Wait, There's More!

Note to self: Stop publishing entries at lunch.  This time of year, there will likely be more discoveries by day's end!  In this case... the first American hazels are both male-flowering (catkins are swelling) and female-flowering (those are the tiny dark pink tufts there).  In a clump of shrubs, some are in full flowers, others look like they did in the middle of winter, with no signs of sexuality at all! 

Speaking of catkins -- the best known of them are pussy willows, which are also starting to bloom. 

And look!  I finally got a picture of Sandhill Cranes.  They are flying over in large numbers today; I've heard reports of sightings from several people. 

Springing

Just yesterday, the alder catkins were tight brown clusters; today they're opening, revealing their inner green to the world.  It may still be winter, but right now, spring seems to be everywhere... the whole world is showing its inner green.  Yesterday... yesterday was one of those days when being outside, it seemed like it could cure anything.  Like it would have been impossible not to be invigorated, inspired, uplifted out there.  There were chorus frogs chorusing, the first time this spring I'd heard that song, interrupted by the distinct call of sandhill cranes.  And not from high above my head... cranes were calling from ground level, as though they've come back, settled in.  Even the prairie itself seemed to be ready to burst... below, an area that was burned in the fall has a faint green tinge to it.  Just a little color, peeking through, beneath the brown, telling us it won't be long now.  (Speaking of long... like my shadow?)

Also... last night's rain brought worms out from the saturated soil.  (I know, this one's dead, but t had to be alive to come out, right?)

Bird Brained

So yesterday... a small group of Sandhill Cranes flew overhead, heading north.  I didn't get my phone out and on in time for a photo, but they were pretty unmistakable.

This morning, I heard something else unmistakable... a piercing call in the crisp morning air.  At first I just kept walking, then I did a sort of double take.  Wait!  That was a red-wing black bird!  I found him in the tree but this little photo was the best I was going to do, picture-wise.  I heard the call several more times, though... tomorrow's winter storm, if it happens, may be a shock to all these guys!  

More Highs and Lows

Sandhill cranes continue to fly by in large numbers.  Today I actually got a photo of a flock... this was one group of birds that flew by with two other V's right nearby.  At least one other large group -- hours separate -- flew by today... and of course, I may have missed any number while not outside!

Maybe not as exciting, but today when I looked in the other direction (down), I saw... ICE!  Not on lakes or anything, but little bits where there was standing water on the trail.  And this photo was taken during my lunch walk, around noon today (not early morning).

We're excited to be expecting quite a bit of SNOW tonight -- though with all the talk, I'm kind of expecting a bust.  But I'll definitely report tomorrow!  

Flying High

As I was taking yet another wind-blown lunch walk... side note: pretty much the only day this week that we haven't had crazy, blow-you-off-course winds was Tuesday when it rained.  You know how much I love strong gusty winds, so... it's been a great week for me.  Yea.  Anyhow.  I was walking, looking down to avoid having leaves or other detritus blown into my eyes, when I heard the distinctive, primordial call of Sandhill cranes.  I looked up to see them, and was immediately blinded by the sun, which didn't bother me because I'm just happy to see the sun.  When my retinas healed, I was able to find the flock -- about a hundred birds, flying due south, up so high that they looked like barely more than specks in the sky.  Migration!

In the other direction (the one I spent most of my walk looking, ie, down) there are still woolly bears braving the elements.  Woolly bear lore says that the wider the orange bands are, the milder the winter will be.  This year's crop seem to have pretty wide bands.  Although I have heard non-larval predictions for a mild winter this year, I don't know that I put any stock in caterpillar predictions.  (Although this is interesting... I've noticed that the woollies this year seem to have one really tiny black side and one larger black side... I've also heard that this winter will start mild but have a brutal end.  Can these caterpillars be that specific?  If that comes to pass, will it mean the woolly bears really do predict the weather? Hmmm.)  

I also saw a grasshopper today, though it was slow and didn't jump very far to get out of my way.  

Seed Burst Firsts on a Misty Morning

With the start of autumn, we look to seeds and colors... the things that characterize the end of a life cycle, in as much as a cycle has an end.  These are not the first milkweed seeds I've seen bursting open, but they actually are the first ones that aren't right next to the trail, and I'm always suspicious that maintenance mowers and, in the case of milkweed, hands alter the phenophases.  This morning I started to notice milkweed plants off the trail opening their seedpods, though these are early adopters.  Most are still green with potential for later!

The cattails are also starting to release seeds... The eponymous brown fuzzy hotdogs-on-sticks are packed so tightly with so many seeds for so long... and now they are starting to burst and explode! 

The goose in this photo isn't especially phenologically relevant, really... We have geese year-round now.  In the 40's, Also Leopold poetically described the return of the geese in March as one of his tell-tale signs of spring.  Thanks to office parks with aerated ponds that never freeze, geese never leave (at least not a lot of them) so their presence means not a lot... but the mist on the lake is an interesting phenomena that's been happening these mornings as it's been getting chilly at night.  Since it's still been warm during the day, the water and ground are warmer than the night air, causing these misty fog-clouds each morning.  They're quite lovely.

The morning fog really strange... you can see this layer of fog hanging over some parts of the land and not others.  In places it's not as tall as my head so I walk through with my head above clouds and my body in them.  When you move in and out of the misty areas the temperature drops by what feels like 10 degrees, then rises again just as quickly...

My last sighting of the morning -- this pair of sandhill cranes flew almost right over me.  Thanks to their distinctive call, I knew they were around before I saw them, and was able to get totally prepared to take pictures... but still, the ones where they were right overhead turned out totally blurry.  This was the best of the bunch, though it's still not awesome.  You almost can't see enough leg to know they're not geese, but, trust me, they're cranes!

Cranes came!

I recognize that the fact that those are Sandhill cranes is not discernible from the photo, but the sound is unmistakable... Welcome back!

A Happy, Mournful Sight

This morning, though it was just above 40 degrees, I saw my first butterfly of the year, a mourning cloak.

I also saw a pair of Sandhill Cranes, here as though possibly they'll stay, not just stop over on the way north.

Chorus frogs are chorusing...

There are also many interesting looking ducks migrating through... but I tend to see them while I'm running, which means it's hard to ID them -- not only do I have no binoculars, but I'm not willing to stop and study.

There Are Signs!

A few updates:

1.  Sandhill Cranes are flying north... This afternoon I heard their unmistakable, primitive call, and felt a shadow as they flew between me and the sun.  I looked up to see a "v" of about 40 of them.

2.  I heard a red-wing black-bird, but I couldn't for the life of me find it.  (By the next day -- Mar 18 -- they were all over!)

3.  Plants are starting to do things, too... slowly, to be sure, but there are some aspen catkins emerging.

Sandhill Cranes

...flying low and calling out to our that pre-language part of our brains that still understand crane trumpet!
They're back!

Still Here

This afternoon, we drove past 6 sandhill cranes in a farm field.  I haven't seen them for weeks, and assumed I wouldn't see any until spring... but they're quite unmistakable.  Perhaps, with the warm weather we had for most of the weekend, they migrated back? :) jk.  (Most of the weekend was unseasonably warm, and rainy, but the mercury is falling now!)

Today, an Observer

Despite my ramblings last week, when I went this morning to run in the same place, I took my camera. While I know it's not the case, there's a part of me that doesn't think things are quite as valid if I don't have PROOF that they happened. And I had to make a deal with myself... the camera was WOW! moments, not for stopping to take a picture of the wooly bears that are everywhere right now, or a milkweed seed pod whose fluff caught the morning sun in a special way. (You could argue that those are WOW! moments, too, but... you know what I mean.)

Sandhill cranes at the edge of the water. 

Anyhow, I did see sandhill cranes again, but the experience was not quite the same as last week's. I came upon a pair of them at the edge of a pond during a part of my run that was relatively crowded -- me, another runner, and a pair of walkers, all going at different speeds, all converged at this spot at the same time. Whether it was this or something else, the pair of cranes didn't stay long. Shortly after I snapped their photo, they spread their wings and took flight across the small pond and into the field, where they joined 4 other cranes. The six of them, presumably the same six birds from last week, jumped around for a few moments, called their primeval call, but they were far from me this time. Then two took off flying, and I ran on. I got an OK picture. I didn't get a connection, I didn't get to be a crane this week.

Almost more arresting were the geese. This morning was a goose morning. Geese really aren't a phenological harbinger of seasonal change the way they once were. In A Sand County Almanac, Leopold brilliantly described, in 1948, the Return of the Geese as an early sign of spring to which he looked forward every year. Now, geese pretty much stick around year long. It is my understanding that there is a small non-migratory population that sticks around all year, and then a larger migratory group. However, we have summer residents that migrate away, and I suspect we also have winter geese that send their summers way up in Canada and come here for the relief of aerated office park ponds than never freeze. Geese are so common that they've become pests... I wonder how Leopold would feel about the businesses that have sprung up whose sole purpose is to chase the geese away?!?

A flock of Canada Geese heading south.

Still... around this time of year and also in March, there is a whole lot of goose movement. On Friday night, I watched and listened as hundreds of them flew over in several groups, in front of a really spectacular backdrop of sun setting with a unique cloudscape. Unfortunately, I was observing from the parking lot of a Chase, with powerlines and a BOA in the foreground... so not so much a photographic moment. I'm not that good with photoshop. (I don't even have photoshop).

This morning, I saw similar numbers of geese in large groups heading in a generally southerly direction. Their calls are certainly not as eerie and haunting as the crane's, but in the numbers that they were in, it seemed to surround me. So that was kind of neat, too.

I was a Sandhill Crane

My regular readers, if there still are any at this point, have surely noticed my lack of blog entries despite October being a phenologically interesting time of year.  There are two reasons for this.  The first is the class I'm taking.  It's on Trees and Shrubs, and one of our major assignments is to keep track of the peak color dates and colors of at least 40 species of tree/shrub.  In other words, it's a phenology project.  In some ways I like the assignment because a) I think phenology is a valuable pursuit, and b) this makes a lot of new people try their hand at phenology.  However, it has taken a lot of the art and poetry out of phenology for me and made it a data keeping exercise.  (When it's done I'll post it so you all can see that I have still been noting phenophases, if not in the internet.)  I guess my mind can't handle 2 phenology projects at once.  After I've gone all over with my spreadsheet looking at every tree and noting its progress, I'm in no place to take pictures or draw one of them.

The second reason is my recent fitness commitment.  There's a limited amount of time in anyone's life... so some of the time I used to spend meandering slowly with a camera at the ready I now spend jogging, too fast and focused to stop and make observations.  This isn't better or worse -- or, it's better for some reasons and worse for others -- but there you have it.  I do see things when I'm running, but most of them, with no photographic evidence, don't seem worth writing about when I get home.  (Two weeks ago: lots of garter snakes, for example.)

Not the case today.  First thing this morning, after starting laundry and fueling up with Kashi and Morning Edition, I went to Rollins Savannah.  At this point, the sun just coming over the tree line in the east, it was quite chilly, and I set out on my chosen 4-mile route, ear buds in place.  I was aware of the low light and the long shadows, the way the sun's rays caught the morning dew and made the plants sparkle.  I was aware of the crispness in the air.  But really, I wasn't paying that much attention to things external to me.

Running, to me at least, is a selfish pursuit.  It's not selfish in a bad way, not greedy, not taking anything away from anyone or anything else.  It's just... self-focused.  I think about the my rhythm, my goals, my life, my issues.  I listen to my music that no one else can hear.  I'm in my own head.  And that's where I am on this clear sunny morning when I feel a shadow cross over me, and I look, and there are four sandhill cranes flying overhead.  Like, right overhead, probably 20 feet in the air, and getting lower, and they land in a recently mowed field where two others await them.  I continue to jog along the trail toward them and I realize that, if I don't scare them, I am going to be among them.  I slow, and remove my earbuds... somethings are more important than my self... and they let me enter their midst.  The cranes are on both sides of the trail.  To my right, five of them walk parallel to the trail, the closest just 15 or 20 feet from me.  And to my left, the sixth bird is about 10 feet from the trail.  I take their pace, unconsciously start lifting my feet higher to walk as they walk.  I am just among them, part of them, one of them.  They don't seem to care.  We stay this way for a while, a flock of seven... maybe it was only a minute, maybe it was ten, I don't know... if I had been carrying my camera, I could have gotten a close up of their faces, their red heads.  I could have shown you the strands of their feathers, a few black ones poking out from under the gray tails, their whole bodies grey, not the brown of the mud with which they sometimes cover themselves.  But if I had had a camera, I might have scared them off.  And even if not, I would have made myself separate, an observer.  I wouldn't have been one of them, for a moment, a crane.

They stopped walking, threw back their heads, and called their haunting call.  Eventually, I ran on, still hearing, occasionally, their prehistoric calls piercing the air.  The rest of my run, I saw flickers and juncos, heard red-winged blackbirds calling their plaintive call that makes me thing of spring.  I got pretty close to them, too, maybe because this morning I was a crane, so I wasn't scary anymore.

So that was my larger moment with the world, born of my time with myself.

Vertebrates of Devil's Lake

The nine group camp sites at Devil's Lake form a semi-circle. In the center of the circle, next to the shower'bath house facilities, is a stand of pine trees that, for as long as I remember, is home to a great blue heron rookery. I've no idea how many birds nest there, but they are constantly coming and going. Their warbles and cackles are the white noise of the sites, and their occasional screams pierce the air in a most disconcerting way. It keeps things from being dull, that's for sure.

This little fellow decided to fledge a bit early. It wasn't injured, as far as we could tell, but it managed to wander itself right into the bathroom complex. And it was ferocious. Though not even close to its full adult size, its feet and beak, overlarge for its stature, may have been their size. And even if not, they were imposing. It made a racket when someone approached, both by calling and by clicking its beak. Chris did manage to rescue it and return it to the grove of pines where the nests are, and when we went to check on it, it was gone. I hope that it survived...

In addition to herons, we saw these Sandhills several times. They seemed to inhabit a farm field near the park, and enjoy wading in this pond which was across the road. At one point, we actually ran across -- though happily not over -- the pair in the road. Here, we saw them dancing in the water right close to us... but by the time I was picture-ready, they had moved across the pond.
Fox snake getting ready to strike (right in the middle).
This turtle is burying eggs (or,digging in preparation to lay them). We saw another crossing the road, probably to find a nest site, and we saw a HUGE snapper moving away from the water, presumably for the same reason.
Little red squirrel. They are so much cuter and feistier and chirpier than the grey ones we see here. I just love them.

Are You There, God? It's Me, Naomi...

(Any of you people remember that book? I must've read it 10 times. Loved it. Not relevant.)

This is my plea to whatever higher powers are governing my universe: Can we please please have some sunny-and-60 spring days soon? I believe it would be good for humanity in general. I mean, if you're testing our patience, we lose. I think it's pretty clear looking at our instant gratification culture of fast food and fast internet and fast everything that we're not patient. If you're testing our endurance, I'll concede there, too. Heated houses, cars, trains, and buses to carry us around... we're wimpy. I admit it. Now, can we get on with the nice part of spring already? Before people start getting hurt? (I mean, more than they already have in the floods and tornadoes that, thankfully, have not affected this area too terribly.) All this chilly rain, they say it's the result of...

La Nina. The little girl. It sounds so benign, friendly, even. But let me tell you, I am really getting tired of the pesky little brat. La Nina occurs when Pacific Ocean water temperatures are lower than normal in the region surrounding the equator. Though thousands of miles from here, the water temperature there affects the jet stream, which carries our weather, and, in the end... though not as severely as if we lived further west, La Nina is making our spring cooler than average. Also rainier. And honestly? I'm ready for some warm dry days!

On to the less complainy portion of the post. This morning I had the pleasure of watching a coyote trot along the trail next to me for a while, seemingly oblivious to human presence. And I sighted another low flying, single sandhill crane. They must be nesting somewhere nearby. All over I see that faint green haze that appears to hover around newly leafed-out trees in the distance. I haven't really been reporting on leaf0outs this spring, but they are happening... tiny, translucent leaves are emerging on several types of tree and shrub... lilacs and crabapples, birches and willows and aspens. Buckthorns and box elders and honeysuckles. It's slow and it's late, but spring marches on.

Call of the Wild

I'm standing in the prairie, rushing to collect flags, when the primordial trumpet of sandhill cranes causes me to stop all motion. I look around, get sun-blinded, regain my bearings, look again, see nothing. How can a noise that is so loud, and that sounds like it's surrounding me, be coming from things that I can't even find? Finally, with the help of a few 7th graders, I see them. Six "vee" formations, or seven maybe, each with a hundred or more birds in it. They are so high up that they look like dust almost, or ashes floating in the wind. But once I see them, I can't stop seeing them... a thousand birds, each as tall as me but so high up I can hardly see them, so numerous I can hear them distinctly, all journeying together, most likely to Florida... it's an amazing sight, one that brings you close to the ancients. I can imagine, a thousand years ago or more, people walking through the prairie, and stopping at the arresting call of the cranes. Taking a minute to ponder, to celebrate, before resuming life's daily tasks. In this season of thankfulness, I am grateful for cranes.

Notes to Self.

As of this week, I am still seeing:

• frogs
• monarchs (though not in the great numbers I was a few weeks ago)
• grasshoppers
• milkweed bugs
• garter snakes

Also, notes from the bird world...

• goldfinches are brown (have been...)
• yellow rumped warblers are coming through.
• juncos are here.
• so are sandhill cranes, though I haven't seen or heard them, other people have been reporting it for a few weeks.
• Geese are going crazy. I know that a lot of them stay around all winter, and a lot of the big flocks I've seen have been going north... but the amount of goose activity... the number of times I've had to stop class and just wait because 50-100 noisy geese were flying over in the past week has been quite high. Say what you will, something is going on with the geese right now.

Sometimes, we just need some boring record-keeping notes.

The Thoughtful, the Interesting, the Mundane and the Mysterious

This little fellow, a juvenile woodcock... OK, laugh, get it out of the way, and get serious, people, because this is the thoughtful portion of the entry... so anyhow, this little fellow had quite a day today, as his nest and life were disturbed by a great number of students. It made me ponder one of the hardest questions in my field. You see, I am where I am because of nature. I work in a school, but I am an EE person first, last and foremost. I care deeply about the preservation of the natural world and I do what I do because I think it is important for tomorrow's citizens to understand and care about nature. To want to preserve it themselves.

Unfortunately, there are times when teaching kids to love nature actually harms nature. And then you have to weigh the costs and benefits. On the one hand, some wildlife -- plants, insects, birds, whatever it is on a given day -- is harmed. Maybe even killed. Maybe it's even something really rare and special. Obviously, this is, to use a terribly non-descriptive word, bad. But if you don't let the kids into the nature, the result might be even worse. A generation -- which will eventually come into power -- that has never been in nature. Doesn't respect it, doesn't love it, doesn't feel connected to it, isn't willing to pay more taxes to preserve it or do any of the other numerous things that people can do to help it.

Now, I am not a person who believes nature is for people. I believe in the intrinsic value of nature, that it has its own worth apart from how people enjoy it or even depend on it. I understand the importance of biodiversity to the ecosystem. But I want other people to think these things, too, and it's hard to learn about something without experiencing it. And it's impossible to learn to love something without experiencing it.

It reminds me of the memorable passage in Richard Louv's book Last Child in the Woods, where he interviews conservation professionals. He asks them, what got you to where you are today -- in other words, why did you become a conservation professional. They all told some version of a story in which, as youth, they explored wild spaces and built forts, played hide-and-seek, or did whatever kids do. They he asked them if they would allow kids to do those things in the wilderness areas they worked at... and the answer was a resounding NO. Ironic...

Our wilderness and our world has changed. When those professionals were running through the woods, a lot of them probably weren't running through forest preserves, but rather more like undeveloped areas that nobody managed. There aren't a lot of those left in this area. The open spaces are managed, and someone takes them personally. They don't want people to go off the trail. This might be OK if the trails I was talking about were paths... small, for foot traffic... paths where you can feel close to nature. Around here, they make an entirely different brand of multi-use trail. They're about 8-10 feet of gravel, with 3-4 feet of mower turf grass on either side. We're talking a highway 14-18 feet in width. You could drive a car on these trails. In fact, I've seen that happen many a time. These trails make you feel removed, as separate from nature as if you were on a road. They're fitness trails, not commune with nature trails. Kids (and adults) need to commune with nature.

It's all a matter of numbers, really. If one kid explores in the woods, it's not a big deal. Something might get stepped on but most things come back from that. If a hundred kids do the same thing, it causes a lot more damage. It's more of a trampling by a herd than a little step. So yeah, as population, and population density, increase around here, there's more stresses on the wildlife. But the real problem is that in today's world, at least around here, one kid doesn't go into the wilderness anyway. For one thing, a lot of kids don't have access anyhow. But for another, we're constantly worried about their safety. Kidnappers and ... I actually heard a group of moms worrying about coyotes the other day. Really. At any rate... Kids don't roam free as they used to. And so, we (well, there's a small movement at least) are trying to do it in school, safely and with supervision. But this means volume. One class of kids makes a big impact. A whole school makes an even bigger impact. So you see...

It's a conundrum. But I'm tired, it's been a long day. I'm finished with thoughtful.

So... on to the interesting.

This Cooper's was in my yard when I got home. I didn't want to disturb it so I took the photo on the left through the window. Later, when it flew off, I went outside. On the right is what was left of the robin that has lived its last moments in my yard.

And finally, the typical mundane phenology updates of the day.

Wild strawberries got their first flowers.

As did foamflower.

We saw 3-6 (depending on they were repeats) sandhill cranes today, and coots and maybe some other non-mallard ducks but I had neither binoculars or a bird book, so we'll never know if we saw the shovelers that had reportedly been in the area.

Finally...Mystery of the day:

Can anyone ID this plant (shown from above and a closer view of the stalk). The whole thing was maybe 6 inches (tall and across).

Rollins Savannah

A pair of sandhill cranes in a prairie pothole. We didn't see a colt.
Milkweeds are making their seedpods, but they're tiny (1-2 inches long) at this point. Cute, like miniature milkweed seedpods.

Compass plant blooming. Mine seem to be doing extremely well, full, several stems... but they're slow. No flowers yet, when all the others have several. It's a mystery.

Waiting.

Long time, no blog.  Well, three days isn't that long, but I had been going crazy for a while there.

The weekend was warm and sunny enough for some major gardening initiatives to begin.  We're adding 2 new raised beds this year, and are eager to get them constructed.  It turns out, the ground is still completely frozen.  The new garden areas are in a bit of shade, which worries me for their planties.  But nothing we can do about that but try.  Even in sunny areas, the ground is still frozen after the first inch or so... although it's supposed to be in the 60s for several more days, so maybe soon...

Anyhow, I concentrated my weekend energies on cleaning up and trimming things back.  This gave me a chance to sit in the sun and clip clip clip for a long time, getting to see the plants and observe other things happening around me.  

Several single sandhill cranes flew over as I worked, their distinctive call giving away their presence long before they could be spotted (and sometimes in place of being spotted!)  A red-tail was also circling above me.  

Irises are sending forth their green shoots, as well as columbines.  Prairie smoke rosettes are looking vibrant, although I'm not really sure they've changed much.  And guess what else?  WEEDS.  Yes, while the prairie still sleeps, the weeds are getting their foothold in.  Sure makes me want to take a match to it!  

Dry kindling and strong winds have meant that prairies have burned naturally (or with the help of humans) since long before people began breaking it up and turning it into farmland.  Prairie plants are specially adapted to periodic burning.  Their biomass, at the burning time of the year, is underground, protected.  (A blaze that flashes by at 450 degrees F above the ground can leave temperatures completely unaffected just an inch beneath the soil!)  Some prairie plants have seeds that will lay in wait and not germinate until burned.  Any trees that grow in the prairie have thick bark that cannot be penetrated by the fire rushing by.  Weeds have no such adaptations.  Of course, if I killed their tiny tops now, the roots would stay alive and they'd re-shoot in a matter of days, but it would feel good.  And make the garden clean-up process ever so much easier. 

I also went to look at the silver maple buds again.  From even a few yards away, the look like huge red blobs -- how can those flowers not have started opening?  But up close, they look just like they did last week (see photograph below).   Spring is about waiting.  

Countdown to actual spring (as determined by equinox): 5 days!!!!!