-flowered bellwort one day, then delight in the bedrock home of bird’s eye primrose (and a not-yet-booming mystery plant) the next. And now here I was enjoying prairie flowers in a barrens!
What do we have to thank for these riches? Why the glaciers, of course!
Last week, with evening sunshine glinting off the riffled waters of Lake Superior’s North Shore, and a surprisingly warm breeze wafting over the spit of wave-washed bedrock, a flower caught my eye. Rock-hopping over, I discovered the pink petals and yellow centers I’d been looking for. Notches in each of the five petals gave them a lovely heart shape. At the base of the flower’s wiry stem was a little rosette of bright green leaves with wavy edges. This flower was one of dozens all sprouting from the cushion of moss in a little bedrock nook. Besides the Bird's-eye Primrose, quite a diversity of plants crowded together in this island of habitat surrounded by a sea of bedrock.
Even though I wish my beloved spring ephemerals could last longer, each spring I also cheer them on in their race against leaf-out. In many ways, the speed of spring is what makes it such an amazing season!
The cool, damp air smelled delicious as I ambled up the gravel road. I’ve been up and down ladders and scaffolding for exhibit construction lately, and so I haven’t had the energy for big bike rides in the afternoon. That’s fine. I will still be able to bike once the mosquitoes hatch, but I won’t be able to walk slowly without a head net.
When the blossoms of a honeysuckle bush caught my eye, I was even happier for my slow pace. I stopped to admire the prismatic raindrops caught under each flower’s chin.
“During this activity,” I explained, “you will each become a professor of something in these woods.”
Over the years, I’ve found that this Professor Hike activity is very effective at connecting students to nature. What’s been a surprise, especially as I lead it with adults instead of sixth graders, is how wonderful it is at connecting people to each other as they teach and learn.
Professors indeed, these little plants have reminded me of the value in taking the time to look closely. I can’t wait to share more of their wisdom during the Professor Hike program on May 8! Register by May 6 at cablemuseum.org.
Read all about it in this week's Natural Connections, or listen to the podcast. Find links to both at https://www.cablemuseum.org/connect/
I heard it first, since I knew what to expect. I pointed eagerly toward a featureless place in the bushes. Peent. The brand-new birder with me strained to pick that one sound out of the thicket. Peent. We waited; breaths held. Peent.
Nature has invented some pretty interesting courtship behavior over the eons, and American woodcocks are a lovely example. Somewhere in the bushes, a female woodcock pretends not to watch the male’s strenuous antics. If he passes muster, she will let him approach her, bobbing with his wings raised, to seal the deal. That’s it, though. She goes off to build a nest and he keeps displaying.
I’m not sure what traits woodcocks are looking for in a partner, but I want to hang out with someone who goes looking for woodcocks!
What if we stopped calling trees, water, minerals, fruits, fish, soil, and everything else Natural Resources and started using the term Earthly Gifts? This was one of the first questions posed by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer at a talk last month in La Crosse, WI. Kimmerer is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.
I’ve been thinking about Robin’s words…and finding her ideas echoed elsewhere. Kathleen Dean Moore is another of my favorite authors, who, like Kimmerer, won the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award. They both encourage us to appreciate gifts from the Earth. Moore wrote, “to turn the gift in your hands, to say, this is wonderful and beautiful, this is a great gift—this honors the gift and the giver of it…”
Here are a few of the Earthly Gifts I’ve received recently. Please admire them with me, and then reflect on a few of your own.
With soggy skies above and soggy snow below, my recent hike on the North Country Trail was not inspiring a love for spring. But with my head bent to watch my footing, I noticed a sprinkling of debris coated the surface of the softening snow. Suddenly one of the little specks vanished. Crouching down for a better look, I discovered that most of the sprinkles were tiny, leaping springtails known as snow fleas. I dug out my macro camera.
Birds can collide with windows in any season, but I’ve always noticed an increasing number of those sickening thuds in spring. As waves of migrating birds head north, we see both a huge increase in the number of individuals, and an increase in birds who are new to the neighborhood and more likely to be hoodwinked by windows.
Now that warm days are turning even window washing and yardwork into attractive tasks because they give us excuses to get outside, it’s a good time to think about making your windows better for birds.
Re-published from 2021
As a naturalist, I get the strangest emails. I try not to check them at home, but when my phone buzzed and the subject said “June bug on steroids?” it was worth interrupting my evening chores. “The past couple nights I’ve heard something hit our window at night when we have lights on and each time I’ve thought ‘that sounded like a June bug… but BIGGER.’” wrote a Museum member.
Chuckling, I wrote her back, “Looks like a predaceous diving beetle! That’s their normal size!”
“To name and describe you must first see, and science polishes the gift of seeing,” wrote Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass. In this week’s Natural Connections, we’ll explore some of the vocabulary of winter tree identification, and the beautiful ecology it helps us to see.
One consequence of this weird winter is that plants like mosses, ferns, and wintergreen who are usually protected by a blanket of snow are now exposed to drying winds. This can result in what is essentially freezer burn in nature.
“Who’s eating my trees?” asked a participant on a hike last week. I’d been wondering the same thing! A few weeks ago I noticed creamy colored exposed wood on several small maple trees along my driveway.
“Why do animals even eat bark?” someone else asked. Good question.
As our world changes, I’m grieving my old friends cross-country skiing (on natural snow) and the subnivean zone, while still making a point to appreciate new delights. I can’t even count how many times I’ve looked at the frozen surface of a North Shore river and wanted to walk the whimsical ice formations up through bedrock canyons. But on past visits the snow was too deep, the wind chill too brutally cold, or the skiing too good to choose that adventure.
This past weekend, conditions were finally perfect!
I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints from people who are feeling lonely this winter. For once, they aren’t feeling cooped up by icy roads and constant blizzards. Instead, we miss our feathered friends! A suite of factors, including the nice weather, means that birds are not as abundant as usual at our backyard feeders.
One exception, at least at my feeders, are pine siskins.
What a weird winter! In a region where people love to talk about the weather, the chatter has been constant. Skiers and snowmobilers (and the business they support) are particularly grumpy, but many people are trying to make the best of pleasant temperatures, despite the lack of snow. Humans are lucky. We have temperature-controlled homes and clothing that can be changed at the drop of a hat.
But what about non-human beings? How are they faring as temperatures fluctuate from 50 degrees to the teens with barely a skim of snow on the ground? This week, I combed back through my many articles about animals in winter to try and understand what some of the impacts may be.
“Snowflakes are amazing!” I gushed to the students in a recent “Words for Winter Wonder” writing workshop hosted by the Lake Superior Writers in Duluth, Minn.
Water vapor crystalizes around a piece of dust, or dirt, or even a unique bacterium. Then, as puffs and gales of wind toss the nascent snow crystal inside a cloud, they experience varied combinations of temperature and humidity. The crystal grows differently in each new habitat.
“Now, we get to try to imitate that beauty that comes with variety,” I said as I passed out a different color of paper to each of the six students. How fitting, I thought, to have six students to imitate the six-sided snow crystals.
Wings, wind, and humans are three of the most common ways that life has arrived on Hawaii since the volcanoes rose above the ocean. But besides the obvious humpback on a whale watch, I hadn’t noticed many who had arrived on the waves. As I descended the trail back to the black sand beach, a tiny white flower caught my eye. Recognizing it as Beach Naupaka, or Naupaka kahakai from my nature guide Wind, Wings, and Waves by Rick Sohren, I stopped to take photos.
Just like the ʻApapane and ʻIʻiwi I wrote about last week, the ancestors of nene geese were blown off course to the Hawaiian Islands and then stayed there, although the geese only arrived about half a million years ago, vs. five million for the honeycreepers. Besides being handsome, with buff-and black diagonally striped necks and black faces, nēnē are the state bird of Hawaii, and one of the most endangered waterfowl in the world.
A bright red bird with black wings hopped among the flowers, probing for the 'Ōhi'a’s prolific nectar with a sharp black beak. While the bird looked a lot like the scarlet tanagers who nest in the Northwoods, I knew it was not. ʻApapanes’ scarlet feathers match the red of the blossoms they rely on.
A little farther down the trail, we spotted more movement in the trees. Another red bird masqueraded as a flower, but while the red body and black wings looked just like an ʻApapane to me, the beak was bright orange and strongly curved. Having studied our field guides, I knew that this was an ʻIʻiwi (pronounced ee-EE-vee).
These two endemic birds who live only in Hawaii birds share more than a love of ‘Ohi’a nectar. They both descended from the same flock of rosefinches from Asia who got blown off course roughly five million years ago, and found refuge on the young island of Kaua’i. That refuge is shrinking.
I’m a big fan of basalt bedrock shorelines. Basalt is the type of dark, igneous rock that forms when lava oozes out of volcanoes and cools quickly near the surface. Hawaii is mostly built from basalt, but then, so is the North Shore of Lake Superior. They don't look quite the same, though. Why?
Wings are one of the main ways that life gets to Hawaii. From huge frigatebirds, to champion marathoners like Pacific Golden Plovers, and elegant additions like Hawaiian Stilts, they all have a unique story.
Whenever I visit the smooth, gray rocks on the North Shore of Lake Superior, I find myself crouching low to examine the colorful patchwork of lichens who have made their home in such a seemingly perilous place. I never expected to do the same thing on Hawaii!
From out of a vast, dark sea, a small area of lights appeared below. The landing went smoothly. As my parents and I descended the stairs onto the tarmac, steamy air made us regret our long pants and sleeves. With almost magical speed, we’d just arrived on the most isolated populated landmass in the world: Hawaii. As different as this tropical paradise is from the Northwoods, I still found plenty of natural connections.
Continuing past the concrete ruins, my friend and I followed the scar of the old road to the top of a cliff. Smooth, dark rock peeked out from beneath dry leaves and grass. Kneeling for a better look, we found stripes of red, black, and gray with smooth, waxy, and sparkling surfaces. Crustose lichens had found toeholds in each tiny crack, so the surface was also decorated with little blobs in shades of brown, white, and yellow. These lichens may be much younger than the outcrop, but the rock itself is no stranger to photosynthesizing friends. In fact, iron formations like this one record a major milestone in the history of life on Earth.
From laughter, to curiosity, to other forms of internal medicine, birch polypore is a common fungus with a lot to offer.
Orion has been my favorite winter constellation for many years. Sometimes subtitled “The Hunter,” it seems apt that Orion is lying on his side these days, perhaps resting up from early mornings of deer hunting. Traditionally, of course, his quarry was more mythical—chasing the beautiful seven sisters of Pleiades, doing battle with Taurus the Bull, fighting a scorpion sent to tame his ego, or hunting the constellation Lepus the Hare.
Out in the middle of Sugar Bay, a small shape interrupted the glimmering ripples. Even in the poor light at a fair distance from a moving car, I could tell that this was a loon by their distinctive silhouette.
The loon’s gray-brown back, full white throat, and pale cheeks confirmed them as a juvenile, a young of this year. While this loon is on the late end of migration, I wasn’t worried for their safety. Juvenile loons have been navigating their fall migrations alone for millennia.
“November is a sigh; a sigh of weariness after the tumult of summer, a sigh of resignation over projects yet undone, a sigh of regret for hopes unfulfilled. It is a sigh of frustration that no matter how we try, the world seems to be sinking deeper into the morass, and a sigh of sadness that neither we nor those around us seem to live up to our expectations.” So wrote Lois Nestel, the Museum’s founding director and naturalist, over three decades ago. It is a gray sentiment, to match the gray clouds and gray trees of this time of year. I feel it, too. With little daylight left after work, it’s hard to want to get out for a walk. When I do, the air is damp and chilled, and the landscape dreary.
Lucky for us, Lois had the fortitude to continue past her sigh and philosophize about a different perspective we could take.
The icy hike was beautiful, and “snowflake birds” swirled ahead of my car all the way home. Real snowflakes chased me from behind, and soon accumulated six inches of the white stuff. Snow buntings and needle ice foretold the coming winter, and as I write this, it has arrived!
Autumn on the Alaskan tundra was a whole new spectacle. With ground-hugging shrubs—all of them circumpolar species who grow around the top of the globe—instead of tall trees, it looked like the land itself was drenched in a rainbow swirl of melted crayon. But caribou were the official reason I’d come here, to the Toolik Field Station on the North Slope of the Brooks Range in 2018.
Dampness cooled my fingers as I lifted softened wood out of the limp maple leaves. In order to make sense of the small log, I assumed the hunched posture of nearsighted people everywhere. My field of vision narrowed, and I became immersed in an alien world. The variety of shapes and colors colonizing this stick were dazzling!
Suddenly, something wet and shining loomed ahead. As I watched, the slug extended their beige-colored form and undulated across the lichen field on their single, body-length foot. Their movement was surprisingly graceful.
Wind whooshed through the pines and spruces who bristled across the spine of our rocky point like quills on a porcupine. I snuggled more deeply into my sleeping bag. The day had been gusty, our paddling fierce and steady against whitecaps, with white lines of foam streaming down the lakes. Once the sun rose again, we’d be paddling upwind into a three-and-a-half mile fetch. Would the breeze slacken or strengthen overnight? I tensed at each gust and relaxed in the quiet, trying to foretell the future.
You would think that after 25 years of paddling in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, I’d be pretty good at sleeping in a tent up there. But no, I often find myself listening in the dark.
Feeling squinty, I lifted my head to let my eyes rest on the soft greens and browns of the forest again. The tender light on the glistening surfaces made it feel like a fairyland. As my mind wandered around all of the living beings hidden in that scene, the phrase “turtles all the way down” popped into my head.
Here in this forest, the sequence isn’t all turtles. It’s spruce trees and raindrops and fungi and ladybugs and mites and weird friends and all the senses we have to perceive them. Throughout the entire universe, it’s relationships and connections all the way down.
"It was 7 o’clock at night at the Northland College Geology Lab, and for the past four hours, I had been peering down a microscope, absorbing the stunning images of a rock cut so thinly that light leaked through it. The microscope I had been using magnified the tiny sample hundreds of times, revealing hidden intricacies between grains mere tenths of a millimeter in size. Each view was a tiny stained-glass window. However, magnification alone was not what made this mineral thin section so colorful and vibrant."
Read more about Kali's amazing mineral photography and the research they did while at Northland College in this week's Natural Connections, or listen to the podcast. Both with guest expert Kali Sipp, our recently fledged Museum Naturalist/Geology Intern!
Just back from leading a “Boundary Waters with a Naturalist” trip for the Museum, I’m turning over memories in my mind. Each one has a unique sparkle or hue; some edges are rough, others liquid; some are common and numerous, while others are one of a kind.
Pelecinid wasps are similar to ichneumon wasps in that adults drink nectar, and they have long ovipositors for depositing eggs directly in the larva of another species. They just happen to be in their own family – Pelecinidae. And, while scientists estimate that there might be 100,000 species of ichneumon wasps worldwide, the Pelecinidae family contains only three species, with only one occurring north of Mexico. This was it: Pelecinus polyturator, the American Pelecinid Wasp.
The 20-foot high cliff was window into the Superior Craton, one of the very first land masses to form when the planet was young. The original rocks likely included basalt from the ocean floor and volcanoes; granite from some of the first-ever continental crust; and mudstones formed as early Earth weather eroded rocks into smaller pieces and re-deposited them. Then, they were all buried deeply by more rocks being piled on top and the actions of plate tectonics, heated to 600-700 degrees Celsius, and metamorphosed.
“This rock has experienced a LOT of Earth’s history,” said Tom, in a bit of an understatement.
A light breeze brushed through the pollinator gardens surrounding the Museum. Happy children and singing birds filled the Museum courtyard with sound. All this noise didn’t bother me; I zoned into the pollinator garden. I was completing my weekly butterfly survey as a participant in the Wisconsin Statewide Community Science Project.
Jillian Finucane is from Madison, Wisconsin, and is currently studying Geological Engineering at University of Wisconsin – Madison. As a lover of the outdoors, she spends her summers hiking, camping, and rock climbing; she adores Wisconsin’s Northwoods. Jillian is a Summer Naturalist/Geology Intern at the Cable Natural History Museum.
Why does kale get to just sit there and grow, doing the only thing it really wants to do, while I have to toil away, tilling the soil, planting the seeds, watering the garden, and weeding away any competitors? By offering up its tasty, nutritious leaves, the kale has seduced me into catering to its every whim.
“…the garden suddenly appeared before me in a whole new light, the manifold delights it offered to the eye and nose and tongue no longer quite so innocent or passive. All these plants, which I’d always regarded as the objects of my desire, were also, I realized, subjects, acting on me, getting me to do things for them they couldn’t do for themselves,” Michael Pollan wrote in his excellent book, The Botany of Desire.
It wasn’t a long message, just a note to correct a typo in an earlier text. “That should have said I love how you quote Mary Oliver! Not…I love how you Mary Oliver!”
I chuckled—my brain’s own autocorrect had skipped right over the phone’s autocorrect fail. So often, even when someone’s words come out in a funny order, we still know exactly what they mean. But now I re-read the original typo and felt a little fizz of joy. Leaving out a single word had essentially turned Mary Oliver into a verb. I mulled this over. What would it mean “to mary oliver”?
I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into when my cousin Meggan decided that this was the summer her crew would come to the Northwoods on vacation. Born just six weeks apart, we’d spent our childhood together with a pack of 13 cousins running wild around Grandpa’s house in southern Iowa during most holidays and school breaks. Now Meggan has six kids of her own. How would I entertain them for a few days? This same crew was part of the family reunion I attended last summer, where we caught a shimmering young spider and named her Princess Entelegyne. As it turns out, I didn’t need to worry.
By the end, they’d also taught me to find beauty in the spongy moth, empathy for a horse fly, and wonder in a trickle of water. Now that’s a productive vacation.
I glanced out my second-floor window and then did a double-take. On the grass below was a doe. The sight of deer in my yard usually just makes me fear for my garden, but as the doe shifted slightly, her tiny, spotted fawn came into view beneath her belly. The cuteness of baby animals is irresistible, even if they do grow into broccoli thieves.
The boat engine rumbled and machinery whirred as a gillnet rose from the depths of Lake Superior. Captain Ross Lind managed the throttle so that the 55-foot-long gillnet-tug-turned-research-vessel named Hack Noyes moved toward the net at the same speed the net lifter reeled it in.
A group of interested adults on this Museum-sponsored field trip gathered around the equipment. We were mesmerized by the clicking of the metal teeth on the spinning drum as they gripped and then released the line, and by the lengths of delicate nylon net attached to the line. Capable hands guided the net down a long, stainless-steel worktable and into the storage tub.
A roll of duct tape bounced along in my backpack, and a permanent marker poked out of my pants pocket as I strode down the trail. A group of 20 Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteers-in-Training ambled behind me. We’d had a challenging morning of botany and geology at Morgan Falls in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Lunch had revived us, and now it was time for the afternoon activity. Anticipation bubbled.
“During this activity,” I explained, “you will each become a Professor of something in these woods.”
Slap. Bam. Swish. Thud. That was the soundtrack to my bedtime a couple of weeks ago as I killed mosquitoes in my bedroom. I caught them between two hands, smushed them against the wall, and swiped at the ones on my high ceiling with an extendo-handled feather duster.
Finally having killed all visible mosquitoes, I checked to see that the towel I’d stuffed under my bedroom door was in place, crawled under the covers, and turned out the light.
Buzz…
Thirty second graders tumble off their big yellow bus and onto the sidewalk in front of the Museum. Hot sunshine makes it feel like summer, and after tomorrow, (their last day of school) it will be. “Welcome to the Cable Natural History Museum,” I shout over the noise of traffic and excitement. “Check out that big banner. What’s the biggest word up there?” I ask pointing to the front of the Museum.
“ROCKS!” They answer as a group.
Raise your hand if you like rocks…awesome! You’re invited, too!
Through the gray dawn, I heard the grouse clucking and their feathers rustling as they returned to the lek and began to display. I could see their sharp tails spiked vertically as they spread their wings stiffly and stamped their feet. Wings flapped aggressively when two rivals came together.
In the end, the most impressive thing about my visit to the lek wasn’t the dancing birds, but the knowledge that land managers are coming together to prioritize the habitat of a fascinating but declining bird. And it’s working. The sharp-tails I helped to count are part of a population that has almost doubled since last year. With any luck, I’ll say that again next spring.
In Wisconsin, Populus balsamifera aren’t as common as their cousins the quaking and big-tooth aspens. Their numbers increase as you head north.
The more scientists dig into the chemistry of balsam poplar, the more impressive it gets. In the poplar’s pharmacopeia, scientists have identified vasodilators that are important for heart health, and oxytocins that reduce blood pressure. These trees of the far north manufacture the molecular building blocks of the brown fat that humans use to shiver and stay warm.
Foxes can interrupt the Lyme bacteria’s cycle by reducing the numbers of mice and chipmunks available for the ticks to feed on. The ticks may find a different host—one who doesn’t carry Lyme—or they may just starve to death. The effect is so powerful that one area of western New York with unusually high numbers of foxes had no reports of Lyme. This research is so interesting, that we're repeating an episode from 2019, with a few small changes.
Each spring as the northward migration takes flight, I use the CD to re-train my ears to identify the songs of the birds who have been away all winter. The robins, bless their loud hearts, are pretty helpful with this, too. There are several birds whose songs are described in comparison to the robin’s.
And, I just learned, the birds themselves tune up their ears in the spring.
It’s not really breaking news anymore that relaxing in nature makes us happier, but it is worth repeating. Nature relieves mild depression, reduces stress, and increases happiness for both adults and children. And, without the icy winds of January or the mosquito hordes of July, this is the perfect season to walk slowly through nature. Go find a puddle, a leaf, a breeze, and some birdsong, and you will also find an increase in well-being.
As the rumble quieted and everyone finished their last sentence, a ghostly sound filtered through the gray mist. Oooo-oooo-oo…the sound of prairie chickens booming.
Eerie though it was, the sound also reminded me of whimsical amusements like blowing across the top of a pop bottle, or swinging a hollow tube through the air. Males make the sound by passing air through their syrinx. The orange air sacs—which are extensions of the esophagus—amplify the sound. Another name for prairie chickens is Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus, or “drummer of love." Another name for this place is a booming ground.
I found myself wanting to contemplate more quietly the things we exclaim about every spring. Going to my bookshelf, I selected a slim volume on cream-colored paper: Wayside Wanderings by Lois Nestel. Lois was the Museum’s founding naturalist and director. Although we never met, I love reading her words, admiring her sketches and photographs, and learning from her quiet wisdom.
About spring, Lois wrote:
“Poor, weary, battered spring, after many reversals, seems to have finally arrived. The time of emergence is upon us..."
The muggy air turned cool as darkness fell. Armed with two flashlights and a camera, I crept from the quiet street into the yard and hoped no one would see me. Turning on the bigger of the two flashlights, I swept the beam from side to side. Bright stripes glowed, dark circles sucked in the light, and glitter covered everything.
Illuminated by ultraviolet light, the Museum’s pollinator gardens were magical on that July evening in 2021.
Now is not the time of year I usually think about butterflies. So the brown, leaf-like shape on the giant snow pile outside my kitchen window caught me by surprise. The butterfly was one of several species who overwinter as adults. Monarchs are another famous example. While we may not be thinking about butterflies during this long winter, they are out there surviving…hopefully. Read more or listen to this week’s Natural Connection.
“The sky is dancing!” wrote my friend. I threw on a warmer coat and headed back outside. Pillars, curtains, and swirls of light danced along the horizon. My jaw dropped as the pillars shot upward, and then overhead and behind me. Light danced across even the southern sky. And directly above me, the curtains turned to curving bands that flashed, wiggled, and swirled. After almost losing my balance, I gave in and lay down on the snow to look straight up.
The frog call chorus already arrived at a first grade classroom near you! First the kids learned to imitate several frog sounds. Then I assigned each row of students to be a particular species. Finally, I directed the students in a full season of frog songs.
“Wood frogs begin, with peepers close behind. They keep going while leopard frogs start! Then the wood frogs and peepers stop. Bullfrogs begin. Leopard frogs go quiet, and finally in August all we’re left with are the bullfrogs. Hmm…Hmm…Hmm…Until even they are silenced by fall.” Snow comes, and we start the whole cycle over again.
Back in January, Dr. Sartini allowed a group of Wisconsin Master Naturalists to join her team on a reconnaissance mission to find out if this den had cubs, yearlings, or just the collared adult. As I wrote, we saw the mom’s sleepy face, and heard the grunts of two cubs. Two cubs were all I’d been expecting when I lucked into joining Dr. Sartini and her students on this data collection visit to the same den.
Eager hands reached out to take the cub and nestle him into a puffy winter coat. Soon more students with more cubs headed our way. Four tiny cubs were distributed among the willing volunteers. Mama bear lay anesthetized in the den, and the cubs needed our warmth.
Thick clouds of snowflakes swirled as I climbed the steep hill. Behind me, a string of 20 third graders from Hayward Intermediate School padded along on the Cable Natural History Museum’s rental snowshoes. Their feet were quieter than usual—in many years the trails are hard-packed ice by the time we embark on this annual field trip. This year, fresh snow dampened the crunch of plastic and metal.
This field trip is designed around the Mammal Tour at the North End Trailhead, a roughly 1-mile loop trail where we’ve placed life-size metal silhouettes of 25 Wisconsin mammals.
As I work with a committee to design and build our new exhibit “The Northwoods ROCKS! Where Geology is the Foundation for Fun,” (opening in May!) I have geology on the brain. Thinking about the glaciers that once covered Northern Wisconsin also has me reminiscing about walking on and paddling next to modern glaciers during my four-month trip to Alaska in the summer of 2018.
Evening grosbeaks are colorful members of the finch family. They got their name not because they are the color of the setting sun, but because English settlers thought the birds only came out of the woods to sing at sundown. French settlers reportedly gave them the more accurate name of le gros-bec errant, the wandering grosbeak. These bright birds travel widely toward the best winter food sources in movements known as “irruptions.”
A few steps down the trail, another oak sapling caught my eye. This one was only chest high and barely half-an-inch in diameter where it disappeared into the snow. And it was hairy.
My second look revealed that the twigs were covered with small, shiny, brown domes, and from most of these domes sprouted a forest of little black clubs. Their shape reminded me of Earth tongue fungi and pin lichens, both of which I’ve written about previously. As I finished hiking the loop, I spotted these odd-looking twigs everywhere!
For over 30 years, students and professors from UWSP have conducted research on the seasonal movements, habitat selection, and reproduction of Wisconsin’s black bear population. During that period, bear numbers have risen from 9,000 to 24,000. The researchers’ hard work has contributed significantly to the body of knowledge about black bears in Wisconsin, and informs bear management, too.
On this late January morning, a small group of Wisconsin Master Naturalist volunteers were lucky enough to join a reconnaissance mission.
Tiny forests of mosses poked up between pale sand grains. Carpets of bluish lichens protected little hills, and pixie cup lichens raised their chalices as if waiting for the right vintage of raindrop. Here, miles from the desert, was another community of cryptobiotic crust holding together sand as the stone falls apart. The sandstone on the South Shore is five times older and gets twice as much rain, but otherwise is not so different from some of the rocks of the Colorado Plateau.
Looking up from Lilliput, I saw the patterns of diversity and connection in that small patch repeat themselves in the forest, across the landscape, and throughout the world.
White-breasted nuthatches weigh more than twice their little cousins, the red-breasted nuthatches. More handsome than cute, their black head grading into a gray back and mostly white belly is quite natty.
Beyond size and color, these two cousins have some interesting similarities and differences. They both eat mostly insects in the summer, and feed insects to their chicks as well. Both find those bugs by clinging to tree bark with their super strong feet and long claws, and moving headfirst down the trunk. Their short tail stays out of the way.
This behavior is thought to give nuthatches a different perspective than the woodpeckers and brown creepers who they often feed near.
“So who do you think made this scat?” I asked, while holding the handful of rubber bear scat aloft. Several hands shot into the air. Omnivore. That was an easy one. Next, I pulled out a replica of scraggly fox scat, and a pile of rubber deer scat. No problem. Most kids were confident that they could categorize any scat they might find in the woods. Most kids were delightfully grossed out by the thought. Now it was time for the next step.
As odd as it may seem, being able to identify animal scat significantly enhances my time outdoors. By observing scat, I get to be a detective, a scientist, and a more informed neighbor. Once the kids stop exclaiming about how gross it is, I hope they become all of those things, too.
I enjoyed making weed soup as a child. Here’s the recipe: fill a plastic pail with water, add cut grass, dandelion leaves, a generous handful of weed seeds, mix well, and show Mom. Since then, I’ve taken classes, accumulated books, and joined walks with experts on edible wild plants. I’ve progressed to wild plum and apple chutney, capered milkweed buds, and maple-glazed black walnuts.
Throughout my life I’ve dreamed about a more natural lifestyle, growing and gathering my food. Can foraging really contribute to my food self-sufficiency?
During the Museum group’s visit to El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Preserve, our guide Daniel called me over to an educational display he’d laid out on a stump. Each of the three butterflies had been eaten by a different predator, and their bodies bore tell-tale clues.
Each of these predators—the mice, the grosbeaks, and the orioles—have something in common with the monarchs themselves: they can ingest milkweed toxins and survive.
Monarch butterflies as I recently experienced them in Mexico—gathering by the millions in their winter sanctuaries—are intimately tied to fir trees. Abies religiosa, the oyamel fir, also known as the sacred fir due to the way their oppositely arranged twigs make the shape of a cross, are essential to monarchs’ winter survival.
Every pair of gravity-defying wings, each metamorphosed body and magnetic navigational system is worthy of awe. But it is the collective action of an entire population that brought us here. Butterflies, and monarch butterflies specifically, live all over the globe. But no pollinator garden, no butterfly conservatory even comes close to hosting this many winged wonders. Somewhere in these clusters is every single surviving monarch born on our backyard milkweed. These volcanic mountains hold the most spectacular example of an insect migration we’ve ever encountered.
Volcanoes are essential to our living Earth. Volcanic activity keeps our planet young and fresh by renewing the Earth’s crust and helping create our life-giving atmosphere. It’s no surprise, then, that at many a volcano someone will whisper, “this is a sacred site.”
So, although we didn’t set out on our trip to Mexico with the intention of visiting volcanoes, that seems to have been the result. Volcanoes provide shelter to butterflies, a model for pyramids, and inspiration to many cultures. And finally, their pull in the Lake Superior basin draws me home.
As usual, my toes were cold. So, I hopped off my fat bike and began jogging down the trail beside it instead, trying to wiggle warmth back into my feet. Crunch, crunch, crunch, I ground icy snow under my boots with every step. The day before had been well above freezing, and the briefly slushy snow was now even more solid.
I was keeping an eye on the edge of the trail when my foot landed next to the track of a larger foot. This wasn’t just some deer hunter’s big snow boot. This wide track showed five toes. And claws.
Black bear!
Red-bellied woodpeckers aren’t just expanding north into areas that now have the milder winter temperatures they are used to. The birds are expanding beyond their previous comfort zone and have somehow adapted to survive colder winters. I can relate. The climate hasn’t quite warmed enough to make winters in Northern Wisconsin comparable to the weather I grew up with in Iowa, but I’ve tweaked my wardrobe and thickened my blood enough to make the cold survivable.
I am a November child. The bare bones of empty trees have always fascinated me.
As I venture through the November of my life, I treasure memories of role models in my family tree. I am honored by a large--even growing--network of friends. I am blessed with a strong root system and the ability to appreciate patterns my life etches on the grey November sky.
Lichens on the whole are incredible. Each lichen is a symbiotic relationship between a species of fungus—who gives the lichen both their structure and their name—and another partner, like algae, who can photosynthesize. Together, they can live on bare rock, dead tree branches, old rusted-out cars abandoned in the woods, and much more. Nutrients come from the wind and rain. They create sugars from water and air.
The flash of a white, furry belly soars over my head. It is luminous against the backdrop of the nighttime sky. I duck as another small form soars past me with all four legs extended in flight, like a tiny caped superhero. A shrill, high-pitched warning squeak blasts from the pine tree beside me. As a heavy cloak of black velvet envelopes the evening and I round the last bend of my walk, the flying squirrels descend and commence their nightly plunder of my bird feeders.
The flash of a white, furry belly soars over my head. It is luminous against the backdrop of the nighttime sky. I duck as another small form soars past me with all four legs extended in flight, like a tiny caped superhero. A shrill, high-pitched warning squeak blasts from the pine tree beside me. As a heavy cloak of black velvet envelopes the evening and I round the last bend of my walk, the flying squirrels descend and commence their nightly plunder of my bird feeders.
The mystery and the egg mass were from spongy moths—the terribly invasive insect previously called a gypsy moth—just as the two girls had been trying to tell me. “Do you know how the students knew about the spongy moth? Have you been talking about them in class?” I asked the teachers in an email. Personally, I’ve been ignoring the headlines about them, which is why I didn’t recognize these two life stages.
Beside the wide, dirt trail, a ruffle of turkey tail fungus cascaded down the graceful curve of a tree trunk like an earth-toned ball gown: a damsel of decay. While the volume of fungal frills—each with a velvety top, concentric bands of color, and tiny pores in the white undersurface—was impressive, the bulk of the being was hidden inside. Intertwined among the wood cells, hidden from view, the fine, white threads of hyphae (the actual body of a fungus) were hard at work. The tree itself was dead, and yet still full of life.
The larvae of all fireflies are bioluminescent, and I was eager to see if the iNaturalist database would confirm my hunch. Sure enough, Photuris genus was the only ID suggestion that popped up. A firefly larva!
Every year, when the air turns crisp, the dogbane leaves glow lemony from the ditches, and the ash leaves fade to mustard in the swamps, I feel the urge to travel.
I’m not the only one.
Cade Campbell is from Bristol, Tennessee, and is currently studying Biology at East Tennessee State University. An avid naturalist, he spends most of his free time outdoors, and has both worked and volunteered with the Blue Ridge Discovery Center as a naturalist, and as a field technician elsewhere. Cade recently finished his tenure as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Cable Natural History Museum.
Where species once migrated south to escape a wall of ice, they must now escape in the opposite direction to avoid excessive heat. My beloved Appalachians are being inundated by wildlife from much farther south. Locations with habitat similar to the Northwoods mere decades ago host life more reminiscent of habitats in the coastal Carolinas or Georgia. Cold-adapted species are forced north or to an untimely local extinction.
This means the Northwoods are receiving new waves of southern species, from great crested flycatchers to swamp darner dragonflies…and for a short time, me. As I prepare for my own migration back south after a summer in the Northwoods, I’m saying goodbye to spruce and fir, black-capped chickadees, and the scarlet clusters of bunchberries. To the wild sarsaparilla, Mayflower, and moccasin-flower I can just say, “I’ll see you at home.” …At least for now.
The voices filtering through our Boundary Waters campsite were so calm and sweet-sounding it took me a minute to process the words: “Hey, bear.”
Lake water dripped from my swim shorts, and I continued toweling off in the sun while the meaning sank in. “Hey, bear!”
Looking across the wilderness campsite, where a group of colorful tents lined the woods on the way back to the latrine trail, I saw a fuzzy black shape in their midst. Ally and Caleb, a young couple who’d been resting in a hammock, were calmly talking to the bear, waving their arms, and doing all the right things to let the bear know that camp was full of humans without startling it. The bear did not care.
Ghost pipe is generally declared a parasite, but radioactive phosphorus first injected into ghost pipe was later found in neighboring trees. Nature is rarely as simple as we think.
When I shared this relationship with a group of Wisconsin Master Naturalist students, they were indignant. Our culture loathes a mooch. “What good is it?” they asked. “What’s its purpose?”
The purpose of any living thing—at least from its own perspective—is to make more of itself. This flower is surely doing that. I could tell my students weren’t satisfied, though. We’re always looking for a benefit to US, or at the very least, a benefit to the ecosystem. “Its beauty isn’t enough?” I countered with a smile.
In fact, that beauty may be important.
Ghost pipe is generally declared a parasite, but radioactive phosphorus first injected into ghost pipe was later found in neighboring trees. Nature is rarely as simple as we think.
When I shared this relationship with a group of Wisconsin Master Naturalist students, they were indignant. Our culture loathes a mooch. “What good is it?” they asked. “What’s its purpose?”
The purpose of any living thing—at least from its own perspective—is to make more of itself. This flower is surely doing that. I could tell my students weren’t satisfied, though. We’re always looking for a benefit to US, or at the very least, a benefit to the ecosystem. “Its beauty isn’t enough?” I countered with a smile.
In fact, that beauty may be important.
While the blob looked more like a patterned glass art piece than a living being, it is actually formed of hundreds of genetically identical, physiologically interconnected animals called zooids. Similar to coral in their colonial lifestyle, each individual zooid is made up of an outer sleeve-like structure that produces a gelatinous exoskeleton; a mass of organs that can move within the sleeve; and the lophophore, which is a ring of tentacles that filters food particles out of the water. Instead of pooping out waste, a zooid just grows a new sack of organs when the old one fills up.
While the blob looked more like a patterned glass art piece than a living being, it is actually formed of hundreds of genetically identical, physiologically interconnected animals called zooids. Similar to coral in their colonial lifestyle, each individual zooid is made up of an outer sleeve-like structure that produces a gelatinous exoskeleton; a mass of organs that can move within the sleeve; and the lophophore, which is a ring of tentacles that filters food particles out of the water. Instead of pooping out waste, a zooid just grows a new sack of organs when the old one fills up.
This week Olivia Rataezyk talks about different types of bird banding.
Olivia Rataezyk is from Seattle, Washington and studies biology at Kenyon College in Ohio. On campus, she divides her time between a research lab studying birds (her favorite animal) and her college’s art gallery. Olivia just finished her tenure as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Cable Natural History Museum.
This week Olivia Rataezyk talks about different types of bird banding.
Olivia Rataezyk is from Seattle, Washington and studies biology at Kenyon College in Ohio. On campus, she divides her time between a research lab studying birds (her favorite animal) and her college’s art gallery. Olivia just finished her tenure as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Cable Natural History Museum.
With a nice mix of clay, silt, and sand, these loamy mesic, or middle moisture, soils are not too dry and not too wet. They form the foundation for the rich variety of plant life in the northern mesic forest, where hardwood trees such as sugar maples, basswoods, and yellow birch mix with Eastern hemlock and eastern white pine.
With a nice mix of clay, silt, and sand, these loamy mesic, or middle moisture, soils are not too dry and not too wet. They form the foundation for the rich variety of plant life in the northern mesic forest, where hardwood trees such as sugar maples, basswoods, and yellow birch mix with Eastern hemlock and eastern white pine.
Deer flies are the bane of summer here in the Northwoods—and around the world. Only Iceland, Greenland, and Hawaii are safe. Just as the black flies become a distant memory and the mosquitoes are relegated to “mosquito hour” in the evening, the deer flies start interfering with our beautiful, sunny days above 71.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
The reason we dislike deer flies so much is that the females need a blood meal to fuel egg development. Unlike the precise, syringe-like mouth of a mosquito, deer flies have two scalpel-like mouth parts that they use to make a cross-shaped incision in your skin. Their saliva contains anti-coagulants to make it easier for them to lap up your blood with a sponge-like tongue.
Each nodding flower contained a lime green center pistil shaped like a stocking hat, surrounded by a lovely pink brim, with a fringe of ten pairs of pink anthers, all ringed by five white petals arching gracefully toward the sky. They were just as beautiful as I’d remembered.
It’s hard to begrudge pipsissewa a little bit of stolen sugar, when that energy allows their sweet flowers to brighten up their dark forest home.
As the sheer, white curtain material of my mom’s homemade insect nets unfurled, small children seemed to materialize out of nowhere as if called by the Pied Piper. The wooden dowel handles with bent coat hanger frames were longer than any of the kids was tall.
The nets were light, though, and the long handles allowed us to keep feet and bare legs firmly planted in mowed grass while reaching into the tall field of goldenrod, rattlesnake master, and other flowers of the restored prairies in Honey Creek State Park in southern Iowa.
I think it was Catherine, age 9, or maybe Freyja, age 7, who caught the first spider. We all crouched around the net for a better look, and I let the spider crawl up on my hand. As she climbed, and I twisted my hand to keep her in view, the light caught her tiny abdomen and it shimmered like white satin. We oohed and aahed.
“Their caterpillars eat woolly alder aphids,” explained Cade, as we both crept closer to the Harvester butterfly with our cameras ready. “And the adults sip on the aphids’ honeydew.”
I felt a little twinge of dismay. Woolly alder aphids are one of my favorite creatures! In the fall they float around like little fairies covered in wispy strands of white wax. I’ve written about them before. Just like most aphids, woolly alder aphids suck plant juices from a host. The alder shrub harvests sunlight, water, and air; the aphids harvest the alder’s sap; and then ants (and, I just learned, Harvester butterfly adults) feed on sugary honeydew secreted by the aphids. In return, ants provide the aphids some protection from predators…predators like the Harvester butterfly’s caterpillars.
It was like something out of a fairytale. Hundreds of tiny orange butterflies rose up in waves before me as I walked down the grassy path. Each fluttered delicately for a moment before sinking back to rest on the green blades, the lupine leaves, and almost every surface in the community garden.
Their name, however, gives them away as an interloper. European skippers are native to many places—Europe, Scandinavia, North Africa, and Central Asia—but they aren’t native here.
“Can’t you smell that?” asked Cade from the bow of the canoe. A warm breeze tickled the back of my neck and blew any odors away from me. He’d brought up a small piece of an aquatic plant with a similar structure to the bladderwort leaves I’ve examined recently. The central, green stem bore whorls of thin leaves.
As Cade placed the curiosity on the blade of my canoe paddle, the breeze swirled, and I caught more than a whiff of sulfur. “It’s chara!” he declared.
Also known as muskgrass or skunkweed due to its strong odor, chara is a type of algae that grows in clean, hard water with a high pH and lots of minerals.
“Oh!” I exclaimed happily, as a submerged plant caught my eye. Its thin, branching, bottle-brush leaves looked somewhat similar to coontail or even watermilfoil, but I knew better. “Bladderwort!” I exclaimed. I’ve written about this carnivorous plant with yellow snapdragon-like flowers before.
Pulling up the whole plant—this species grows as a free-floating leafy stem less than a foot long—I found the namesake bladders. Smaller than an apple seed and of a similar shape, the translucent capsules sparkled in the sun. That beauty is deadly.
Off the cuff, many folks would tell you that the white fluff flying on the breeze this time of year is from cottonwood. The thing is, Eastern cottonwood—Populus deltoides—is pretty rare in the northern third of Wisconsin. But, as it turns out, the white fuzz is a family trait, and local relatives abound.
Columnist’s Note: Anne Torrey, of Gordon, WI, participated in a Natural Connections Writing Workshop I led last fall, and is continuing to hone her craft. I hope you enjoy her unique account of witnessing a common event—the drumming of the ruffed grouse. While the first drumming reached our ears months ago, the subtle beats still echo through the woods as males assert their territories and make sure they’ve attended to all of the ladies.
–Emily Stone, Naturalist/Education Director at the Cable Natural History Museum.
It’s hard to imagine all of what goes on at a chemical level in nature. Here is a common plant, growing in mucky wetlands, that uses carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and energy from the sun to make food, chemical weapons, and pharmaceuticals.
Newly emerged queen bumble bees have strong legs and a long tongue that allow them to access the nectar hidden deep in Dutchman’s breeches flowers. These early flowers rely on fuzzy bumble bees for pollination—few other insects are active during cool spring days.
Dutchman’s breeches flowers hide their nectar away in the tips of their pantaloon-shaped flowers. Hungry bees who are too small to access the nectar properly will simply chew holes to access the nectar.
This episode originally aired in 2019.
“Lakes are cradles for all sorts of babies as they grow up,” I told the group. “How many of you like to play in the mud and water as you grow up wild?” The little ones—only 3 and 4 years old, grinned. One student looked up at his teacher. “I love mud best!” I chuckled in agreement.
Then we all transformed ourselves into dragonfly eggs by hugging our knees. We wiggled, and grew, and hatched into crooked-legged-nymphs. The nymph stage of a dragonfly’s life is essentially their childhood.
The robin woke me up again today. He’ll likely be my alarm clock for the rest of the summer as he rushes to raise up to three broods of chicks. Hermit thrushes will soon join the chorus, too. Hopefully, as Thoreau predicted, “whenever he [or she] hears it, it is a new world and a free country.”
As a campfire-poking kid, I love the idea that setting fires has a scientific and ecological purpose. Fire clears out the thick thatch that can smother new sprouts. Black ashes absorb sunshine, warm the soil, and provide prairie plants with an extra boost. Fire is a form of decomposer, and makes nutrients from dead vegetation available for new growth. Deep below the blackened soil, a web of roots, burrows, insects and more bide their time. The fire’s destruction would soon become renewal.
In addition to antibacterial behaviors, turkey vultures have developed excellent immune systems that can ward off and even destroy the microbes that cause botulism, anthrax, cholera, and salmonella. Their stomachs, gross as they may seem, help purify our world. Can you imagine a world in which dead things all rotted slowly in place? Turkey vultures embody the fact that “the secret name of every death is life again.” (Mary Oliver, Skunk Cabbage)
The story of the vultures—of winter’s rotting wounds transformed and purified, of the purifier rising up into the sky, of it returning to cleanse the world again and again—sounds a lot like another story I often hear this time of year.
Spring is coming, albeit slowly, to the Northwoods. Now is the time to finish up work in the woods that could potentially damage oak trees and allow for infection by oak wilt. Now is not the time to clean out your gardens, though, since pollinators and other beneficial insects need longer stretches of warmth in order to emerge from hibernation safely.
Eastern chipmunks hibernate in underground burrows throughout the winter, but pop out at the first sign of spring. Learn more about their little lives!
When Ryan Brady initiated a spring raptor count at the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center (NGLVC) while a student at Northland College in 1999, his ornithology professor, Dick Verch, had never documented a golden eagle near Ashland, WI.
The first bird Ryan spotted, on the very first day, showed the slightly V-shaped silhouette, small dark head, and dark tail of a migrating golden eagle. Both birders were thrilled! Recently in Duluth, 41 golden eagles flew over in a single day!
This week, I talked to Ryan Brady to get all the details on when to see golden eagles in Wisconsin, and how to identify them when you do.
The recent storm encased twigs and buds in ice. But destruction could have been worse. A cold winter meant that plants were still dormant. A late spring ice storm would be much more destructive to tender new growth. As it turns out, winter dormancy may have saved some dinosaurs when the asteroid hit, while spring activity played a role in the others’ demise. Learn more about this recent scientific study and its connections to the Northwoods.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” I exclaimed over and over this past week as sunlight glinted off the ice-covered trees. After a weekend storm, up to half-an-inch of ice now coats everything.
Of course, it’s a terrible beauty that has wrought destruction on our forests, created deadly challenges for wildlife, and become a headache for the people who manage, maintain, and use our many roads and trails.
“A mark of true intelligence is the ability to hold competing thoughts or ideas while striving to better understand both,” wrote my philosophical friend. It felt especially appropriate as my mind swirled trying to imagine all the impacts of this storm. Clearly, it’s beautiful. Clearly, it’s destructive. What are the positive and negative impacts, both now and into the future?
Three-year-olds say poop a lot because they have it on their minds. Well, naturalists are no different. Poop is an essential part of food chains, animal tracks, and even scientific research! This week I spotted bird poop doing something funny, and in the course of researching it discovered that the conventional wisdom about bird poop is wrong!
Adaptations are key to any animals’ survival, and each species is adapted to its own habitat. This is readily apparent in the fates of two different birds spotted in the Northwoods this winter. An out-of-place yellow-rumped warbler was impressive because of how long she survived in the cold against all odds, without the right adaptations to get her through. Redpolls are equally impressive because their adaptations are built to help them thrive in those same, challenging conditions. They are all tough little birds.
Stiff muscles after a day spent in nature can make a person feel old, but nature can also make us feel young. Compared to a butterfly, our lifespan is enormous. Compared to the stars, we are less than infants. The sense of discovery, excitement of learning new things, delight in following our curiosity, and freedom from the constraints of polite society all contribute to our feelings of joy and vibrancy and youthfulness in nature—no matter what our true age.
When a sixth grader asks, “Why is grass green?” I’m pretty sure they don’t expect an answer that dives into chemistry and evolutionary history. And yet, that’s what they’ll get! While many of us—even scientists and educators—have a logical (but incomplete) answer ready to go, a little more digging turns up connections to blood, the nuances of photons, and even a mysterious ancestor that may or may not have existed in the deep past.
Eastern hemlock thrives in the deep shade of its elders, while paper birch craves almost full sun. These evergreen and deciduous trees could hardly be more different…until you look more closely at their tiny, winged seeds and the nurse stumps where they each find purchase. In this week’s Natural Connections we’ll explore the relationship between this odd couple while snowshoeing on the beautiful Forest Lodge Estate.
Pileated woodpeckers are impressive birds with chisel-like beaks and striking red, white, and black markings. They eat a variety of insects, fruits, and other mysterious items they might find on the slender twigs of a boxelder tree outside our office window. Learn more about these unique “tree cleavers” in this week’s Natural Connections.
This week a stack of old books revealed a treasure. Bound in blue cloth with gold writing, “Sharp Eyes: A Rambler’s Calendar of Fifty-Two Weeks among Insects, Birds, and Flowers,” written by William Hamilton Gibson in 1891, offered delightfully verbose descriptions of a walk in nature. In the WINTER section, Gibson called snow, “a great white page storied with the doings of the little wild folk which few of us ever see.” Gibson also wrote admiringly of squirrels, saying that “his sensitive plumy tail in every movement expressive of its homage to the line of beauty.” Enjoy this time capsule!
Wolves are common in the Northwoods, even if we rarely see them. That’s why Naturalist Emily Stone was thrilled to find big wolf tracks on her driveway, and plenty of wolf sign in her woods. From cozy wolf beds, to a trail filled with raised leg urinations, there’s lots to learn from tracking her new neighbors.
Least weasels are the world’s smallest carnivores. With long skinny bodies, they hunt little mammals under the snow, in that magical space we call the subnivean zone. From North Africa to northern Russia, and even here in Wisconsin, these tiny predators stealthily reduce our populations of mice and voles, all while looking cute. Learn more about them from Naturalist Emily Stone in this week’s Natural Connections!
Sledding is one of Naturalist Emily Stone’s favorite winter activities. She’s not alone. Otters, bears, and even ravens and crows also enjoy sliding down hills on snow. Scientists know that play, including sliding, is somehow connected to young animals surviving longer. Playtime might even help adults reduce stress and boost their immune system. Grab a sled and let’s go!
Back in the 1970s, Gary Siegwarth stuck a carton of ice cream in a snowdrift. “I thought it was the perfect hiding place from my siblings,” Gary told me, “Turns out the ice cream cache quickly metamorphosized into a subnivean shake… Gary had discovered the Subnivean Zone. This week, I’ve tucked thermometers into the snow in a less sticky way of observing the same magical phenomenon.
While splitting firewood, Naturalist Emily Stone found an entire civilization of carpenter ants. Well, maybe it was just a satellite nest with drones, queens, and workers. How were they planning to spend the winter inside a chunk of red elm? Find out more in this Natural Connections episode.
Clubmoss, prince’s pine, and ground pine are just three of many names applied to little evergreen plants in the family Lycopodiaceae. Besides looking like adorable, doll-sized Christmas trees, these plants have explosive spores that were used in the first flash photography, magic tricks, and more. They also have a special relationship with mycorrhizal fungi and the wood wide web. Take a hike with Naturalist Emily Stone to learn more!
Kris Millgate is an award-winning outdoor journalist who recently completed a “doozy of a road trip” following Chinook salmon from the ocean to Idaho and back. She’s also my friend. This week, I share a little bit of what I know about her adventures, plus the connections between salmon, dams, and Wisconsin. On December 7, 2021, I’m hosting a screening of her documentary film “Ocean to Idaho,” where copies of her book, “My Place Among Fish” will be available for purchase.
Have you been seeing swarms of delicate, mosquito-like insects around your house? Happily, instead of being a terrible species of cold hardy bloodsuckers, these are fungus gnats. Fungus gnats are tiny flies whose larvae eat mushrooms. They often appear abundantly in the fall. If you can catch one without crushing it too much, spines on their knees offer assistance with identification. Curious? Naturalist Emily Stone will share what little is known about these autumn visitors.
Does November make you feel gray? Naturalist Emily Stone makes a point of getting outside even on chilly mornings in order to notice changes in the woods and get a better night’s sleep. Autumn leaves change in color and shape while keeping their beauty. Animal tracks are pressed into soft mud. And her trail camera captures buck deer, turkeys, grouse, a blue jay, and one curious fox. How do you keep the November doldrums at bay?
Does November make you feel gray? Naturalist Emily Stone makes a point of getting outside even on chilly mornings in order to notice changes in the woods and get a better night’s sleep. Autumn leaves change in color and shape while keeping their beauty. Animal tracks are pressed into soft mud. And her trail camera captures buck deer, turkeys, grouse, a blue jay, and one curious fox. How do you keep the November doldrums at bay?
Did any little bees buzz up to your porch last weekend on Halloween, looking for a sugary snack? How did you treat them? Did you smile and coo at their costumes? Wiggle your gnarled hands at them menacingly? Or did you pounce from the shadows, grab them with your strong front legs, and use your sharp beak to inject poison and then suck up their liquefied body tissues?
Not that last one? Well, you must not be a Jagged Ambush Bug. These True Bugs have several cool adaptations that make them a great addition to your pollinator garden.
Nature is transitioning into winter at this time of the All Hallows’ Eve. As plants and insects succumb to the frost, Naturalist Emily Stone contemplates the cyclical nature of life. From her perspective as a naturalist, and with wisdom from poet Mary Oliver, our veins course with stardust; our muscles are built from venison; our lungs converse with maples trees; our bones swirl through the mud with herons. With every breath, with every bite, we are intimately connected with all the atoms on Earth. Even in death, we can find connections and joyful reciprocity.
Taking a walk at night with a UV flashlight is just as good as going to a haunted house. In this week’s episode of Natural Connections, Naturalist Emily Stone discovers spooky fungi, including edible abortive entoloma mushrooms, blood-red moss, and a gracefully creepy millipede. Get inspired to go out on your own dark forest night hike!
Fall is a beautiful time to be in the Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness in Northern Minnesota. Naturalist Emily Stone recently went on a canoe trip there and witnessed a merlin chasing songbirds, as well as autumn meadowhawk dragonflies mating. These seasonal events are some of the last flights of fall. Learn more about their behavior, ecology, and adaptations in this week’s Natural Connections Podcast!
Many native bees build their nests in long cavities. They look for hollow plant stems, beetle holes in trees, and woody twigs they can excavate. Gardeners can help the bees out by leaving flower seed heads standing in the garden all winter long. Then in spring, it’s time to cut them off. After that, the bees move in and you can let nature take her course. Learn more about how to garden for the bees in this week’s podcast with Naturalist Emily Stone.
The few beautiful wildflowers that survive into fall attract a huge number of bumble bees who are completing their annual cycle. New queen bumble bees and drone bees begin to emerge mate with bees from other colonies, and prepare for the winter. For drones and workers, this means death at the first frost. For new queens, this means gorging on nectar and pollen to put on fat layers just like a bear preparing for hibernation. Learn about Naturalist Emily Stone’s observations of these fuzzy fall bees in this episode.
Here in the Northwoods, we’re lucky to witness a kaleidoscope of colors as trees transition from summer into fall and winter. Autumn is a beautiful time of year, but a sad one, too, as the colorful leaves are dying. The lives and deaths of leaves are fascinating, though, and this week Naturalist Emily Stone elucidates the science behind how leaves grow and then how trees recycle nutrients and store them away for next spring. Red, orange, yellow, purple, and brown compose the resulting rainbow.
Photographing baby animals takes luck, skill, and perseverance. This week, Naturalist Emily Stone gathered the “stories behind the photos” that were entered in the Museum’s Northwoods Animal Babies Photo Contest. Stories include sneaking up on cute fawns, observing owl babies in the backyard, and going out every day to observe nature. Once you hear the stories, you can visit the Cable Natural History Museum Facebook page to vote on your favorite photos!
Naturalist Emily Stone talks about her canoe trip down the Namekagon River, which is protected by the National Park Service. A tiny mussel shell inspires her to be grateful that the river is protected, and to compare the birds and wildlife she sees along the stream to a string of pearls. At the end, she contemplates a quote from poet Mary Oliver from the poem "The Kingfisher," about how the world contains death every day, and every day we must work to find our own splash of happiness and gratitude in order to survive.
This week we’ll learn about the problems and possibilities when two warblers hybridize.
Welcome to the Library Nature Park at the Sherman and Ruth Weiss Community Library in Hayward, Wisconsin! This audio guide is designed to help you discover even more about the nature that surrounds us. Together, we'll discover flowers, trees, birds, and more.
Welcome to the Library Nature Park at the Sherman and Ruth Weiss Community Library in Hayward, Wisconsin! This audio guide is designed to help you discover even more about the nature that surrounds us. Together, we'll discover flowers, trees, birds, and more.