No matter which way you look at it, the House Finch male brings a bit of color to a snowy landscape.
I’m always so happy to see that first Pine Siskin of the darkening seasons, it’s as if the tiny bird is capable of walking on water.
A snowbird finds snow.
And Jerry Mathers as the Beaver.
The White-breasted Nuthatch knows what you did.
It’s a good thing bees don’t have ears. If they did, all that buzzing would drive them crazy.
A squirrel is showing what a wild turkey would look like with a toupee.
Naturally
Autumn colors popped and fell. Unlike Maxwell House coffee, whose slogan is "Good to the last drop," a leaf is good after the last drop. The leaves on the ground are beautiful unless you detest raking them.
The frost had deleted most of the wasps and bees. Emily Dickinson wrote, "The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee; a clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy." The bees that do all the work are females. That might surprise no one.
I listened to blue jays go on and on. Mark Twain wrote, “A bluejay is human; he has got all a man's faculties and a man's weakness.” I figured these were discussing the merits of the electoral college. Mark Twain also wrote, “You never saw a bluejay get stuck for a word. He is a vocabularized geyser."
Horned larks gathered on the roadside on a windy day. There was and might still be a brand of cigarettes called Lark. I have never seen a horned lark smoking one. A road-killed muskrat wasn't far from the larks. The muskrat is commonly known as Ondatra zibethicus and rightly so. Captain & Tennille sang “Muskrat, muskrat. Candlelight. Doing the town. And doing it right. In the evening, it's pretty pleasing. Muskrat Suzie, Muskrat Sam. Do the jitterbug at a Muskrat Land. And they shimmy, Sam is so skinny.” I have nothing to add to that.
Brenda Kotasek of St. Peter volunteers at the fabulous Henderson Hummingbird Garden and saw the last hummingbird on Oct. 6 and last monarch butterfly on Oct. 8.
My feeders were so busy, I expected to hear "Yackety Sax," the song played during the chase scenes on "The Benny Hill Show." Pine siskins seemed to be everywhere. The wind, white-throated sparrows and chickadees whistled. So did the temperature as it whistled past my ears on its way down. Harris's sparrows, which I sometimes hear whistle as they pass through in the spring, magically appeared. I whistled on their behalf. Why not? As Monty Python's Eric Idle sang, "When you're chewing on life's gristle, don't grumble, give a whistle."
Q&A
"How fast can a mole tunnel?" I read something from Purdue University saying moles can tunnel 100 feet per day. I've been told and read often that they can dig 160 feet in a single night, but couldn't find research documenting that. Moles nest deep underground but make tunnels as they burrow through the soil in search of food. Surface tunnels are the raised ridges in lawns created by moles working just below the surface. Folkloric remedies haven't proven effective in discouraging moles.
"What can I do about powdery mildew on lilacs?" Learn to ignore it. It's a cosmetic disease as it is on most woody ornamentals.
"Do you recommend using pruning paints on trees?" No, research has found they slow natural healing. You might use them if you're forced to prune an oak during the growing season. It keeps sap beetles from finding the wound, which they'd find almost immediately and possibly transmit oak wilt. Latex house paint would work as all that is needed is a physical barrier.
"Why does a monarch butterfly chrysalis have gold on it?" Chrysallis is from the Greek chrysallid, which is from chrysos meaning "gold," referring to the metallic gold-like sheen of some butterfly pupae. The gold is created by a coupling of a carotenoid pigment and hill-like structures that reflect light from their peaks. There are theories as to the purpose of the gold. It could act as camouflage -- mirroring colors of the surroundings and breaking up the shape of the pupa or it might look like dew droplets. It could be a warning coloration, which acts like a "Poison" sign. Or it might filter particular wavelengths of light, which might be harmful to the monarchs.
"What is the one thing that most often becomes litter?" According to the Ocean Conservancy, the top 5 most littered items are: 1. Cigarette butts 2. Food wrappers 3. Plastic bottles 4. Plastic bottle caps 5. Plastic bags.
"Why do robins molt right before they migrate south?" Robins molt so they'll have fresh feathers for the flight. These fresh feathers are better insulation against the winter cold. Robins start molting flight feathers in mid-June and finish molting by early September. They molt body feathers from late July into October. Each feather is pushed out by a new one. Most feathers last a year, but if a feather is pulled out when a robin isn't molting, it's replaced promptly.
Thanks for stopping by
"Tell me, O Octopus, I begs. Is those things arms, or is they legs? I marvel at thee, Octopus; If I were thou, I'd call me Us." — Ogden Nash
"God in his wisdom made the fly. And then forgot to tell us why." — Ogden Nash
Do good.
©Al Batt 2020
A Harris’s sparrow is a handsome sparrow. North America’s largest sparrow breeds only in Canada. Photo by Al Batt
Eventually, everything is repurposed into something for birds.
A Blue Jay will fly across five state lines for peanuts. At least that’s its campaign promise.
A robin has a great sense of humor. This one is enjoying a haw.
How much wood would a woodpecker peck if a woodpecker would peck wood? I’ve been hearing from homeowners with cedar shakes who are learning the answer to that question.
A lovely singer, the House Finch was once sold in the illegal pet trade as a Hollywood Finch.
Red and white. Fight, fight, fight. A cardinal in the October snow.
A tail of snow. The Fox Squirrel’s first snow.
A Pine Siskin pining for a pine tree in the snow. Siskin derives from the sound the bird makes.
Is this the first time this starling had ever seen snow?
A Cedar Waxwing enjoys a hawthorn apple. I enjoyed watching a Cedar Waxwing enjoying a hawthorn apple.
A Northern Flicker contemplates the migration ahead. Being your own GPS has to be stressful.
https://soundcloud.com/kmsu/put-out-your-feeders-al-batt-10202020?in=kmsu/sets/birding-with-batt
Al Batt
Twitter http://twitter.com/batt_allen
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Purple Finch in the background.
House Finch in the foreground.
Purple Finch, then a House Finch.
My father once shared a hospital room with a Sparrow. No, not this House Sparrow. It was a man named Sparrow. A Batt and a Sparrow. My father was uncomplaining, but the Sparrow chirped a lot.
A Brown-headed Cowbird without a cow.
The smallest North American woodpecker is the Downy Woodpecker.
A Pine Siskin puffs up.
A well-dressed starling.
Naturally
The day was a humdinger; Mother Nature must have moved her world headquarters to my neighborhood. Most of the deciduous trees were engaged in making their leaves colorful. Virginia creeper vined in bright red leaves.
Nature is the ship on which I sail. There's always something worth noticing. Large black ants hurried. I heard music. I think it was a carpenter anthem. Let there be ants. And let there be eaters of ants like northern flickers. The male flicker has a black mustache. For an ant, a flicker is the skunk at the party.
Once I start watching birds, I become too lazy to stop. My capacity for astonishment becomes endless. A chickadee cached sunflower seeds in a divot in a power pole. The tiny bird was investing in utility stocks. Crows produced a natural noise as jays gave me an earful. I was unable to get a word in edgewise. I’ve read of a group of jays called a party, band, cast and scold. I use "a bunch of jays" more than anything else. Something plural flew past my head. Multi-colored Asian lady beetles. Maybees were on the flowers. That's my nickname for bee mimics, flies that resemble bees. Bee mimics are other insects that resemble bees. This is called Batesian mimicry, which means something harmless is imitating something dangerous. Most bee-lookalikes are hoverflies. These harmless flies cannot sting.
Portland, a Texas city on the coast, claims properly that it's always feather weather there. I know that's true, but it was feather weather in my yard, too, thanks to the white-throated sparrows scratching for grub on the ground. They took occasional breaks to whistle a bit. Whistling is a white-throated sparrow’s superpower. A caller asked why some of the birds had tan stripes while others had white stripes. This lovely bird, with a declining population, comes in two forms — those with tan stripes and those with white stripes. Those with white stripes are the most aggressive. Males of both forms want to mate with females with white stripes, but females of both forms prefer tan-striped mates. So it all works out. I wish birds had a mailbox so I could send them an appreciative postcard.
A phalanx of blackbirds moved past as I walked at the edge of a lake at a state park on a quiet day. I checked logs in a bay and was rewarded with good looks at turtles. Hope springs a turtle. Pelicans flew over, their wings made sounds as if they were swinging ropes.
Q&A
Tom Jessen of Madelia wrote, "If all cowbirds are raised by other species, how are they able to communicate with each other after leaving the host nest and joining the flock?" Cowbirds are brood parasites, meaning they ditch their eggs in the nests of other species and allow the foster parents to do the hard work of raising the chicks. Cowbirds have parents that don't look or act like them. Behavioral scientists are working on an answer. Cowbirds learn to recognize other cowbirds through sound and sight. Some scientists believe adult cowbirds stick around after the eggs are laid and maintain contact with the hatchlings, which is how the chicks learn the ways of the cowbird. In response to hearing the begging cries of baby cowbirds, female cowbirds respond by calling to them. When a young cowbird is able, it begins to visit adult cowbirds. It's an amazing story.
Rick Mammel of Albert Lea asked how long to keep a hummingbird feeder up in the fall. I keep mine up 7 to 10 days after I see the last hummingbird in case there are any stragglers. A feeder doesn't delay their migration.
"Are insect numbers declining?" The German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research did a worldwide compilation of insect abundance that showed land-dwelling insects are in decline. On average, there is a global decrease of 0.92% per year. The number of insects living in freshwater has increased an average of 1.08% each year. Local trends are highly variable.
"Where do Minnesota's trumpeter swans migrate?" They are short-distance migrants, with the vast majority of the breeding population migrating only as far south as central and southern Minnesota to sites where there is open water and an abundant food supply. A power plant site that hosts thousands of wintering swans is Xcel Energy’s Monticello Nuclear Power Plant along the Mississippi River, which has local efforts that feed the swans. Some have migrated to Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas. Single swans, sibling groups, young pairs and failed breeders leave their summer territories first, followed by pairs with cygnets. They migrate in small family groups to wintering grounds.
Thanks for stopping by
"Voting isn’t the most we can do. But it is the least." — Gloria Steinem
"I get mail; therefore I am." ― Scott Adams
Do good.
©Al Batt 2020
The male northern flicker has a black mustache, which is lacking on a female. Photo by Al Batt
Hitchhiking is habit that gulls find hard to kick.
A deer pretending to be the shadow of a tree.
It was a Franklin’s Gull, not Ben Franklin, that said “Kek!:
A scavenger hunt for Blue Jays.
The temperature whistled past my ears on its way down. Harris's Sparrows, which I sometimes hear whistle as they pass through in the spring, magically appeared.
The temperature whistled past my ears on its way down. Harris's Sparrows, which I sometimes hear whistle as they pass through in the spring, magically appeared.
I whistled on behalf of a silent Harris’s Sparrow. As Monty Python's Eric Idle sang, "When you're chewing on life's gristle, don't grumble, give a whistle."
Battered, weary and beautiful. The leaf is a tiny sun illuminating my world.
There used to be and might still be a brand of cigarettes called Lark. The Horned Lark has never been seen smoking one.
The song of the Horned Lark has been described as a "tsip, tsip, tsee, didididi." I believe fellow Minnesotan, Bob Dylan, might have included that in a number of his songs.
The Muskrat is commonly known as Ondatra zibethicus and rightly so.
Captain & Tennille sang “Muskrat, muskrat. Candlelight. Doin' the town. And doin' it right. In the evening, it's pretty pleasing. Muskrat Suzie, Muskrat Sam. Do the jitterbug at a Muskrat Land. And they shimmy Sam is so skinny.” I have nothing to add to that.
A Blue Jay performing its morning ablutions.
Mark Twain wrote, “A bluejay is human; he has got all a man's faculties and a man's weakness. “
Mark Twain wrote, “You never saw a bluejay get stuck for a word. He is a vocabularized geyser. “
When a Blue Jay takes a bath, it does so with gusto.
A White-throated Sparrow becomes a whirling dervish in a bird bath.
A Dark-eyed Junco, trying to get the drop on a drop of water.
A Ring-billed Gull waiting for gullible food, which is pretty much everything.
Have you seen your Great Egret, standing in the shadow? Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, keen birders.
A Gray Catbird dressed for fall. A gray suit is the catbird’s wardrobe staple.
Nature by the yard
Each day comes in bits and pieces. I try to hoard time. Staying close to where I am is soothing. Geese flew overhead in a ragged V, which made me wish the change of seasons didn't happen so quickly. There was a chill in the air and the mosquitoes had started wearing jackets. A pileated woodpecker flew as if swimming through the air. A flock of robins fed on the fruit of a hawthorn tree, a small tree (native to Minnesota) that has long and stout thorns. I've heard its red berries referred to as haws or thorn apples. The American robin’s scientific name is Turdus migratorius. I once called a friend named Robin "Turdus." It didn’t go over as well as I’d hoped. Northern flickers fed on earthbound ants.
Baltimore orioles had disappeared for a few days, but they kept this old bird herder company until Oct. 1. The last hummingbird was seen in my yard on Sept. 25. The purple finches showed up early this year. I’m sure their appearance isn’t meant to indicate a harsh winter because all our winters are harsh. Native sparrows migrated in — white-throated sparrows, dark-eyed juncos and Lincoln's sparrows. They were mere scraps of songs, but white-throated sparrows whistled while I worked. That was a fine thing.
A monarch butterfly showed up now and then. Some make a 3,000-mile journey to the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Monarchs have a life cycle that includes four generations each year. The fourth-generation monarchs are the ones that fly south.
The right amount of rain and sunshine allows trees to produce sugar, which leads to scads of red leaves. Albert Camus wrote, "Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower." Wind and rain could bring them all down in a huge leaf drop. Then I'll look for the reddest leaf.
The frost was hard on the plants. The flowers aren't doing well. Some are hooked up to an ivy. I cut down some buckthorn, a hardy deciduous shrub or small tree that keeps its leaves well into the winter. Reichard and Campbell (1996) documented that 85% of the invasive woody plants in the U.S. were originally introduced as ornamental plants and an additional 14% were introduced as agricultural plants. In general, native plants sustain other life forms more effectively than do nonnatives.
Q&A
Dennis Anderson of Hartland asks when pelicans leave. The fall migration for American white pelicans in Minnesota is late August to mid-November as lakes and rivers freeze. They winter along the Gulf Coast from Florida to Mexico.
"How often are cougars seen in Minnesota?" The DNR shows 31 confirmed sightings between 2004 and 2018. Other mountain lions have been verified since then.
"I think I heard a jay sounding like a hawk. Is that possible and, if so, why do they do that? Blue jays commonly impersonate red-tailed and red-shouldered Hawks. I’ve heard jays do broad-winged hawk and Cooper's hawk calls. The more I learn about birds, the more extraordinary they become. Only the jays know for sure why they are making the calls, but there are theories. When there are no theories, there are theories as to why there are no theories. I digress. One theory about jays impersonating hawks says they're trying to warn other birds of a hawk's presence. Another theory suggests jays strive to dupe other birds into thinking that a hawk is close, perhaps so the jays could gain unbothered access to a feeder. Yet another possible explanation is that jays merely mimic the sounds they hear.
Verna Erickson Hoppe wrote, "We have lots of blue jays. I noticed they eat black oilers whole and don't crack them. Is this OK? What happens to a stomach full of whole seeds? the feeder is empty in a few minutes." A blue jay stores the sunflower seeds in its throat and upper esophagus —an area called a gular pouch. It transports them in this distended throat and anterior esophagus to a secure spot where it coughs them up to eat or cache.
"Can garter snakes swim?" The common garter snake is a generalist, inhabiting a wide variety of habitats. It likes to be near water, and if threatened, will often flee into the water and is an excellent swimmer.
Thanks for stopping by
"There is always more goodness in the world than there appears to be, because goodness is of its very nature modest and retiring." — Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall — what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do." — Mary Oliver
Do good.
©Al Batt 2020
The white-throated sparrow whistles while I work. I’m most appreciative. Photo by Al Batt
I miss the Monarch Butterflies. I wished them traveling mercies.
Let there be ants. And let there be eaters of ants like this Northern Flicker.
Whistling is a White-throated Sparrow’s superpower.
This is a male Northern Flicker. He has a mustache.
Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. The Wright brothers made their historic first flight off the top of a sand dune here on Dec. 17, 1903.
This year has brought so many things, including hailstones the size of dumplings.
This year has brought so many things, including hailstones the size of dumplings.
It’s like a fish shack, only with toilet paper instead of ice.
This was my home away from home as I canoed the Missouri River in Montana. I read the journals of Lewis and Clark as I traveled. Their adventure was a bit more epic than mine.
This chickadee was caching sunflower seeds in a divot in a power pole. The tiny bird was investing in utility stocks.
The new feeder was a jarring experience for the squirrel.
The Pied-billed Grebe has soft, thick feathers that were once used to decorate women’s hats.
I thought I heard music. I think it was a carpenter anthem.