John James Audubon called it the Carolina pigeon or turtle dove. We call it the mourning dove. It’s Wisconsin’s official state symbol of peace.
A young Baltimore oriole ready to take on the world — or at least my yard.
A mountain bluebird I encountered in Montana.
I recall when the post office peeped regularly with baby chicks sent through the mail.
A batter’s box scene made from spare parts did well at the County Fair.
Great horned owls hunt our roads. A perilous endeavor.
The movie was much too loud, as most tend to be, but not loud enough to drown out the sounds of popcorn being eaten by someone in the next seat. Perhaps it was a red squirrel?
It was the day I almost found Waldo. It turned out to be a walnut instead.
As a skunk walked by.
And without dental insurance.
A snake in the grass.
By Al Batt
Published 9:00 am Saturday, August 4, 2018You have read 9 of 10 articles.
Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. Email him at SnoEowl@aol.com.
My neighbor Crandall stops by.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
“Everything is nearly copacetic. Still Bill, he makes more dust than miles, asked if I could read lips. Still Bill is as useful as an appendix. He tried to make tomato juice by driving the lawn mower over my tomato plants. I’ve had some college. That’s where I learned most of what I don’t know, including not being able to read lips. That comes in handy, especially when driving. When Still Bill, he bottoms chairs for a hobby, learned that I couldn’t read lips, he mouthed some words that I’m sure I’d have wanted to hear. I try to do everything in moderation that I dislike doing. Still Bill, an expert at doing nothing, even does that in moderation. Yet, thanks to a lifetime of being chewed upon by mosquitoes, I’ve been awarded membership in the Minnesota Mosquito Breeders’ Association.
Speaking of chewing, Ma believes in chewing her food. She even chews water. She told me that for their first date, Pop took her to the dump to shoot rats. Pop’s dog, Bark Twain, is missing. Pop loves that mutt. Ma suggested he put an ad in the newspaper, which he did.Now it’s a week later, and there’s still no sign of the pooch.“
“What did he write in the ad?” I say.
“‘Here, boy.’”
Naturally
I watched an eastern kingbird, Tyrannus tyrannus, attack crows. The kingbird was outnumbered five to one, but it chased the crows away. There was no subtlety to its attack. A kingbird is tenacious.
A hummingbird’s brain makes up 4.2 percent of its weight, the largest of any bird proportionately. Our brains are 2 percent of our weight.
I saw a snapping turtle looking like a lizard that had stolen a turtle shell and a large, black and yellow, cicada killer wasp. Cicada killer females can be about 2 inches long, males about half that. The males have no stingers. The females can sting, but aren’t inclined to do so. Females sting cicadas with a paralyzing toxin and carry them to burrows in sandy or loose soils. They lay one egg on a cicada in a nest chamber. A second or third cicada is often added, because female larvae are larger than males and require more food. The chamber is sealed and the egg hatches in one or two days. The larvae consume the cicadas before spinning a cocoon and overwintering underground. They emerge as adults in July or August and live two to six weeks.
Q&A
“I’ve noticed small gophers running across the road. Why do they cross the road?” To show the opossum it could be done. These 13-lined ground squirrels (seven dark stripes separated by six lighter stripes) find the grass tastier on the other side of the road. They eat grass, leaves, seeds and insects. They may take meetings with another squirrel there. This animal is the mascot for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers.
Jeanie Mortenson of Faribault wrote she had little caterpillars on her milkweed that are devouring it. She said they were small and had bodies covered in what she described as spiked, stiff hair. She wondered what they were. It sounds like tussock moth caterpillars, often found on milkweed. It’s nicknamed the tiger milkweed moth for its orange, black and white hair tufts. They can harm milkweed, but predators usually keep their numbers down. The adult moth has gray wings and a yellow abdomen with black spots.
“When do monarch butterflies migrate in the fall?” Monarchs begin clustering on trees and plants by the end of August into September.
The great-great-grandchildren of the monarchs that arrived in the spring make the long journey south to Mexico. Monarch numbers in Minnesota peak in late August and early September as resident butterflies are joined by those from farther north that have begun their fall migration. The eggs typically hatch in three to six days depending on the weather. The caterpillars spend nine to 14 days eating, growing and shedding their skins. A monarch passes eight to 14 days in a chrysalis before transforming into a butterfly. Monarchs can take up to two months to complete their migration.
Albert Lea Audubon Preserve
Walk naturally at the end of Oregon Street in the wilds of Albert Lea. Thrills and trails are available.
Pelican Breeze
Please join me on a tour of Albert Lea Lake at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 12 by calling 507-383-7273.
Thanks for
stopping by
“Up with life. Stamp out all small and large indignities. Leave everyone alone to make it without pressure. Down with hurting. Lower the standard of living. Do without plastics. Smash the servo-mechanisms. Stop grabbing. Snuff the breeze and hug the kids. Love all love. Hate all hate.“ — Novelist John D. MacDonald
“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.“ — E. O. Wilson
Do good.
Even though they look down on me, I’m happy to see the sunflowers doing so well.
The many flowers of the burdock can symbolize abundance, but I find its burs clingy.
A hopeful sign that the believed-to-be extinct chainsaw-billed woodpecker might still exist.
I’m working at a fine county fair and wondering if the cattail was the inspiration for a corn dog.
Buff Orpington would be the perfect name for the star of yet another bad reality TV show.
An official greeter at the Freeborn County Fair.
Fall has begun its PR campaign.
The red admiral is another butterfly that migrates.
A young red-headed woodpecker in our yard.
You are under good wings with killdeer insurance.
And let the chips fall where they may.
European skipper, first recorded in the U.S. in 1925.
Repurposing an old silo near Montgomery, Minnesota.
A red admiral nectaring.
A bumblebee hums like a humblebee.
A cabbage white. A frequenter of mud puddles and other dives.
Beneficial goldenrod soldier beetles are fond of yellow flowers, except for this particular beetle.
Another false zebra longwing at Reiman Gardens Butterfly Wing in Ames, Iowa.
This butterfly is a reader at the Butterfly Wing of Reiman Gardens in Ames, Iowa.
Birdsfoot trefoil is blossoming in abundance on our roadsides.
There is a beauty to the American robin that too easily goes unnoticed.
A dickcissel goes online.
The Cloud Gate, a public sculpture nicknamed The Bean, reflects and distorts the world at the Millennium Park in Chicago.
In recognition of a man lost in Chicago.
Purple prairie clover attracts butterflies and cameras.
A long-suffering Cubs fan who didn’t see them win the World Series.
I love watching damselflies dance among the flowers.
Honey bees taking a little time off.
A lovely display at the Water’s Edge Nature Center near Algona, Iowa.
It might resemble a honey bee, but it’s a drone fly.
A little boy asked me if that was a price tag.
A Halloween pennant. A dragonfly with the look of a butterfly.
Blue vervain is a lovely plant that attracts bees.
Blazing star enters stage right.
By Al Batt
Published 9:00 am Saturday, July 21, 2018
Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. Email him at SnoEowl@aol.com.
My neighbor Crandall stops by.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
“Everything is nearly copacetic. I had my ears checked. The doctor said they hadn’t changed much since my last exam. I still had two of them. I’ve been helping my neighbor Still Bill remodel his garage. It’s the most work I’ve ever seen him do. Still Bill believes there is no reason to make an effort when an excuse works just as well. It’s not his fault. He tries to exercise, but he can’t outrun a fork.”
Naturally
I tiptoe through nature. I love to do that.
House wrens had become the main source of birdsong in my yard. Their competition came from fledgling birds crying, “Feed me.” The demanding youngsters inspired me to pick ripe tomatoes. Flavorful orbs of fine eating. I heard a dog day (annual) cicada call. I typically hear them from July into September. Hot weather fans their singing flames. These insects are providers of late summer sounds and memories. Folklore says that a cicada’s buzzing song declares that frost is but six weeks away. The cicada isn’t a proficient predictor of dropping temperatures.
I spotted earwigs on the milkweeds I’d planted for the monarch butterflies. An obvious feature of an earwig is the pair of pincers or forceps at the tip of the abdomen. Both sexes have these pincers; in males they are large and curved, whereas they’re straight in females.
I watched red fox kits at play. I love seeing foxes for many reasons. One is because I dislike Lyme disease. A study found the red fox to be a major agent of control of that disease due to its fondness for mice as food. Mice are efficient transmitters of Lyme disease.
I watched American white pelicans floating on the water. Pelicans have a pouch that would make a kangaroo proud. Dixon Lanier Merritt wrote, “A wonderful bird is the Pelican. His beak can hold more than his belly can. He can hold in his beak enough food for a week! But I’ll be darned if I know how the hellican?” Pelicans are splendid fliers and soar magnificently on giant wings, but becoming airborne can be challenging without the aid of the wind. Pelicans must run over the water while beating their wings and pounding the water’s surface with their feet to get enough speed for takeoff. Their feet flapping sounded like Fred Flintstone starting his car.
Q&A
“Why did I see a bald bird at my feeder?” Don’t be surprised to see a bald cardinal or jay in July and August. It’s normal for some birds to go through an abnormal molt with an odd replacement of feathers.
“What three fictional birds are featured on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?” Woody Woodpecker, Donald Duck and Big Bird.
“I saw a bird that looked like a downy or a hairy woodpecker, but it had red on the top of its head. What was it?” It was a downy or a hairy woodpecker. Both downy and hairy woodpecker adult males have a red patch on the back of the head. Fledglings have red on top instead.
“My field guide calls it a gray jay, but I thought it was a Canada jay.“ Some people call it a camp robber or a whiskey jack. The bird’s name officially became the gray jay in 1957. The North American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society changed the name to Canada jay this year.
“How many bumblebees are there in a nest?” Bumblebee nests vary in size depending on the species and time of year. A nest may contain 50 to 400 bees. Honeybee hives typically contain about 50,000 bees.
“I saw a squirrel that looked as if it were eating pavement. Was that what it was doing?” If you saw a squirrel pressing its nose to the pavement of a road or parking lot, it was likely licking minerals (especially salt) from the cement or asphalt.
“Do blue-gray gnatcatchers eat gnats?” Yes, but only blue-gray gnats. That’s not true. They eat insects such as: Leafhoppers, plant bugs, moths, beetles, weevils, spiders, caterpillars and grasshoppers.
Alima Fairchild of Rushford asked if scarlet tanagers are common in Minnesota. They are common, but not commonly seen.
Audubon Preserve
The estate of Myron and Stephanie Pederson gave a 10-acre plot of land to the Albert Lea Audubon Society in 1987. Audubon purchased an additional six adjacent lots. The Audubon Preserve is in the southwestern part of Albert Lea at the end of Oregon Street. Loren Kaiser maintains nearly two miles of mowed trails. Dustin Demmer provided native plantings. Birds and wildlife abound. Motorized vehicles and picnicking are prohibited in respect of the wildness of nature. The next time someone tells you to take a hike, and they will, take it at the Audubon Preserve.
Thanks for stopping by
“Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.“ — Theodore Roethke
“If you can’t be in awe of Mother Nature, there’s something wrong with you.” — Alex Trebek
Do good.
Photo by Al Batt
I might have heard this: “I need the big crane. Go back to the machine shed and bring me the right tool this time.”
Or I might not have heard that.
A cicada killer wasp silences cicadas.
The smile of a cicada killer.
A leopard lacewing that is found in Asia.
I recall with great joy seeing blue morpho butterflies in the dappled sun of Costa Rica. Morpho refers to Morpheus the god of dreams in Greek mythology.
I hope they brought the right crane.
Black-eyed Susan was not named after a bad boxer.
Queen Anne’s Lace. A biennial that I called “bird’s nest” annually when I was a lad.
Malachite butterfly. Malachite is a semi-precious green gemstone.
Owl butterflies are crepuscular— active at dawn and dusk.
An Australian butterfly called a clipper.
The tiger swallowtail’s caterpillars resemble bird droppings.
I try to pet a bumblebee each morning. It doesn’t appear to bother the bee and it delights me.
Bumblebees have longer antennae than the flies that mimic them.
A blue jay bald due to an abnormal molt.
A native, solitary bee nesting box.
A native, solitary bee will fill an entire tunnel of this nest box with eggs and plug the tunnel entrance with mud, leaf pieces, or other vegetation. A bee hotel like this is a swell gift for a gardener.
A Chicago pigeon seeing what is on the menu.
Feeling too fluffy to fly.
The common birdwing is an Asian butterfly that can be found at Reiman Gardens in Ames, Iowa.
The Atlas moth, an Asian species, has a wingspan of up to over 11 inches.
Seen at Reiman Gardens in Ames, Iowa. Atlas was the Titan responsible for holding up the heavens.
Atlas moth redux.
The crimson-patch longwing (red postman) can be found in southern Texas.
My wife chewed me out for hanging around the Wrigley Building in Chicago.
by Al Batt, albertleatribune.comJuly 14, 2018 09:00 AMCow slobbers are prettier than one may think. Al Batt/Albert Lea Tribune
Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. Email him at SnoEowl@aol.com.
The guy from just down the road
My neighbor Crandall stops by.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
“Everything is nearly copacetic. Ma and Pop’s wedding anniversary is on the horizon. They wanted to get married right out of high school, but Pop wanted to buy a farm first. It took him 10 years to save up enough money to do that. That was a good thing.”
“How was that a good thing?” I wonder aloud.
“Because if they’d gotten married right out of school, I’d be 10 years older. I had a visitor from Minneapolis who said she wanted to paint my barn. I was getting ready to haggle when she explained that she wanted to make a painting of it. I told her to knock herself out. She asked what kind of cows mine were. I told her that they were a rare breed of natural weather predictors. Of course, she asked me what I meant by that. I explained that when the cows are standing, it means no rain is likely for the next 24 hours. And when they’re lying down, it means it’s going to rain within in a day. There is always one more question and hers was, ‘Half your herd is standing and the other half is lying down. What does that mean?’“
“That’s a good question,“ I interject.
“And I had the perfect answer for her. It meant half of the cows were wrong.”
Naturally
I was birding and looking at flowers. Spiderwort is such a lovely flower. Cow slobbers is what I called it when I was a boy because the flowers bloom early in the day, then wilt into a jelly-like substance. The striking flowers appear in small clusters, with new buds opening each day. Wort comes from the Anglo-Saxon wyrt meaning “herb” or “root,” and spider derives either from a belief that they’d cure spider bites or the spidery shape of its stamens.
It was a beautiful green July day, but I already missed June. June is the reward we’re given for putting up with January. I wanted to see ants on the peonies again. Ants on the Peonies would be a great band name. I wanted to shuffle through the drifts of cottonwood seed once more. David George Haskell wrote this about cottonwoods, “Over its lifetime a parent tree releases 2+ billion seeds to the wind. On average, one seed makes it.“
There was no breeze. It’s place had been taken by hungry mosquitoes. I picked raspberries. There was a good crop. Good raspberries, bad mosquitoes. That’s the rule. I ate mulberries I’d plucked along with the raspberries. The world goes quickly from shoots to fruits.
Blue jays scolded as other birds moved about silently, trying to make a living. Turkey vultures floated overhead as if they were fleeting dreams or disembodied souls.
A ruby-throated hummingbird male moved slightly, enough to catch the light just right and cause an iridescence to play upon his throat.
A flower opened to the sun, perfect in its imperfection. I plucked a floret from the flowerhead of a red clover plant and tasted the sweetness of its nectar. I looked for four-leaf clovers. A fellow can never have too much good luck. I’d seen research that said there is one four-leaf clover for every 5,000 three-leaf clovers.
Q&A
“Why do moths fly around lights?” It’s unclear exactly why they visit lights, but here is a theory. Moths use moonlight to find their way in the dark. Artificial lights might interfere with their internal navigational equipment, confusing the moths. This may cause a moth to fly in circles around an artificial light in an attempt to maintain its flight path.
“Why are they called dabbling ducks?” A dabbling duck is a shallow water duck that feeds primarily along the surface of the water or by tipping headfirst into the water to graze on aquatic plants, vegetation and insects. It dabbles. They are infrequent divers and species include mallards, wood ducks, blue-winged teal, northern shovelers and others.
“How much does a pelican weigh?” An American white pelican weighs 10 to 20 pounds. It looks bigger than that because of its 9-foot wingspan.
Thanks for stopping by
“But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed.” — Barbara Kingsolver
“Years ago I had a Buddhist teacher in Thailand who would remind all his students that there was always something to be thankful for. He’d say, ‘Let’s rise and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we may have learned a little. And if we didn’t learn even a little, at least we didn’t get sick. And if we did get sick, at least we didn’t die. So let us all be thankful.’” — Leo Buscaglia
Do good.
byAl Batt,albertleatribune.com
July 7, 2018 09:00 AM
Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. Email him at SnoEowl@aol.com.
My neighbor Crandall stops by.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
“Everything is nearly copacetic. I gave Pop a computer, but he gave it back. He doesn’t want a computer until one can be taught how to catch a walleye. Ma doesn’t mind when Pop forgets to zip up his fly. At least that means he remembered to wear pants. My cousin Clancy was supposed to be here in March. He didn’t show up until June. Daylight saving time messes him up. I was going to turn on the air conditioning, but it was too hot to do even that. On a terrible hot day, I remember the words to an old song that goes something like this, ‘It ain’t no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.’ Clancy is like my neighbor Still Bill, he couldn’t get out of his own way. Still Bill isn’t lazy; he just doesn’t want to do everything and then end up with nothing to do when he retires. Still Bill, who once lost a race with a glacier, has a cast on his foot.”
“Oh, no! Did he break it?” I ask.
“No, he stepped in a bucket of cement.”
Naturally
I’d been out the door at 4 in the morning. I’d awakened without an alarm clock, as I tend to do when I look forward to something. The morning’s fog exceeded the fog in my brain, but there were birds that needed counting. They were counting on me. I did a Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) in June. I’ve been doing the same route for many years and it was good being back in the counting saddle after missing the BBS last year when I was on the disabled list.
I counted birds for three minutes each at 50 regular stops. At one stop, I watched a fox squirrel walk down a farm drive and right up to my car. It gave me a baleful look while sitting up on its rear legs. Apparently satisfied that I was a harmless man who had been fairly warned, the squirrel ambled back up the drive from whence it had come. It was obviously a watch squirrel.
I watched five wild turkeys walk bean rows. I’d done the same thing when I was a young turkey. Several sandhill cranes flew over. They had nested there for some years. I was pleased to see them. The day was filled with newly minted robins.
Butterfly weed, a much more vivid orange color than a monarch butterfly, demanded my attention. Orange isn’t an exceedingly common color in nature this time of the year. Daisy fleabane presented more rays per flowerhead than I could count.
Days earlier, I’d stood transfixed as a red-winged blackbird male flew down from a tree and landed on the back of a Canada goose gander. The gander was in the company of his missus and a few goslings. Ganders are particularly aggressive in that case, but this gander put his head down and rushed to the water of a pond as the blackbird rode along as if he were in a saddle, pecking and prodding the gander on his way. The goslings and the missus waddled behind. Once in the water, the gander was freed of his tormentor. I hoped the goslings would one day be able to look again at their father as if he were all-powerful.
Q&A
“Is there a bird named after Minnesota?” No, but there should be. Something like the Minnesota minnow heron, Minnesota timber hawk or Minnesota casino crow. There are a number of birds that carry a state as their first names. California (condor, gnatcatcher, gull, quail, scrub-jay, thrasher and towhee), Connecticut warbler, Florida scrub-jay, Kentucky warbler, Louisiana waterthrush, Mississippi Kite, Tennessee warbler and Virginia rail. There are also two with Carolina as a first name — Chickadee and wren. There is a Virginia’s warbler, but it carries the woman’s name that discovered the bird.
“What bird holds the record for the longest legs in relation to body length?” The flamingo is the likely winner with one of the five species of stilts coming in second. The ostrich was in the running.
Tom Belshan of Glenville asked what the caterpillar of the cecropia moth eats. The cecropia moth (robin moth) is North America’s largest native moth, with a wingspan approaching 6 inches. The caterpillar, as long as 4.5 inches, feeds on the leaves of hardwood trees such as: Birch, boxelder, cherry, elm, hawthorn, linden, maple, oak, poplar and willow. Cecropia moth adults don’t eat. A good number of people have reported seeing these lovely moths this year.
Earl Jacobsen
I bid farewell to Earl Jacobsen of Albert Lea. Jake had been a humble servant of the Albert Lea Audubon Society and many other organizations for years. He did so with grace. He loved the earth and the sky. As the rain poured down onto the roof at my friend’s funeral, the minister said, “Listen to the beauty of nature.”
Thanks for stopping by
“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.“ — Confucius
“Each life is made up of mistakes and learning, waiting and growing, practicing patience.“ — Billy Graham
Do good.
Cecropia moth photo by Al Batt
Sandhill crane and colt.
Young American crows have blue eyes.
Chestnut-backed chickadee.
American robin eggs are robin-egg blue. Go figure.
I stumbled upon this young thing in May.
It was almost impossible to get her to sign a model release form.
A common nighthawk feeds on flying insects as high as 500 feet in the air.
A great crested flycatcher sometimes weaves a snakeskin, onion skin, cellophane or plastic wrapper into its nest.
Truth in labeling.
A turkey vulture enjoying a meal provided by an SUV.
This tree frog found purchase on an odd branch of a strange limb.
I was excited to see an ivory-billed woodpecker. Even if it was in a painting.