Saturday, July 30, 2011

Surprise Sandhill Cranes

Posted by Kirk
On Friday I took my photography class down to the lake to take our final photos. We were getting nice shots of dragonflies, frogs, the usual suspects. I decided to take the group over to the next lake over and to my surprise we stumbled upon a family of Sandhill Cranes. There were to adults and two colts. They slowing walked away from us and I'm assuming they didn't fly because they had the young with them. These are incredible birds with wing spans of 6 feet or more. The photo above was taken by one of my students Dylan. We decided to take a ride on our solar powered pontoon boat and when the kids came back with their life jackets, this adult walked right past them on the trail. Pretty incredible.

Sandhill crane fossils (or those of very close relatives) have been found in Nebraska. These fossils are 10 million years old making cranes one of the oldest bird species in the world. The birds nesting at the nature center are part of the Great Lakes or Eastern population of Greater Sandhill cranes that overwinter in Georgia and Florida. We've been fairly certain that they are nesting on the property but it is always nice to have confirmation in the form of young wandering around with their parents.

~Kirk
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Monday, July 25, 2011

Monday Phenology: July 25, 2011

Posted by Kirk
Let's get to it. The sun rose at 5:50 AM, a time which is creeping ever closer to the time my alarm goes off. It will set tonight at  8:48 PM giving us 14 hours 57 minutes and 40 seconds of daylight. As of this past weekend we've slipped below 15 hours of daylight. We'll lose a hair over two minutes of daylight each day this week. Have I not been warning you to enjoy summer while you can? I spent yesterday at the beach soaking up the sun. All are advised to do the same while you can. 

Week in Review:


Monday with everyone focusing on the heat you would be forgiven for not noticing that we broke a record low temperature reading. The low temperature at the airport was 80° F. The previous high low temp was 79° back in 1986. The highest heat index I recorded was 112.3 which was a far cry from the 118 predicted. Then again, it is always cooler in the woods. Even just traveling to White Bear Lake after work I was stunned how much hotter it felt when I stepped out of the car. Here's to working in the woods.

Tuesday was another hot one. The highest heat index I recorded out in the woods was 107. This shows the cooling effect of the woods and the urban heat island effect of the urban areas of the twin cities. It got up to a record breaking 119° heat index at the MSP airport and there was a report of a state record 125° heat index in St. Peter, MN. I'm actually quite enjoying the heat and humidity. Toward the end of the work day, after the kids had gone home, Paul noted on our weather station that we briefly hit an 82° dew point which would be a new state record. It wasn't all about the heat though. Out in the prairie the yellow coneflower is nicely blooming the wild bergamot seems to be blooming as well.

Wednesday was the hottest day of the week technically with actual temperatures up to 100°. The humidity wasn't quite as high though so it didn't feel as hot. By "not as not" I mean the heat index only reached 103.3 out here in the woods. It was far worse in the cities.

Thursday there was an amazing cool down. Even with the heat index, I only saw a top temperature of 81.4°. It felt glorious. Dragonflies currently out and about include Calico and Halloween Pennants, Widow Skimmers, and Dot-tailed Whiteface. I'll try to post some photos this week.

Friday I was pleased to see a Scarlet Tanager hanging out just outside the window to my classroom. I was teaching a photography camp and all my kids grabbed for their cameras. I had mine in hand but the bird was gone by the time I got to the window. This bird seems to come to the water feature out the window almost daily. If only I could catch it in the act.

Saturday was an extremely lazy day thanks to rain. I had plans to mow in the morning but I could hear thunder in the early hours so I slept in. Later in the day the yard was still wet so I took a nap. It was a glorious lazy day much deserved after all the teaching I did in the heat this week. No phenology to report other than a lazy napping naturalist.

Sunday I put my son to bed at 8:30 and then headed out to mow the lawn as the sun sank down in the sky. I finished by 9:30 and I was more mowing by memory and light from the windows more than by any remaining daylight. As I put the mower away I could see only a faint glow on the horizon. Summer is slowly slipping away.

What to watch for this week:
Keep your eyes open for more dragonflies this week. There are some species that should be out and about now like the meadowhawks that are quite pretty.
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Friday, July 22, 2011

The bloom of a carnivorus plant

Posted by Kirk 2 Comments
This week I took my photography camp kids down to the bog and was delighted to see the sundew flowers were blooming. They are so small you'd be forgiven if you missed them.



Sundew is a fascinating plant. It is often called a carnivorous plant though insectivorous may be more appropriate. The dazzling drops at the tips of the leaves draw in insects who discover too late that the drops are extremely sticky. The drops are a mucilage that serves two functions. It both traps and digests the insects. Enzymes in the mucilage digest the insect and the nutrients are absorbed into the leaves. The leaves are only about one centimeter across and easy to miss. Look for this amazing plant next time you are in a bog.


A question comes to mind though looking at the flower. While it isn't terribly showy I'm guessing the plant is insect pollinated. Is there a danger of trapping pollinators on the leaves and having them not pollinate the flower? A little research online shows that sundew are pollinated by species other than their target prey species and there is little overlap so the leaves and flowers are not working at cross purposes. Fascinating.

~Kirk
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Monday, July 18, 2011

Too Darn Hot

Posted by Kirk
I think this says it all.

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Monday Phenology: July 18, 2011

Posted by Kirk
The sun rose at 5:43 AM this morning and started getting to work heating things up. It won't set until fifteen hours, eleven minutes and 26 seconds later at 8:54 PM which will provide plenty of heating hours to melt our brains.

Keep cool by thinking about last week:

Monday the mosquitoes and biting flies were increasing in numbers and it was what I thought would be the hottest day of the week. The week had other plans.

Tuesday I noticed the garlic mustard seed pods are opening out in the woods. I had hoped to get out and pull a lot of this invasive species out before it bloomed but didn't get around to it. It bloomed, formed pods and now those pods are just about to burst open. It seems like every seed germinates. If you have any garlic mustard you were hoping to remove this year it is probably too late.

Wednesday the corn seemed to shoot up about a foot over night. I'm sure it wasn't that much but this morning it was noticably taller than the beginning of the week. I'm looking forward to some Minnesota sweet corn. It was a cooler night, Tuesday night it got down to 37° F up in Hibbing, MN.

Thursday I am sure something interesting happened but I'll be damned if I can remember.

Friday was a rainy day and persistent lightening was successful at keeping me inside with my summer campers. I was finally able to make it out to the prairie at the end of the day and it was beautiful. The black-eyed susans are in full bloom. They seem to be doing especially well in the area of the prairie we burned. 

Saturday started off loudly. I was awoken by some of the loudest thunder I have heard in my life. It shook the house violently. There was a thermal inversion overnight which trapped the sound waves close to the ground which seemed to intensify the thunder. Heavy rains caused flash flooding on two local highways and the little park down the street from me was still under a foot of water at lunch time. We were planning on having an outdoor movie on Saturday night but it was so hot come evening we stayed indoors. I did hear cicadas for the second time this year during the day.

Sunday I was busy with my wife's birthday but my uncle pointed out some bees on the plants near where I had parked. I took a look and was astonished to see more bumblebees than I could count feeding on some sort of flowering ornamental plant. The leaves looked like some sort of monarda but I didn't recognize the flowers. The humidity was oppressive. I'm writing this at 1:30 at night and the heat index is still 100°. We tied a record for our 81° dew point today.

What to expect this next week:

There should be a lovely 118° heat index today and it should be a hot week. That's all. Just hot and humid. It will trump everything else. Phenologically, Saturday is an important day. It will be the first day we lose two full minutes of daylight. We won't lose three minutes per day until August 31st.
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Monday, July 11, 2011

Monday Phenology: July 11. 2011

Posted by Kirk
This is summer. I'm delighted. I love the weather from cool beautiful days to sweltering heat and all the thunderstorms in between. The elementary school down the street has a message spelled out on their large notice board out front. It reads, "Does this make up for winter?"

Yes, yes it does.

The sun rose this morning at 5:37 am and set as I was putting the finishing touches on this at 8:59 pm. Not to be a downer but here's your friendly reminder that today was 1 minute and 21 seconds shorter than yesterday. This is it people, this is what we wait for. Get out there and soak up the sun. We've lost a little over 7 minutes of sun since the solstice. Daylight's burning.

Here's what I noticed this week:

Monday I enjoyed July 4th by starting the day off with a family hike around Lake Como in St. Paul. The milkweed was in full bloom around the lake and a solo double crested cormorant was busy fishing. The baby mallard ducklings are coming along nicely and there were many of them out on the lake in family groups.

Tuesday I returned to work and noticed that the Eastern Phoebes we monitor via CCTV cameras have hatched out their second brood of eggs. There were five eggs on Friday and the assumption based on when they were laid is that the eggs hatched on Saturday while no one was there to see it happen. This seems to always be our luck. Friday I found an eggshell under a different phoebe nest near the lake so there are probably a lot of newly hatched second broods of phoebes around the metro.

Wednesday I noticed a lack of mosquito larva in the pond at the nature center. I had a group of younger kids this past week learning all about water. We spent all morning dip netting in the pond and didn't find a single mosquito larva. It should be wildly full of larva based on past experience but I didn't see a single one. Very strange. I'm not complaining.

Thursday we took on a larger body of water and dip netted in the lake. I noticed a distinct lack of dragonfly larva though this was far easier to explain. Careful observation of vegetation along the shore revealed many exuviae i.e. the discarded exoskeletons of larval dragonflies that have hatched out. The dragonflies weren't really missing, they were flying all around us. It was interesting to see how different it was from dip netting with school groups in the spring where we catch many dozens of dragonfly larva each session. I wondered if perhaps all of the mosquito larva had hatched out as well but it was quite pleasant at the pond with virtually no mosquitoes. Perhaps they were all eaten?

Friday was the first day I really noticed daylilies blooming. They were suddenly everywhere! I know they can be terribly invasive but is sure is nice to have some large colorful flowers around.

Saturday I spent time identifying an interesting caterpillar larva my students had found at the end of the week. It turned out to be some sort of Lappet moth. I wrote up a post will all the details.

Sunday I spent over an hour clearing a mountain of thistle from my garden. Later while working in the garden my 3 yar old son asked what that noise was. He had heard the first cicada of the year. Way to go little phenologist.

What to watch for next week.
Watch for increasing biting flies. They can be awful this time of year. With all the rain lately, it should be a fabulous time to get out and look for all kinds of interesting fungi and slime molds as well. Tell me what you find!

~Kirk
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Sunday, July 10, 2011

Unknown Lappet Moth Caterpillar

Posted by Kirk 2 Comments
While teaching this week we discovered this gray caterpillar with red spots at lunch time. I did some internet sluthing to try to figure out what it is. We have a good collection of moth ID books at work but they are woefully inadequate when it comes to caterpillars.

Here's the suspect.

You can see the feature that stands out right away are the two red areas between the segments nearest the head. They show up even clearer in this next shot.
You can also see there are quite a lot of hairs but it is not covered in hairs like a wooly-bear and they aren't crazy hairs like a tussock moth caterpillar. Here's a few more shots.






I did not get a good shot of the underside but it was mostly black with some small yellow specks on it. After doing my online research I am for sure comfortable calling this to the genus level as a Phyllodesma sp. There are photos out there for Phyllodesma americana, the American Lappet Moth but this seems slightly different. Best I can gather there is some disagreement over various sub-species or full species of Phyllodesma moths. If the experts don't agree then I'm staying out of it. Lappet Moth caterpillar is good enough for me.

The best resource online for identifying these is the online community BugGuide.net. You can post up photos and naturalists from around the world will help you with your ID. Here are some photos of similar or even seemingly identical Phyllodesma caterpillars I was able to find online.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/367529
http://bugguide.net/node/view/328010
http://bugguide.net/node/view/111823

~Kirk
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Tuesday, July 5, 2011

You can help Nighthawks

Posted by Kirk
My father, a non-birder who grew up in Minneapolis in the 1950s and 60s, remembers that the sky used to be filled with Common Nighthawks. A species needs to be pretty numerous for non-birders to take notice.

That's changed though and numbers of Common Nighthawks are in steep decline. They simply aren't as common as they used to be. Hopefully you can help with that.

Sami Nichols at the University of Minnesota is undertaking a project to monitor nighthawks populations and hopefully identify acting nesting sites. The data she gathers can hopefully aid policy and conservation decisions to help this species regain numbers.

You can help by reporting nighthawks you see. Please download the instructions and reporting forms and start looking for nighthawks!




https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B4Xi-44OmFL4OWRiZGViMDUtMDAwNS00NGE4LThhYWEtMTZlZjE0ZmMxMTll&hl=en&authkey=CNyT3ZAD
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Monday, July 4, 2011

Monday Phenology: July 4, 2011

Posted by Kirk
Brace yourself sun lovers, the downward slide has begun. The sun rose at 5:31 am this morning and will set at 9:02. That may be a whopping 15 hours, 30 minutes and 51 seconds of daylight but we're losing close to a minute every day. We've lost about 7 minutes since the summer solstice. It sure felt like summer this week with high temperatures, lots of sun and humidity. This is what we dreamed of in February.

This past week:

Monday I took kids down to the lake for a geology class and saw that the beavers were doing a good job maintaining their dam. They are keeping the water about two feet higher in Terrapin Lake as a result of the dam. I estimate that it is holding back about 750,000,000 million gallons of water. That's no small feat! Go beavers!

Tuesday I spent the day at Lilydale Regional park but instead of being focused on phenology I was focused on Geology teaching kids about 450 million year of fossils. I found a fantastic horn coral, a really nice Lambeophyllum profundum. Since it has been dead for almost half a billion years though it hardly counts as phenology. I can tell you that the Poison Ivy is is full effect this summer at Lilydale.

Wednesday morning I noticed the bull thistle is in full bloom in a pasture near work. It is considered a noxious weed but it sure is beautiful to see a large grouping all bloom at once. I'm not sure the holsteins were as impressed as I was.

Thursday I noticed a bee flying around by my back door. It looked at first glance like it was carrying a caterpillar. I watched closely as it flew down to a small hole in my wooden deck railing and went inside. Moments later it emerged again and another bee came back heavily laden with more cargo. They weren't caterpillars at all but rather rolled up leaves. It seems I have a leaf cutter bee nest in my railing. They are docile bees with a mild sting and only sting when handled.

Friday it was crazy hot. Out at work my summer campers and I kept a close eye on the thermometer and around 2:30 or so in the afternoon the heat index reached a maximum of 114.7. I looked around online and didn't find any higher readings anywhere in the metro.

Saturday the leaf cutter bees were still at it and by nightfall there was also a small pile of sawdust near the exit hole. They only excavate rotten wood so they aren't harming the deck. They are important pollinators and a native bee. Interestingly the larva overwinter and do not hatch out until next spring. I'll have to watch for that. While the bees are welcome to stay, I did have to evict four separate paper wasp colonies from my yard. Man they are tenacious and in full on nest building mode this week.

Sunday I spent some time watching a female American Goldfinch gather thistle seeds from my yard for nest building. Goldfinches nest much later than other song birds as they build their nests from thistle seed and must wait for it to ripen. The bird seems to be nesting in a nearby Ginkgo tree. I'm glad all that thistle I can't seem to get rid of is going to some good use.

What to watch for this week.
If you haven't seen the goldfinches gathering seeds for their nest you haven't missed out. A lot of thistle is just barely starting to go to seed so there's plenty of time to witness this event this week. Speaking of seeds, watch for cottonwood trees to dump massive amounts of wind-borne seeds this week. The weather should cool off a bit and be in the 80's. There will be a chance of thunderstorms on Tuesday and possibly Friday/Saturday. Saturn is in the West-Southwest skies just after sunset all this week as is the waxing moon. Both are cool targets though binoculars though the moon will be bright so a pair of sunglasses will help you see more details.

~Kirk
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Saturday, July 2, 2011

Another male hooded warbler (w/photos)

Posted by Kirk
Last week our bird banders showed up and I joking asked them to catch another Hooded Warbler. They are considered rare in the state. In fact, when we submitted the data for the last Hooded Warbler we caught the bird banding office sent us a message saying there was an error in our data because Hooded Warblers don't exist in Minnesota. Oh well, these photos tell a different story.

What I'm really interested to see is if we have any females which would indicate breeding. Two males in the same forest is a good sign but technically they could be batchelors hanging out with no females. Time will tell on this one but I'd love to say we have breeding Hooded Warblers on site.




~Kirk
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Friday, July 1, 2011

New "Invisible" Nature Camera

Posted by Kirk


I'm a fan of trail cameras and similar devices to discover what is out and about in the woods. Here's an innovative idea, use mirrors to reflect the natural surroundings. It is a kind of ultimate camouflage.

~Kirk
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