389 - A Blue -Spotted Vision
Natural Connections
Although the temperature plummeted and rain ran off our jackets, our excitement and determination could not be dampened. Rubber boots tromped over soggy leaf litter, and hands grasped at every fallen log, flipping them over as we searched the forest. The Wild Wonders campers and I were on a mission, seeking out an animal who thrives in rainy conditions–the salamander.
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388 - Unexpected Hope
Natural Connections
I was just about ready to round up the group and move on from the old quarry when someone exclaimed over a pretty white flower among the weeds. Five luminous petals, each with translucent lines arcing gracefully toward the nectar reservoir in the center, provided the backdrop for a ring of delicate eyelashes tipped with glossy yellow spheres. I could barely believe my eyes! I first met bog star, or marsh grass-of-Parnassus, during my summer in Alaska while assisting with a snowshoe hare study in the Brooks Range. This little beauty captured my imagination immediately.
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387 - Further Observations of Forked Fungus Beetles
Natural Connections
Guest writer Katherine Woolley is about to start her junior year as an environmental education major at Western Colorado University. This summer, as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, she taught our Junior Naturalist programs and showed a real talent for finding and appreciating the oddest parts of nature. I spotted the male first. He was sitting on the highest point of the mushroom shelf like he was the king of the hill. Then I spotted his mate, who to my surprise, looked like she was sitting up. I knelt down and cocked my head to the side to get a better look. For beetles who...
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386 - Finding Forked Fungus Beetles
Natural Connections
Guest writer Katherine Woolley is about to start her junior year as an environmental education major at Western Colorado University. This summer, as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, she taught our Junior Naturalist programs and showed a real talent for finding and appreciating the oddest parts of nature. A walk along the Forest Lodge Nature Trail is never boring. I was reveling in this fact as I took my evening meander through the large trunks of towering trees. To my left, I spotted a shelf fungus clinging to the bark of a half-decayed paper birch stump. Creeping closer to...
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385 - Seeds on the Move
Natural Connections
Guest writer Kylie Tatarka is about to start her senior year as an environmental science major at Rochester Institute of Technology. This summer, as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, she taught our Junior Naturalist programs and spearheaded the creation of the online “Becoming the Northwoods” exhibit. Seeing the aspen-covered ground reminded me of a tree that is more common in my home state of New York, the eastern cottonwood tree, which is a relative of the aspen with similar cotton-tufted seeds. I grew an affection for these trees while leading a seed dispersal hike....
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384 - Boundary Waters Beauty
Natural Connections
The Boundary Waters is beautiful, but that’s only part of it. What really keeps people coming back, I believe, is the way this place helps us to challenge ourselves. When you cut out the excess, the superfluous, and the mess, and fit everything necessary for a week or two of life into a single, green pack, life becomes simple. There is an incredible sense of freedom in this knowledge of self-sufficiency. This freedom feels all the more sweet when it comes with manageable challenges and a means to test our mettle.
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383- Looking Into the Lives of Dragonflies
Natural Connections
Upon spotting the green dragonfly resting close enough for me to capture, I knew I had to try. With my kayak nestled into the grassy bank of the Namekagon River, I snapped a few photos of my target and began to reach my hand out slowly. But when my fingers gently grasped the dragonfly, I was horrified to find that it was squishy rather than the typical hard feeling of an exoskeleton. My hand shot back to my side in an instant, repulsed. My first thought was that the dragonfly was dead and waterlogged.
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382 - Treasures of the Big Bay Lagoon
Natural Connections
The calm waters of Lake Superior glimmered in midday sunshine, and dozens of families enjoyed the sandy beach of Big Bay Town Park on Madeline Island. I hiked past them all, my steps echoing slightly on the boardwalk that winds through pine forest behind the beach. In the lagoon where decomposition has slowed and organic matter has accumulated over time, a floating mat of Sphagnum moss and sedges holds numerous treasures in a type of wetland called a fen. Treasures I was hunting!
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381 - Hunting For Elk
Natural Connections
If an elk calf can make it through their first year, they have a 92 percent chance of surviving each year after that. The DNR is in year two of a three-year effort to understand the survival rates and mortality factors of that first perilous year. Do the young do better where there’s been a recent timber harvest or other disturbance? How important is it for the maternity habitat to have a view? To answer these and other questions, they attempt to locate and deploy a GPS collar on 25 calves as soon as possible each spring.
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380 - Canadian Tiger Swallowtails
Natural Connections
Something small and bright caught my eye. Stopping mid-stride and mid-conversation, I bent down to look at a small jumble of legs and exoskeletons in the tread of the Ice Age Trail. The yellow mantle behind the head of a black carrion beetle is what I’d noticed first. They are quite striking, even when rooting around in the decaying flesh of a recently dead animal, looking for a place to lay their eggs. The adults eat dead stuff, too, hence the bear hug this one was giving a shiny brown, but unmoving, carcass of a Junebug.
info_outlineI apologize for the weird audio quality this week! I'm traveling -- as you'll hear -- and my audio editing program did an update that takes out breath noises, etc, automatically. But that also changes how my voice sounds and seems to reduce enunciation. If it's too annoying to listen to, you can read the article at: https://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/