Column: Nature’s World

My neighbor Crandall stops by.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“Everything is nearly copacetic. Last fall, my second cousin once removed Curly from Missouri visited my farm. I told him that I had a Holstein cow that found game birds. Curly didn’t believe me. I had to show him. We walked into the pasture. The cow came near us hoping we had food. The cow stopped and struck a beautiful point. I walked ahead of the cow and scared up some pheasants. This happened a few times. The cow would point, and I’d chase up some birds. Curly said, ‘That’s enough, I’ve got to have that cow!’ Curly would rather hunt quail than eat. I told him that the cow wasn’t for sale. Curly told me that he’d give me $5,000 for her. Turned out, she was for sale. We made a deal. Curly drove home, came back with a trailer, and took the cow to the Show Me State. He called me a few weeks later. Curly was unhappy. He told me that all the cow did was to stand belly deep in the pond. I told him what the problem was.”

“What was the problem?” I say.

“The cow is a Holstein. Everyone knows that Holsteins would rather fish than hunt.”

The bird walk

I led a spring bird walk for beginning birders one year. The day we picked turned out to be an unfortunate choice. It was cold, windy and the rain poured down. I polled the participants, asking if they wanted to brave the elements to bird. They agreed unanimously. We walked and saw good birds. At the end of the hour-long stroll, we gathered in a dry shelter and I thanked everyone for his or her good company. A drenched man told me, “I see why you love birding. It feels good when you stop.”

It’s morning either way

Snow fleas photo by Al Sack of New Richland.

I was speaking at gatherings in Gulf Shores, Ala. I went birding each morning while I was there. The white sand, warm weather and birds made for delightful walks.

Early one morning, I walked by a table situated outside a large hotel and encountered a man enjoying an adult beverage. I hoped it was his first of the day. He asked me what I was doing. I told him that I was looking at birds. He smiled and said, “Awfully early in the morning for that kind of thing, isn’t it?”

A yellow bill

“A birdie with a yellow bill, hopped upon my window sill, cocked his shining eye and said:

‘Ain’t you ’shamed, you sleepyhead!’”

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote those words and he could have been describing the European starling. The dark bill that the starling sports in the winter turns yellow in the spring.

The crow chronicles

David Courey of Glenville reports that he has a crow named Al who visits his yard each morning and acts as an alarm clock.

Ken Leland of Albert Lea has a pet crow in his yard. Ken says the crow is a pet, but the bird doesn’t know it. The crow has some white tail feathers.

Snow fleas

On a sunny winter day, look at the base of a tree where the snow has melted enough to expose fallen leaves. If you see something that looks like pepper sprinkled upon the snow, those specks are tiny insects called snow fleas. They appear on warm, sunny days to feed upon decayed plant material or sap. They jump like fleas, but aren’t fleas. They are springtails. Two tails on its rear are tucked underneath the belly and held in place by hooks. To move, the springtail releases its spring-loaded tails, which slap the snow, and send the snow flea flying into the air.

Q and A

“What is the rain owl?” It’s a nickname for the barred owl. It is believed to call before a rain.

“How big is a trumpeter swan?” It has a wingspan of approximately 7 feet and weighs 20 to 30 pounds.

“What do wild turkeys eat?” In the spring and summer, turkeys feed on a variety of plants and insects, such as dragonflies, snails, roots, flowers, fruits, tubers and grasshoppers. In the fall, turkeys feed on acorns, grapes, corn and oats. During the winter, they eat anything they can find — plants, nuts, seeds and fruits. In farm fields, they feed on waste grain, manure and silage. Research has shown that healthy turkeys could live up to two weeks without food.

Nature lessons

Some Native American tribes thought owls were the priests of prairie dog towns.

St. Paul Island, in Alaska’s Pribilofs, is a stunning archipelago of ancient volcanoes and tundra. It has a population of 525 but no dogs. Dogs are prohibited in order to protect the northern fur seals.

A blue-gray gnatcatcher looks something like a miniature mockingbird.

A rose-breasted grosbeak by any other name would sing as sweet.

The Alaska Distillery in Wasilla makes smoked salmon-flavored vodka.

The northern flicker has 132 recorded names.

When the snow begins to melt, retreating snow banks on roadsides reveal deer carcasses blooming like macabre crocuses.

When food is abundant, great horned owls sometimes kill more than they need. They cache the kills and return repeatedly to feed until the carcass is picked clean. If the stored prey freezes, an owl solves the problem by incubating the frozen food until it thaws.

Golden eagles

Scott Mehus reports that this year’s Golden Eagle Survey was a great success. More than 100 people volunteered their time and efforts looking for golden eagles while driving 3,000 miles in the Blufflands on Jan. 15. They saw 81 golden eagles — 65 in Wisconsin and 16 in Minnesota. Observers spotted 591 bald eagles, 391 red-tailed hawks and 61 rough-legged hawks.

Thanks for stopping by

“I like nonsense — it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope and that enables you to laugh at all of life’s realities.” — Theodor S. Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss

“One should pay attention to even the smallest crawling creature for these too may have a valuable lesson to teach us.” — Black Elk

DO GOOD.

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