Naturally

The early morning catbird outside my bedroom window was long-winded, producing a mile of music or a kilometer of cacophonous sounds.

The morning chorus was robust. Love was in the air. There was a parade of birds to the feeder. A red–winged blackbird, doing what the bird does to fill its day, ate sunflower seeds.

They met in an open-billed showdown on the platform feeder. One was a female red-bellied woodpecker and the other a male cardinal. The woodpecker won without a single bill being aggressively jabbed.

Flowers scented the woods. A ginormous American robin splashed water out of the birdbath. A ginormous robin might weigh 3 ounces—less than a deck of cards.

Lemon-yellow goldfinches made me look. A blue-gray gnatcatcher, looking like a miniature mockingbird, produced buzzy, insect-like calls.

I listened to a scarlet tanager near the city of Mabel. Or perhaps Mabel was near the scarlet tanager.

Foxtail barley is a common grass of the roadsides, often in saline soil. Even though it is considered by some to be a weedy species, the flowering spikes are attractive, silky and waving in the slightest breeze. It’s known for its distinctive feathery seed heads that resemble a fox's tail.

I wobbled around Rochester’s Mayo Clinic. The two female peregrine falcon chicks that hatched there this year were named Riya (meaning beautiful or graceful) and Aria (meaning lioness or noble). Newly fledged peregrines make short returns to their natal site for the first week or two. The first egg was laid on March 24 in the Mayo nest box. Typically, there are 2 to 4 eggs laid. Three eggs were laid this year, and two hatched. The adults take turns tending to the eggs, although the female peregrine (Hattie) does the majority of incubation while the male falcon (Orton) does most of the hunting.  Eggs hatch about 33-35 days after they’re laid. The nestling stage lasts for 38-42 days. Falcon chicks fledge in mid to late June.

Q&A

“You mentioned a bird that uses snakeskins in its nest. Details?” Great crested flycatchers are known to include a shed snakeskin in their nests. If snakeskins are scarce, they use materials with similar characteristics, such as cellophane, plastic wrappers or onion skins. Why do they do this? Some research suggests the purpose might be to deter predators. A study found that nest boxes with snakeskins were less likely to be disturbed by predators.

“Why do foxes have fur on the bottoms of their feet (their paw pads)?” There are a number of reasons. In cold climates, the fur provides a layer of insulation against the ice and snow. For foxes living in deserts, the fur on their paws protects the tootsies from the scorching hot sand. The fur on the paw pads provides better traction on slippery surfaces of ice and snow. The fur helps muffle the sound of their footsteps, allowing them to hunt more effectively. The fur on the paw pads may help foxes sense prey burrowing under the snow.

“Where do I find western meadowlarks in Minnesota?” A friend and field trip leader extraordinaire, Kim Eckert of Duluth, suggested a general rule of thumb is that any bird seen west of a north-south line from the city of Warroad in Roseau County south to the city of Fairmount in Martin County was a western meadowlark. East of this line, however, both the western meadowlark and the eastern meadowlark species could be seen. The Minnesota Breeding Bird Atlas data showed that the western meadowlark is encountered in moderate breeding densities along the western tier of counties from Rock and Nobles in the far southwest to Kittson and Roseau in the far northwest. Scattered pockets of higher breeding densities can be found throughout this region. Breeding populations rapidly decline in east-central and south-central areas of the state, and the western meadowlark is predicted to be rare to absent throughout much of eastern Minnesota.

“Do barn swallows eat a lot of insects?” Barn swallows eat all kinds of flying insects, including ants, beetles, bees, butterflies, flies, gnats, mosquitoes, moths and wasps. A single barn swallow can eat 60 insects per hour or up to 850 in a day. A married barn swallow devours the same. That's approximately 25,000 insects in a month.

Thanks for stopping by

“You can’t go back and make a new start, but you can start right now and make a brand new ending.”—James R. Sherman.

“We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature, his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted.”–Lyndon B. Johnson.

Do good.

The cliff swallow is the species that used to return each March to Mission San Juan Capistrano in California. A popular song was written, “When the swallows come back to Capistrano. That's the day you promised to come back to me. When you whispered, ‘Farewell,’ in Capistrano. T'was the day the swallows flew out to the sea.” Photo of cliff swallows and their mud nests by Al Batt.