Red Wing Nature Notes

I’ve been noticing lot’s of evidence of digging in the fields lately. Whatever is doing the digging appears to be going after moles and gophers. There will be a hole right in the middle of a mole trail or gopher mound. The other day I found a dead baby mole in the turned up dirt.
As I write this I hear a coyote howling so it’s not suprising that I imagine coyotes are the diggers.
This is probably right, but now there is more digging for me to wonder about.

Today I came across about ten large holes in the field. They seemed to occur in pairs about twenty feet apart. They were all open and deep. The freshest ones were big enough for our rat terrier to crawl into, I’d say eight to ten inches in diameter. When that started to happen I got her, the dog, out of there imagining the possible result of a badger encounter. I’m trying to imagine what else it could be besides a badger. I’m thinking about staking out the spot and waiting to see if I can see the owner some morning. I would have a better chance of seeing something if I knew the habbits of badgers.
I also wanted to note that american toads are once again mating on the pond. This year it started April 24 Actually about May 5th.(This shows the problem with making observations in the dark. Toad and tree frog sounds started on April 24th, but they were not mating on the pond until almost two weeks later.)

Here’s a link to the video from last year in case you’ve never seen this — quite impressive.

All of my recorded years are as follows:

1999 — May 3rd
2000 — April 3rd
2001 — April 29th
2002 — April 15
2006 — May 2nd
2007 — April 22
2008 — May 7th
2009 — April 24(May 5th)

I think someone who knows told me this happens on the first wet day after the first couple of days with temps over 70 degrees. It looks like we are two weeks ahead about the same as last year.

I have also noticed the gold finches are turning bright yellow.
Last of all I wanted to mention how since starting this blog it has become clear to me how easy it is, in my case at least, to notice or not notice something because of expectation. I notice many different birds at our feeder, but have evidentally trained myself to think all larger dark birds are grackles or starlings or blackbirds.

A week or so ago Bruce posted a photo of a brown-headed cowbird at his feeder. I wondered how his cowbird looked so much different than our gray colored cowbird. Today I saw the cowbird again and something clicked in my head and I realized there was another darker bird on the feeder with the cow bird. I’m thinking, “how funny that blackbird is always hanging around when the cow bird is at the feeder.” Then I looked at it and realized its head was brown. It didn’t look anything like the typical “black birds” I’m used to seeing.
Well, it seems pretty dumb, but now after looking in the bird book I see the male and female are different, the male being much darker than the female. There was something in front of me that I just didn’t bother to see until someone else pointed it out.

Looking out across the Mississippi river toward the Wisconsin shore, it is quite obvious that green foliage has emerged almost overnight.  The narrow island at the Head of Lake Pepin is covered with soft green willow leaves.

On Wednesday April 21st, I observed the first of the spring Dutchman’s breeches blooming on the north-facing hillside near our home.  Now the action at our bird feeders is another story.

Is anyone else being plagued with common grackles hoarding all the sunflower seeds?  As you can see from the photo included in this post, we also receive visits from brown-headed cowbirds.  Unfortunately, this bird has the reputation of laying their eggs in another bird’s nest.  The host bird ends up incubating the eggs and feeding the young cowbirds at the expense of their own young.

I filled and put out my hummingbird feeders yesterday in anticipation of the arrival of the hummers any day.  They usually arrive at our feeders on or close to May 1st.

I’m looking forward to my annual spring canoe trip to the BWCA in three weeks with friends Marc and Tony Vogel and Jim Isensee.  Yesterday morning, with windows open, I was awakened to a sound that reminds me of spring in the north country- the incessant call “Old Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody” of the white-throated sparrow.  This songster is difficult to see much less photograph because it spends most of the time feeding and moving near the ground in dense brush such as raspberry and gooseberry brambles.  My intentions all day were to call Marc and report my discovery.  After going out for dinner last evening, we returned home to find a voice message from Marc” Bruce I heard my first white-throated sparrow today.”

Most of this afternoon was spent hiking trails in the prairie and on the north side of Frontenac Pond at the state park.  As I drove down to the park, I noticed some recent pileated woodpecker activity on a dead aspen tree along side the county road.  What a sight this must have been to observe such shredding of this tree by a bird.

Once on my hike, I observed numerous new arrivals to our area including a kestrel,winter wren, bluebirds, eastern meadowlarks, yellow-shafted flickers yellow-rumped and palm warblers marking the start of the annual spring warbler migration.

Two weeks from now is usually the peak of this migration in our area with Frontenac State Park being one of the best places to observe this phenomenon.

Near the end of my hike, I happened upon a lone trumpeter swan on the pond with a small flock of Canada geese.  My photo demonstrates by comparison the size of this huge bird.  I first noticed the swan when it let loose with it’s low pitched gentle nasal honk.  The red stain on the head and upper neck results when the feathers become stained while feeding in bog stained waters rich in humic acid.:
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Spring is here and with it comes dramatic changes in the weather. The wind has made itself known. This morning two Cardinals sat on our birdfeeder. The female just couldn’t keep the wind from ruffling her feathers. I guess we all have bad hair days.

My mom always says the wind is nature’s way of pruning the weak branches. Yesterday a fairly large box elder came down in our yard. It must have been weak because it snapped right at the base. Having it laying on the ground made it easy to take a photo of the buds, which have burst.

As the sun came up this morning in a blue sky I heard thunder. I looked to the west and saw dark clouds in the sky contrasting the brightly lit landscape. As I watched a complete double rainbow formed, the rain came and went and patches of blue opened in the sky again.

Also yesterday morning I was struck by a planet and a sliver of the moon hanging in the trees before sunrise. I just had to take a photo.

Last Thursday Bruce Ause took me on a paddle down the Cannon River From Canon Falls to Welch. I have written some related comments at this link. There was just enough water to float the canoe at the shallow spots. Much of this part of the river is completely wild. The trip was not as quiet and serene as you might expect. It seemed that around every bend there was a pair of geese staking a claim to that stretch of the river, honking persistantly as we went by.

In addition to the geese there were many woodducks and bald eagles taking flight at our approach or watching us from high in the trees. After a paddle like that you become quite accustomed to seeing ducks in trees.

At one point we took a break and pulled into a sandbar. A lone goose eyed us warily and swam away when we beached. At first it didn’t occur to either of us that this goose was single when most of the other birds we saw came in pairs. Slightly back from the shore in long dry grass we found signs of a struggle, two big piles of goose feathers and finally the fresh carcass of a dead goose.

There is no way to know what got this goose, but it was a little strange we didn’t see tracks of a predator and that a large part of the kill was left behind. We wondered if possibly an eagle could have done this. Not too far away we did see an eagle nest with one bird in it and another sitting in a tree nearby.

I am reminded of the hardwood forest in Hay Creek were on a winter day you can walk in the woods without seeing a sign of another human while just a stone’s throw away tens of thousands of people live and work. If you were a king with your own private lands you would not be more alone.

This stretch of the Cannon is much the same way. Somehow it has escaped development.

Yesterday Barb Tittle Reported a purple martin scout in her yard, so she has taken the cover off of her martin house. Earlier this year when the first bluebirds arrived I hurriedly put up two bluebird houses thinking that maybe I was too late.

I attached the houses to the posts that support our deck only a few feet from a window in our house. I put them near each other because I had read that other birds that might take a bludbird’s nesting spot will happily move in next door and drive away the rest of the competition.

Within minutes of putting up the houses a noisy pair of blue birds was inspecting the houses. Within a day they had settled on one. Just recently I have noticed them carrying grass into the chosen house. The second house remains vacant.

It is hard to see into the nest , but I do not think there are any eggs yet.

My post from last week featured an observation the I made on the top of Barn Bluff of the splendid display of pasque flowers.  These are usually the first of the spring flowers that appear on the prairie.  Yesterday, a friend of mine Jane Lorentzen and I hiked to the top of Barn Bluff to check on the status of those pasque flowers.  Most of the flowers were still blooming, but many were well past their prime color and size.  These delicate flowers definitely have a short life in full bloom.

This afternoon, I discovered the first of the woodland spring ephemerals on a north facing hillside near our home.  These flowers have to bloom early in the spring before the trees overhead leaf out and block most of the sunlight from reaching the forest floor.  The two spring flowers that I came across today  were snow trilliums (Trillium nivale) and sharp leafed hepaticas (Hepatica americana).  Carol Warfel reported today that while riding her bike on the Cannon Valley Trail yesterday, she observed numerous bloodroots and hepaticas.  If we receive some rain this weekend, other spring flowers are sure to follow.

A final observation from yesterday was of the bald eagle nest at Colvill Park.  One eagle was on the nest and it”s mate was on a nearby limb.  I observed no sign of new eaglets yet.  Best guess is that hatching will take place later this weekend.  Stay tuned.