Eclectic travelers

WINGIN’ IT By Kate Crowley photos Mike Link Typically the earliest arrivals in spring migration are waterfowl; Canada geese, followed by the myriad duck species.  We recently drove over the Moosehorn River north of Willow River and saw both geese and mallard ducks swimming about.  The rivers are opening up earlier this year which allows waterfowl to position themselves for prime territory before the lakes are ice free.  In recent years more and more people are seeing Trumpeter swans arriving with the other waterfowl. A couple weeks ago I heard one woman tell another about the swans that were out on the ice on Sturgeon Lake.  Her husband was concerned about their condition and was about to go out and check on them when they took off.  On the same day that we saw the geese and ducks on the river we spotted six Trumpeters in a stubble corn field.  It was an odd sight - not where we expect to see these large birds, but they were probably scavenging ...

WINGIN’ IT By Kate Crowley Let me tell you a little bit about how my brain works and the challenge I face every two weeks when a column is due.  The week before I start thinking of possibilities.  The closer it gets, the more my brain and eyes search for possibilities. Sometimes it’s really simple because a unique bird or behavior appears; more often it’s like this; ME: The article is coming out right before St. Patrick’s Day – a most important holiday because of my ancestry – what could I write about that relates to that and birds?  St. Patrick is famous for driving the snakes (paganism) out of Ireland, not the birds; so that’s out.  What about green?  Hmmm --- the only green birds that I know of are parrots or parakeets – I have seen them in various places, not here of course, I wonder why there are so few green plumed birds in the world;   Lots of people keep these types of birds as pets……. (then wandering past the windows as I’m thinkin...

GOING NATURE’S WAY By Kate Crowley I am intrigued by the idea of Sense of Place; to feel completely ‘at home’ in one particular place.  I have read that people who grow up on the Great Plains feel claustrophobic when they are in forested environments and in reverse,  people who have grown up surrounded by forest find the openness of the plains unnerving, with nothing to break the view to the horizon. I grew up in the city, but the Minnehaha Creek and Parkway were just two blocks away and I spent countless hours playing and exploring there.  The city lakes were within biking distance. The Mississippi River was just blocks away from the apartment where I lived the first four years of my life.  When I was 36 I married Mike and moved to our current home and it was perfect.  When my dad first visited us in our new home, he said, “Kate must think she’s died and gone to heaven”.  This is where I am supposed to be.  Scientists who have studied the e...

WINGIN’ IT By Kate Crowley In a recent column I talked about the unexpected encounters with birds that add to our daily enjoyment of nature.  A week ago Mike and I were out cross-country skiing near our house when we heard a flock of birds making an unfamiliar sound.  We stopped and looked up into the top of a Jack Pine and saw them moving from branch to branch. Because it was a sunny day, it was hard to see their colors clearly because they were so strongly backlit, but we both came to the conclusion that they were Waxwings.  The question was; Cedar or Bohemian?  Neither one of us had binoculars, but Mike has better long distance vision than me and he was able to see their features better.  In order to bring them closer I started ‘pishing’.  I have talked about this technique before.  It is just as it sounds.  You purse your lips and make a ‘pishing’ sound –sort of like ‘shushing’ someone in the library, but using a ‘p’ at the front....

` `WINGIN’ IT By Kate Crowley By mid-January we are beginning to feel the oppression of too little color in our lives. The scene outside the windows is white/brown/gray, with some green thrown in if you are lucky enough to have conifers on your property. One of the ways we deal with this monotone world is by encouraging the blooms of Hyacinths – those ubiquitous boxed bulbs found in stores before the Christmas holidays. I have two from previous years that have refused to regenerate new flowers, though they are supposed to. Mike on the other hand has one plant in his office that he started from a seed given to him by a cousin and said to be from his Great Grandmother. For two years in a row now, it has produced the most beautiful coral/orange blossoms – 7 this year! I have a new Hyacinth my mom gave me this November which has just opened its first flower – in a gorgeous red and white stripe pattern. Since Mike’s office has east facing windows and apparently the right touch with...

WINGIN’ IT By Kate Crowley Photos by Mike Link I decided that the first bird I saw this morning (January 1) would be my bird for the year – as in the Chinese New Year custom, i.e., Year of the Rooster, Year of the Ox, etc.  I was in my usual morning location – reading in bed when I saw a flash of black pass over the skylight.  It could have been a crow, but I didn’t see it well enough to ID with certainty, so I thought I’d wait for a definite sighting.  A moment or two later there was a loud pounding on the front of the house.  Mike yelled upstairs, “Is that you?”  I let him know it wasn’t as I went into my office to open a window and shoo away what by now I knew to be a Pileated Woodpecker.  As I reached the window the large black and white bird flew off to a nearby dead aspen where it gripped the trunk and looked around.  So – this is the Year of the Pileated, which I will consider auspicious since these largest of the woodpecker family are str...

GOING NATURE’S WAY By Kate Crowley As one calendar year ends and another begins many of us take stock of where we’ve been and where we hope to be (literally as well as philosophically) in the coming year.  I would hope that everyone would also stop and think about all that our earth and our fiery star gives us.  Every day we get up and take a deep breath of oxygen without a second thought. In one day, the average adult takes 17,000-30,000 breaths per day.   Clean, breathable air; how much does that mean to you?  Then you head into the bathroom where you brush your teeth using this incredible life sustaining resource called water. Depending on what report you read, we are told that the average American drinks anywhere from 2.5 cups to 4 cups of water per day.  And we never question the safety of our water, although there may be more anxiety about this since the people of Flint, Michigan found theirs was severely polluted with lead. And then there ...

WINGIN’ IT   By Kate Crowley I know that the birds are supposed to be protected by their layers of feathers from our winter weather, but when the temps drop into the minus 20’s overnight, I really wonder how any of them survive. They must deal with more than 12 hours of darkness without benefit of external sources of heat, like the wood stove that glows with its warmth in our living room.  But every morning, we are blessed with the movement and antics of our resident birds (all 17 wild turkeys included).  Mike gladly goes out each morning to refill the sunflower feeders and the suet feeders if they need it.  He also spreads a wild bird seed mix on the ground.  The turkeys are watching unseen for this earliest feeding and immediately swoop down from the pine trees or race up the front field in single file to forage as fast as possible on the seeds and grain he has spread for them.  Then they retire to the top railing of our fence where they...

GOING NATURE’S WAY By Kate Crowley It is the first week of November, the leaves are off the trees, but the ground below is as green and lush looking as it was in August. And I still have flowers blooming next to the deck; a weird feeling for lifelong Minnesotans.  I will not complain about the mild temperatures because I know that eventually cold and wintery weather will arrive, but that doesn’t change the feeling of abnormality that this autumn weather creates, especially for those of us who study nature and the complex dance of the seasons.  Besides the green grass, which will eventually fade to brown under a layer of leaves and snow, there is green on the forest floor which will remain throughout the winter months, even as a blanket of white covers it.  I walked through our woods the other day with my friend Cindy and she pointed to some of the plants in this group.  She asked, “What are these? They’re so pretty”.  She was referring to a cluster of P...

WINGIN’ IT By Kate Crowley November arrives and with it comes the doldrums of birdwatching.  Yes, there will be birds throughout the winter at our feeders and in the trees, but the excitement of spring and summer is a fading memory.  So, I look inspiration wherever I can find it and today it was while driving to the Twin Cities and counting the red-tail hawks perched on the arched road lights on the sides of I35.  They are big birds and if they are facing towards the car you will see a white breast with a dark band below it.  If they are turned with their backs to you, they appear to be mostly brown.  There must be a lot of rodents in the grassy borders in certain stretches because there can be three or four hawks perched in a half mile. Earlier in the week my daughter and I saw two sitting right beside one another on a light pole; not typical for these solitary hunters.  We assumed they were a pair of siblings or possibly a parent and an offsprin...

WINGIN’ IT By Kate Crowley Stereotypes.  It happens all the time in our society.  It even happens with birds.  How else can you explain the association of crows and ravens with the evil spirits of Halloween?  Both of these birds belong to the Family Corvidae – my favorite, because of their innate intelligence and social interactions.  Like the fairy tales of the Big Bad Wolf, these glossy black birds have come down through the centuries with stories and beliefs that emphasize one behavior that we humans find revolting and ignores all others. During the Middle Ages and the scourge of the Black Plague, these predators and scavengers found easy pickings among the countless dead who lay exposed in streets or fields.  The same was true for the warriors and soldiers killed in endless wars;  people saw the wolves, crows and ravens feeding on the dead and were (not surprisingly) horrified.  It is not a coincidence that wolves and corvids would be...

WINGIN’ IT By Kate Crowley Here it is the first week of October and all our flowers continue to bloom and not a hint of frost in the forecast!  We all enjoy these beautiful autumn days, maybe even more than any others because we know they are numbered.  I’ve noticed in recent days that it’s not only us humans who are basking in this warmth and unusual climatic conditions; but so are the bees. Last week when it was cloudy and moist I was surveying the flower beds and stopped by the maroon colored chrysanthemums.  All over the golden disks in the center of the flower were bumblebees.  They were very lethargic and really didn’t seem able to fly.  I tested one with a stick and it could move its wings, but did not get airborne. These bees very slowly moved from flower to flower probing the nectar tubes.  There was no pollen collecting on their bodies, which is an unintended side effect from their search for nourishment.  They only make small amount...

GOING NATURE’S WAY By Kate Crowley If there is a silver lining to be found in this very wet autumn, it is found in the forests.  I’m not talking about the leaves, which are very slowly turning color; I’m referring to the vast assortment of mushrooms on the forest floor and on the sides of some trees.  We just returned from a week’s hiking in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and I have to say, we have never seen such abundance and variety in the Fungi Kingdom.  The people we were with, I’m happy to report, were just as excited as Mike and I and demonstrated a sense of wonder that adults normally lose.  Overall, I prefer to just observe the variations in shape, size, texture and color of mushrooms.  I do like to eat the types sold in grocery stores and Morels are a favorite in the spring, but I have only eaten a few ‘wild’ mushrooms and that only happened when I absolutely trusted the knowledge of the person I was with.  In Europe people have been...