Twin Cities Naturalist

We've known there are coyotes on site at work for years now. We find their tracks in the snow, we hear them at night and we find their scat on the trails year-round. I've never been successful in catching any on camera though. That all changed in the past week. My co-worker Paul took a game trail camera down to the lake to see what might show up. We got a blurry cottontail rabbit, a deer and ... our first coyote captured in a photo.

This was at 10:30 at night on November 20th. With this success under our belt we tried other cameras in new locations. We have a dead deer in our prairie. We put one out there every year for the animals to eat. When schools come they can see all the tracks of the animals that eat the deer. There are an impressive number of visitors. We see tracks from raccoons, opossum, mice, crows and coyotes. I've even personally seen a bald eagle eating the carcass. We've never actually seen a coyote at the deer. We put fresh batteries into the camera and set it up near the deer. Here's what we captured.

On the 24th, the first coyote showed up at 11:33 pm. The next night, a little earlier in the evening, a coyote cautiously approached the deer. The camera is set to wait five minutes between taking photos and we didn't get multiple photos of the same coyote in one evening so that tells me they don't stay long. The way this coyote is cautiously approaching the carcass (photo below) tells me this might not be the same animal as seen the night before. I would think an animal that had already been feeding here would be less wary.

The next morning, a coyote came to the deer in broad daylight. At 9:30 am, this coyote was caught by the camera. It looks more interested in the trail than the carcass. I'm thinking it might smell the other coyotes.

The batteries died at this point. The cold Minnesota winter is brutal on the batteries. The camera's take 6 D-cells but it still burns through them fast in the cold. When we get some fresh batteries we'll put the camera back out. I'm thinking it might be interesting to set it to a shorter lag time between photos. Also, we can set the camera to Video mode which could be really cool. I don't think it will work at night though as clearly the flash helped us get three of the four photos above. The deer has fresh eagle tracks around it so I'm hoping we can catch an eagle on "film" as well.

~Kirk

On November 21st, this interesting looking cardinal showed up at a backyard birdfeeder in Eden Prairie, MN. Thanks to Nancy for letting me re-produce the photos. She wasn't sure what was up with this strange looking female Northern Cardinal chowing down at her Yankee Whipper. The head is white but it still has a red crest. This is a pretty classic example of partial leucism. I've posted a number of images of leucistic birds from around the metro before. There was the Leucistic American Goldfinch (also with white on the head though not as much as this cardinal. I really liked this leucistic American Robin as well. One of my favorites though was this odd leucistic purple finch that looked like some sort of odd ring-necked finch.


Leucism results from defects in pigment cells in an animal's body. It can affect just one cell or all of the cells on an animal. This means we can get a bird with just one odd white feather or, as in this case, white feathers in just one part of the body. We can even get a leucistic bird with all white feathers but normal colored eyes, beak and legs. These are the individuals that are most often mistaken for albinos. A leucistic animal is sometimes called a partial albino but technically this is incorrect as albinism has a completely different cause and is systemic, never partial. True albinos lack melanin in all of the cells in their body thus the oddly colored eyes, beak and legs.

~Kirk

Looking for a way to celebrate the Winter Solstice?

Saturday Dec. 18, 2010, from 3:00 to 5:30 p.m. at Lowry Nature Center, in Victoria, MN you can celebrate the longest night of the year.

From Lowry:

Reflect on the winters in your life, compose a poem, and create a “winter count buffalo hide” in the Native American tradition. Find your way along the blindfold blizzard walk, and make a snowflake catcher. Step into the spiral dance to live fiddle music, and sing ancient winter carols. Follow Old Man Winter to "tie down the sun" at the bonfire, ensuring the return of longer days. Enjoy cookies and wassail (cider), symbolizing the hope that summer will return. Winter Solstice is the day the sun seems to stand still; after this, the days begin to lengthen. Mark the turning of the year through ceremony and songs celebrating the darkness and return of light. This celebration in community can bring you new insights, a connection to ancient ritual and peace at the turning of the year.

Reservations required; call 763-559-6700 or register online at www.threeriversparks.org. $5/person, children under 2 free. Program #11130710

I just found out that the link at the top of the page where you can subscribe via email was broken. I suspect it has been broken for quite some time. I never have reason to use it myself. However, it is now fixed. If you would like to get the latest posts from Twin Cities Naturalist delivered directly to your email inbox, simply enter your email address in the box at the top of the page, click "Submit" and follow the directions. You can also click the link below.

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Thanks for reading!

~Kirk

This is part two of my posts about audio captured during the 2010 Leonid Meteor Shower. If you have not read part one, I recommend reading that first as it gives insight into what on earth these noises are. Wednesday afternoon, I listened to Space Weather Radio again while cleaning the house. I had my ears open and I captured a few more meteors. I only listened and recorded for about 30 minutes. There were three clustered up a bit at 1:28, 1:33 and 1:36 CST and then nothing for quite a while. Here are four interesting sounds I captured.

Date: November 17
Time: 1:28 pm CST
Description:This was the first meteor and it showed up just a few minutes into recording. In my notes I described it as a cute little ping. Certainly nothing big.


Date: November 17
Time: 1:33 pm CST
Description: This one is pretty interesting. There is a small ping followed by an increase in reflection of the ringing tone. This is likely the signal bouncing off the trail the meteor made. At the end there is a second ping which makes me wonder if the meteor flashed/exploded at the end.


Date: November 17
Time: 1:36 pm CST
Description: This was just one minute after the previous one. It is a nice ping. This was the largest meteor I heard in that 30 minute block.


Date: November 17
Time: 2:05 pm CST
Description: This isn't a meteor. I'm hoping someone with more knowledge than me can clue me in to what is going on here. What you hear is the drone of the 216.98 Mhz signal broadcast by the Air Force as part of the Space Fence. A short time in, the signal starts to modulate and develops a choppy rhythm that increases in frequency and then decreases. It actually reminds me of the interference my cheap phone charger used to cause on my AM radio in my car. It was weirdly related to the rpm of the engine. Is this interference from a plane? I can't find any examples online that explain all the different sounds you hear on Space Weather Radio. A guide to what is a plane, what do different satellites sound like, what do different meteors sound like, etc. would be very helpful.

Hope you enjoy these clips.

~Kirk

Last night I tried my hand at capturing audio from the 2010 Leonid Metoer shower.


I was listening in and recording the stream from Space Weather Radio. This is possible because of the US Air Force Space Surveillance Radar (pictured left). There's a lot of junk in space and when the government is flying multimillion dollar craft up there they want to keep them safe. The space radar's primary antenna is located in Kickapoo Texas. Twenty-four hours a day it puts out 800 kilowatts of continuous wave power at 216.98 Mhz. It sounds like a steady tone. The primary mission is to monitor everything in orbit. It can detect objects as small as 10 centimeters orbiting at up to 30,000 km above earth. The radar works by having the signal bounce off objects and reflect the signal back to a number of listening stations.

During a meteor shower, meteors streak through the atmosphere and create a trail of ionized dust. The radio signal reflects off this trail and we can hear the signal change. Space Weather Radio has a listening station set up by Stan Nelson on the roof of his house a couple hundred miles away in Roswell, NM. Space Weather Radio streams the signal over the web and you can listen in. During a meteor shower, you can recognize meteors by the sound. Depending on a number of factors you can hear different things. I listened last night for about an hour while I read a book and recorded as I went. I captured about 20 "event" sounds and heard probably 10 more that were too faint to bother capturing. Only a few of them were meteors.

Here's some of the more interesting audio I captured last night. A lot of what I heard last night was little chirps and slow whistles. From what I understand, these are not meteors but rather the signal bouncing off satellites. Most meteors do not exhibit a doppler effect, they simply start with a kind of ping and then fade out. However, I understand that they can have doppler shift if they are traveling perpendicular to the broadcasting signal. Perhaps someone reading can give me feedback on this.

Here are some of the more interesting sounds I recorded last night. Everything is open to interpretation. Feel free to correct me in the comments.

Date: November 16
Time: 10:34 pm CST
Description: This clip starts with the 216.98 Mhz background signal barely audible. Three seconds in, there is an initial quiet descending whistle followed by a second whistle at 7 seconds in. The second whistle is at a higher frequency. I'm pretty sure these are not meteors. They have a clear descending tone caused by doppler shift. I believe they are a pair of satellites and not meteors.



Date: November 16
Time: 10:48 pm CST
Description: This one starts with the background signal much louder. There is then a very quick descending tone. It is almost more of a strong chirp than a whistle. I'm guessing this is a satellite as well but this one moving a lot faster.



Date: November 16
Time: 10:45 pm CST
Description: This was the strongest meteor I picked up during the session. You can hear it sounds different than the previous two. It is a strong Ping that slowly fades.



Date: November 16
Time: 10:56 pm CST
Description: I'm guessing this too is a satellite reflection and not a meteor.



Date: November 16
Time: 11:20 pm CST
Description: Last one of the evening. This is just a classic small meteor.


All in all it was pretty interesting to listen in. I heard more "other" sounds than meteors but then again I wasn't listening during either of the "peaks" of the shower. Please leave comments and let me know what you think.

~Kirk

UPDATE: Hear more sounds in PART TWO of this post.

The Leonid Meteor Shower will be visible this month in the Twin Cities (the rest of the world as well.)

Science has come a long way on these showers to the point that astronomers are getting better at predicting which years will be good and at what exact times the earth will encounter the most dense clouds of debris. The debris that burns up in a meteor shower is from dust trails left by passing comets.

There are again two predicted peaks to the Leonids this year. The predicted peak is 20 meteors per hour. Keep in mind though that these predictions assume you are in a really dark site. Probably not a storm like they have been in the past. There are records of over 3000 per hour in the past! The next predicted huge year for the leonids is in the year 2034. A bit of a wait on that one. Many of the meteors will be faint. The two predicted peaks are for 15:00 UT and 21:00 UT. That translates to 9:00 am CST on the 17th of November and at 3:00 am CST. North America isn't really positioned best to view them again this year but it will still be possible to see some. Best time will probably be to get up early in the morning Wednesday when it is still dark out. The moon will interfere with seeing meteors too.

The meteors in this shower are from the comet Tempel-Tuttle. There are two different peaks predicted because the comet has visited many times and the peaks correspond to slightly different dust trails left in different years.

People have asked me where the best place is to view meteor showers in the twin cities metro area. That's a tough question. It all depends on how many you want to see. I've seen plenty of meteors from my light polluted St. Paul back yard. Shield your eyes from any stray light such as street lamps and turn the lights off in your house. Most of all, let your eyes adjust to the dark. Fifteen to thirty minutes of letting your eyes adjust to the dark will let you see many many more meteors.

Suppose you want to drive a little though to get a good view? Check out the Minnesota Astronomical Society website. They have a really cool light pollution map created by Craig Cotner. If you look at the map, you can see light pollution is pretty bad anywhere near the metro. What direction to travel depends a little on where in the metro you live. Heading out to an area in the yellow zone on the map will at least give you somewhat darker skies. You need a minimum of a two hour drive to get to a truly dark site and likely it will take even longer. Think boundary waters for true darkness! At any rate, you can most likely easily see a few good "shooting stars." from your own back yard.

~Kirk

Probably the most exciting bird caught in the nets during this fall's banding season was this beautiful Northern Shrike. The banding process begins by stringing up special nets around the nature center and then waiting for birds to fly into them. Net runners monitor the nets and run any birds they catch back to the bird banders. Paul was the lead bander this particular day. No one is really excited about sticking their hand into a bag with an agitated shrike though everyone was happy to watch someone else do it. You can see why by looking at the beak.

There isn't really all that much difference between a shrike beak and a raptor beak. Shrikes are efficient predators and have an incredibly shark beak. Banding one is fairly intimidating. We've been banding birds at the nature center for over 40 years now and this is only the second shrike ever caught in the nets. It apparently was attacking another bird caught in the net. Shrike's feet are not strong like a raptor's feet so they kill food by impaling it on thorns. They come back and eat it later after it has died. In the following two photos, Paul is looking at the wings to learn more about the bird before banding it.


The band itself is a simple aluminum ring that is formed into a loose circle around the bird's foot with a special pliers.

Here the bird is just before releasing. There are a number of ways for a bander to hold birds. They do so in ways that will keep the birds safe. The bird's safety is the number one priority.



Once the bird is banded and all information is recorded it is set free. Hopefully, someone will capture this bird again and send the data in to the federal bird banding office so we can learn more about the life of Northern Shrikes.

~Kirk

Photo credit: all photos by Kimberly Woodward

In honor of all those migrators heading south right now flying in chevrons. Flying V by They Might Be Giants.

I bought Freaks of Nature on a whim at the bookstore a few months back. The tagline on the book is "what anomalies tell us about development and evolution." The book essentially has two ideas to it. First off, it chronicles a bit of the history of the Evo-Devo debate. Before evolution came on the scene, it was thought that an animal develops based on environmental conditions present during development. Freaks or abnormalities were ascribed to events such as a mother being frightened during pregnancy. Once genetics and evolution came on the scene, the tendency became to ascribe everything a genetic cause. Mutations were (and still are) king. What Bloomberg lays out in his book is the concept that while genetics are an important piece of the puzzle they are not the whole story. Species still need to develop and while there are structural processes that help shape animals bodies. Genetics may set the scene but structural interactions also play a role in determining final form. The book touches on the topic of epigenetic inheritance as well. The idea that non-genetic traits can be passed on to offspring. This idea seems preposterous and naive, a kind of pre-genetic understanding of the world. Yet, we're seeing new studies that seem to show this very thing happening. One example is the Marshall University study showing that fat father rats have unhealthy daughters.

The basic concept of the books is that by studying how and why things go wrong, we can gain insight into how things go right. Bloomberg walks the line between differing worldviews and presents his case with interesting stories and case studies.

While I found the information interesting, I'll admit the book is more than a bit dry. At times, I found myself wondering if I was reading a doctoral thesis turned into a book. It was not as fascinating as one might think a book about freaks of nature would be. For those fascinated in developmental and evolutionary biology, the book will be interesting but not a page turner. For those looking simply for a book about what we can learn from freaks and why they occur, the history and debate between the two theories may be a bit tiresome. ~Kirk