Natural Connections

“What sweet ode shall we write to spring? Soft and tremulous one minute, tempestuous the next, she proffers her gifts with one fair hand and with the other snatches them away.”  –Lois Nestel, Wayside…

A faint string of birdsong filtered through closed windows on a recent morning. It was well after dawn, but thick gray clouds made it feel like the Sun had yet to rise. “Song sparrow!” I exclaimed. “…

The grouse drummed again; thumping slowly at first, and then crescendoing into a rapid-fire blur. As his last vibrations dissipated into the still air, another grouse answered from a neighboring terr…

For three days in the summer of 2018 we worked on this mark-recapture survey along a pipeline access road in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska, gathering data that would help scientists at the nea…

Listening to a pair of wood ducks explode from a tiny patch of open water in a woodland pond and woo-eek through the woods is a distinctly springtime experience. Wood ducks are uniquely adapted for l…

The first ice cave was a wonder to behold. Crouching low, we shuffled into the crack that was the cave entrance. The light from our headlamps danced across the cave walls and highlighted the mass of …

For recording time-activity-budgets for loons, Jay has an app on his phone that is set to beep at 2-minute intervals for an hour. At every beep, the binocular-wielding observers help the recorder mar…

The first day of Loon Camp begins with a count of all the loons on Lake Jocassee, which is why I was now puttering through the upper lake on a pontoon boat with Jay, Brooks, and seven other “loonat…

I hardly needed to zoom in to see the bird’s black head, white face with black stripe, black-and-white barring on their flanks, and solid black back. Five years ago I’d seen an almost identical woo…

The wind can be a symbol of unity, freedom, eternity and balance. It is as true ecologically as it is metaphorically.  As the winter winds swirl around you, take moment to appreciate the wind’s role …

It wasn’t long before someone keyed in on an adorably squiqqly line snaking up the length of a tree. A frost crack! Long ago I learned that these cracks burst open with a noise like a rifle shot as a…

You know it’s chilly when even Lake Superior can see their own breath. During a recent period of bitter cold, there was sea smoke drifting across the shining gray wavelets near Grand Marais, MN. Lake…

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 …

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 favore…

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-…

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 …