Natural Connections

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!  Bitter...

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.  Maneuv...

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 reso...

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 fore...

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...

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 brac...

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...

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. I...

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 logica...

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,...

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 d...

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, bu...

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...

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 mo...

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...

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 whe...

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...

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 t...

"'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 bi...