Episodes
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Murmurs of interest rippled through the classroom as I spread a rectangle of green felt on the floor at the front of the room. The murmurs became questions as I placed two lines of life-sized animal tracks, printed and cut out of white paper, onto the felt. When I finally invited the second graders to come up and gather around the felt, I was amazed by the almost instantaneous formation of a perimeter of kneeling children, totally focused on the scene.
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On Christmas Day, I found myself driving from Lutsen, Minn., to Duluth with a very unusual package next to my skis and duffle bag.
To reassure ourselves that the owl was still alive, Christine opened one of the flaps on the box. Staring up at us were two giant yellow eyes nestled into satellite dishes of gray-patterned feathers that funnel sound into the owl’s hidden ears.
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Episodes manquant?
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Gathered around a bonfire on the Winter Solstice, the hostess asked us each to share one moment from the past year that made us go, “Wow!” Despite the fact that my year had included rafting the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, my favorite “wow” moment happened on a river much closer to home. One lovely afternoon last May, I set out with a friend to paddle an upper section of the Namekagon River. Approaching a bridge, a burst of twittering, movement, and flashes of yellow in the alder shrubs drew my attention. Squinting, I thought I spotted a black cap on one of the tiny heads, and quickly pulled into an eddy.
Sure enough, our binoculars revealed a flock of half-a-dozen or more little birds, “yellow as a lemon, with a smooth, black cap…” as Mary Oliver described them. Laughing in delight, we felt like we’d just conjured these Wilson’s Warblers with her poem.
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Chickadees cache as many as one hundred thousand food items per year. Not only do chickadees remember their seed cache sites, but they also remember details like which food items were the most favored and which seeds have already been eaten by them or by a thief. To support such an incredible memory, chickadees grow 30 percent more neurons in the fall when caching behavior peaks. Last April, researchers at Columbia University added to our understanding of chickadee memory. They discovered that chickadees create “neural barcodes” and essentially create their own system for inventory and checkout—just like at a grocery store!
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While digesting one of the many rounds of holiday feasts and leftovers, with plates of cookies in between, a headline caught my eye: “Big brains or big guts: Choose one.” As much as the post-holiday-dinner-brain-fog is real, I don’t love the implications of those options. Luckily, the article wasn’t about humans. It was examining birds in cold, highly variable habitats, and their struggle to survive. Essentially, birds have two options: spend energy maintaining a big brain that allows them to find high-quality food, or spend energy maintaining a large stomach that can make low-quality food sufficient in high quantities. According to the research, if you are a bird who needs to survive cold winters, you must choose one. There’s no middle ground.
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In a landscape of winter white, bits of color really pop. Recently I was on the North Shore of Minnesota when they received several inches of fluffy, wonderful snow. The forest seemed decked out for Christmas with clusters of bright red mountain-ash berries adding color in the woods along the ski trails, around town, and on the rocky shore of Lake Superior. Ruffed grouse appreciate them even more, I’m sure, as they perch in the dark purple twigs and nibble both berries and buds. And now the trees have given me a bit of a mystery to nibble on too...
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The lack of leaves in this “see-through season” reveals aspects of the landscape otherwise obscured. For example, “Check out that nest!” I exclaimed to my friend, and we admired the small cup suspended between a Y in the sugar maple twigs. The placement of the nest, plus the few pale strips of paper from a bald-faced hornet nest woven among grass, bark, and pine needles, told me that it was likely built by a red-eyed vireo.
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On a recent hike in Virginia, a song burst out of a bush beside us. The white-throated sparrow riffed on their usual song, experimenting with a gravely “sweet can-a-NA-da can-a!” “Jazzy!” We laughed to each other. I don’t usually expect birds to sing in their winter habitat. Birds’ songs are typically used to attract mates and defend territories, and therefore are most useful in spring and summer. So, we figured we were hearing a young male practicing for the coming year. As it turns out, that was only part of the story.
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Head down, I hurried toward the post office. Then, a spot of color made me stop and smile. A single yellow dandelion and its star of vibrant, toothy leaves nestled into the grass. I’ve always loved dandelions. And, the dandelion may be more useful than I ever imagined! The Kazakh dandelion, a relative of the one in your yard, is an excellent source of natural rubber.
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Once upon a time, and by that, I mean 1.9 billion years ago, the atmosphere was filled with carbon dioxide and methane, and the first inklings of life had only just begun. Volcanic activity in the early oceans, and erosion off the few continents, enriched the water with iron and silica. Cyanobacteria bloomed in those mineral-rich seas, and they also produced at least one type of toxin: oxygen.
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Light from the dining hall at Upham Woods Outdoor Learning Center spilled out, down the hill, under the pines, and onto the bank of the Wisconsin River, where a handful of environmental educators were waiting for a night hike to begin.
I almost hadn’t joined the group. This was the final night of the Wisconsin Association of Environmental Education annual conference, and I had a long drive home the next day. Being sleepy for that wouldn’t be ideal. But it had been years since I’d been on a night hike, and I didn’t want to miss out.
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An odd series of hollow little clucks and rattles emanated from a patch of lichen-crusted rocks. Was there a friendly alien hiding nearby? Or maybe a Star Wars character that only Han Solo can understand? With short, jerking movements, the camouflaged chatterboxes revealed their identity: ptarmigans.
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The wool of my favorite old rusty orange sweater felt warm and scratchy as I stuffed it into my backpack next to a jacket and camera. The low gray clouds hung onto their rain, but wind gusts flung water drops off the trees as I walked to my car. As soon as I turned onto the gravel road, though, I knew I’d made the right decision. The much-needed rain had washed dust off the autumn leaves and saturated their colors. This was a perfect day for a scenic drive through a rainbow forest.
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Ever since I discovered how to read the glaciated landscape of Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, I’ve been fascinated by these massive forces of nature. Admiring them from afar, seeing them up close, paddling among icebergs, touching their ice…glaciers are even more amazing than I’d expected. This week I’ve been busy leading field trips, but I’ve been dreaming of a time when I was a participant on two field trips that involved paddling near glaciers in Alaska.
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By Elliot Witscher with Emily Stone
In the bright sunlight and heat of the afternoon, the cool, fresh, flowing water from a pipe in Prentice Park in Ashland, WI, was a welcome treat. I wasn’t expecting to find a unique geological feature in an unassuming city park. But walking down the hill from the parking lot, we found a plain metal pipe, surrounded by gravel, with water gushing from it. Standing in a circle with the 20 other people also taking the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training, I learned from Professor Tom Fitz that this was a flowing artesian well. -
As our water taxi motored into the harbor, a gray-headed water bird floated around the corner of a barnacle-crusted rock. A Pacific Loon!
Having spotted one new species of loon, my interest in seeing the others grew. The afternoon that I arrived at the Toolik Field Station to prepare for doing caribou research, I took a short walk around the base to get a feel for the area. The tremolo of a loon flying overhead sent a thrill down my spine, and I watched the large bird land on the far side of Toolik Lake. Were they a Common Loon? They sounded similar. But the logo for Toolik features a Yellow-billed Loon, and I was sure the scientists would have chosen them deliberately. Now that I’d seen the most similar loon to the ones I’d left back home, my last goal was to see the most different loon. -
A small group of first graders nearly vibrated with excitement as they gathered in a circle on the carpet at the front of their room. They remembered me from last school year, when I’d brought tubs full of nature stuff to their kindergarten classroom. For those first Museum Mobile visits, we focused on exploring nature using our five senses. Now, as first graders, I explained, we get to practice those skills again…by using our eyes to make observations about spiders! I was heartened by the wave of enthusiasm – not fear – that rippled through the group.
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Floating down the river, exploring the side canyons, relaxing around camp, I was always on the lookout for both the novel and the familiar. A giant insect I’d never seen before but knew immediately to be a Tarantula-hawk Wasp caught my attention just as easily as the glossy black feathers of a Common Raven. After a few days of pointing out something I’d noticed, or explaining the basics of a geological feature, I found more questions coming my way from the other participants. With each teachable moment, I felt more connected to both the canyon and my fellow rafters. I wasn’t surprised at the way this unfolded, and probably, neither are you.
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Due to a stuffy nose, I’m not recording a new episode for you this week. I did pull forward this episode from 2023 about the elk herd near Clam Lake.
Morning mist hung low in the sky as a dozen elk ran across a clearing. A similarly sized herd of Museum members held our breath and grinned at our good luck. It was luck 3 billion years in the making.
- Montre plus
