Column: Nature’s World

My neighbor Crandall stops by.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“Everything is nearly copacetic. I stay busy. There are a lot of different kinds of potato chips to try. My nephew Cletus has been helping around the farm, so I got him something for his birthday. He wanted a Guitar Hero, but I didn’t get him one. Cletus can pretend that he’s a pretend musician. I got him an air computer instead. It’s an empty box. I still have my Christmas tree up. I keep it up until Easter. It’s an Easter tradition.”

“Are you still playing cards at the Loafers’ Club each day?” I say.

“I am but I can’t remember why. I don’t like playing with Still Bill. He’d make a wonderful stranger.”

“What is the matter?” I ask.

“Still Bill has just enough energy to play Euchre. That’s quite an accomplishment for a fellow who is too lazy to use a TV remote. He’s a wizard of the knife and fork but not much of a card player. It takes him forever to declare trump. Still Bill is so slow, he has to speed up to stop, and he cheats.”

“How can you tell he’s cheating?” I wonder aloud.

“Because he never plays the cards I’ve dealt him.”

What the owl saw

The crows were having a cow. They were cawing loudly and angrily. I grabbed my binoculars. I scanned the branches of large trees as I searched for the source of the crows’ irritation. I suspected what I would find. I saw the identifiable shape before I trained my optics to see it clearly. “I’ve found an owl,” I thought to myself. My binoculars showed the owl surrounded by feathered rage. As the binoculars brought the owl closer, I discovered it was staring at me. I thought I’d found an owl but it had found me first.

Mulling over the mulberry

Thanks to my late friend Les Schroader of Alden, I have mulberry trees in my yard. He gave me small trees to plant. Many folks don’t like mulberry trees. They consider a mulberry to be a messy tree. The birds have a much better opinion of the tree, and that is part of the problem. Birds eat the berries, run them through their systems and then stain things like clothes hanging on a line, sidewalks, houses or cars. To birds, a mulberry tree is a banquet. Robins, cedar waxwings, catbirds, brown thrashers, blue jays, house finches, cardinals, scarlet tanagers, grackles and starlings are some of the birds that devour mulberries. Most of them are willing to sing for the feast. To me, the mulberry is a tree without a stain.

Accipiters

Was it a Cooper’s hawk or a sharp-shinned hawk depicted in last week’s column? It was great hearing from so many readers. The male sharp-shinned is about the size of a blue jay, and the female Cooper’s hawk is around the size of a crow. The problem is that the female sharp-shinned hawk and the male Cooper’s could be the same size. The females are larger than the males in both these species. Both species have long tails, short wings and hunt birds. An adult Cooper’s looks as if it is wearing a cap while an adult sharpie appears hooded. The sharpie has a squared tail and the Coop a rounded tail with white on the end. This can be tough to discern in worn plumage. In flight, the Cooper’s head appears much larger than that of the sharpie. One of the best ways I’ve found to tell the difference between these two is if I can get a good look at the hawk’s head. The sharpie has a bug-eyed look, and its eyes are closer to the bill than on a Cooper’s. To me, the sharp-shinned’s head looks cute. As cute as a fierce raptor can look. A Cooper’s hawk looks angry. The photo was of a young sharp-shinned hawk.

Q and A

“Why do deer freeze in the headlights of a car?” Deer are crepuscular, meaning that their activity peaks around sunrise and sunset. Their vision is optimized for low light. When headlights strike their eyes become fully dilated to capture as much light as possible and the deer are unable to see. They freeze until their eyes adjust. University of Georgia research suggests that by human standards, deer are legally blind. It estimated deer vision at 20/200. Where a person with normal eyesight could discern details at 200 yards, a deer would need to see at 20 yards.

“What is the snowbird?” It should be a snowy owl, a snow goose or a snowy egret, but it is not. It’s a Minnesotan who abandons the pleasure of our winters for the warmth offered south of us. As far as birds are concerned, I think of the dark-eyed junco as the snowbird. They arrive ahead of the snow as a public relations bird for winter. The junco has the gray of winter’s skies on its back and the white of snow on its belly. Another that some call the snowbird is the snow bunting. A tundra nester rarely migrates farther south than the northern states. It shows much white in flight as it drifts like snow. These feathered snowflakes appear to enjoy winter. Whichever bird is your snowbird, they are both part of our winters.

9th Annual International Festival of Owls

The event is March 4-6 in Houston, Minn. Highlights include live owls, photography session, owl prowls, seminars and speakers. Build an owl nest box, make a variety of owl crafts and have a hoot eating owl-themed food. Phone 507-896-4668 or go to www.festivalofowls.com.

The National Eagle Center in Wabasha

The center will host the following birds in March: a Steller’s sea eagle, wedge-tailed eagle, bateleur eagle, Eurasian eagle owl, spectacled owl, kookaburra and African black-footed penguin.

Albert Lea Audubon

The group has a meeting at 7 p.m. March 1 at the Episcopal Church. Bob Goetz will present a program on purple martins. No charge.

Thanks for stopping by

“I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.” — E. B. White

“Whoever is happy will make others happy, too.” — Anne Frank

DO GOOD.

Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. E-mail him at SnoEowl@aol.com.