Tag Archives: Minnesota Zoo – Apple Valley

Insect, Truth

Pawnee Skipper

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This is a pawnee skipper, though the photo is misleading as lepidopteral tweezers are not actually a common predator. I was fortunate enough to see this species because I won a butterfly outing at a fundraiser for the Minnesota Zoo.

(Side note: Oddly, I was the only bidder … who doesn’t want to spend a day climbing hills pursuing endangered butterflies? What’s wrong with people?)

Anyway, we set out early in the morning to get to an area of untouched post-glacier land in Western Minnesota, where we started checking out hills. Did you know that there are some butterflies whose life-time range consists of the top of a single hill? Scientists call it “hilltopping”, but I call it a rather limited world view and a risky strategy. Nonetheless, there exist these butterflies called the pawnee skipper that are rare to begin with and, as humans level hills to make land for farming, they’re getting ever more rare.

Counting them is also difficult, because they fly really quickly and they all look like one another (a not uncommon problem for counting a species, actually), so when we caught this guy, we put him in an envelope for a while to see if any more came out. We then saw two more, presumably fighting for the top of the hill, as we’d just caught the alpha male.

(Side note: Yes, you are living in a world in which there are not only alpha butterflies, but in which butterflies fight with one another to become alpha. Think of it as Barbie Mariposa and Her Butterfly Fairy Friends meets Fight Club.)

After counting three, which was two more than last year’s count for that particular hill, we went off for more generalized butterfly catching. I was tired, as I’d only been home from Peru for about three days, but the times in which this sort of work can be done is limited. Butterflies don’t live long, after all, and the conditions have to be just right. I am hopeful that I’ll be able to do this again and that we’ll hopefully also be able to set something up more locally so more people can join us.

Insect

Monarch tagging

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The monarch discovery story is a fascinating one and longer than I can adequately summarize here, so go read it or watch the movie. However, once you’ve done that, consider joining a monarch tagging expedition in the Spring. It’s fun and it’s easy (details here).

I’ll try to post when I know when the ones in Minnesota get scheduled for 2016 … but your chances will be better if you keep an eye on things too.

Bird, Truth

Swallow

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Swallow

I had long wondered how these nests were made, so I paused for a while to watch them. First, each glob of mud is about one beak’s worth. Beaks hold a lot more mud than it looks like they do. They create a row of mud at the bottom of the nest. It’s a slow process because there is often little room for footholds, so they sort of spit it out as they hover in the air. If you’ve ever seen these guys fly you know they’re not exactly built for hovering.

Anyway, it takes a while, but they eventually get a row about three little mud globs deep and as wide as they need to land on them. It’s a good things birds are light and that summer days are hot, because the line is just about firm enough for them to land on. This is when they start to firm up the row and build upon it. Then it’s back and forth and back and forth between the mud and the cliff face (or bridge, in this case). It’s exhausting, and sometimes they pause to rest a bit. That’s when things get interesting.

See, they live in a group and some of them, once they’ve started, seem to decide that it would be nice if the mud were a bit nearer. Then their neighbor flies off to get more mud for their nest. Opportunistically, the resting bird will glance around to see if anyone is watching (humans apparently don’t count), and zip out to steal their neighbor’s fresh dollop of mud and add it to their own nest. Then they make sure to just be resting there when their neighbor comes back.

I watched this process happen about three times before the victim bird caught on and there was a bit of chasing going on. I don’t know how common it is, but it’s somewhat nice to know that it’s not just humans that are assholes to each other when they’re tired.

Fiction Friday

Amur Tiger (Panthera tigris altaica)

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She gets sad sometimes. She knows not why.

Life is, after all, rather pleasant. The summer sun feels nice. There’s little wind. Her belly is full.

Still, her mind keeps turning to the past and to the future. She cannot focus on the now, where things are good. She remembers the before, and thinks of friends now gone. She thinks of the to be, and of her friends of today that will no longer be there, in the then.

A loner by nature, she nonetheless longs for company. Yet when company is found, wishes for solitude. Never satisfied. Never unthinking. Never at peace.

Perhaps, she ponders, emotions are a form of weather — some days being intrinsically sad in the same way that some days are inexplicably joyous. Maybe patterns of feelings swirl the globe, and some are just sensitive to the ebbs and flows. Could such a thing be measured, she wonders, with forecasts made and warnings released. Is that why some storms are called tropical depressions? Is this why pressure is described as high and low?

She thinks of the days when storms have swept through her life, life becoming a cataclysmic torrent of thunder, lightning, and rain interspersed with calm and sun; biting wind becoming gentle breeze in minutes, yet with the promise of turning once again, without warning. She wonders if anyone else feels like a maple seed, buffeted storm to storm, hoping to eventually land somewhere safe, to rest, to grow, and to, over time, become something else, something stronger.

She feels that no one does, but as she thinks, she remembers two others. Yes, there have been some. Some that knew. That she could talk to, that understood when some things just were and no amount of effort could change what was into something that was not to be. She remembers discussions, stretching deep into the night. Finding comprehension in others. Finding a strange sort of joy in discussing pain. But alas, they are gone now, lost to the past, naught by memory.

So she sits, alone, accompanied by none but a dandelion, ephemeral as all things, and thinks of things that were not and will never be.

Blind to the now.

Noir

Bird Noir

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The sharp knock at the door drew me from my stupor. Still half asleep, I knocked my whiskey bottle from my desk, and heard it shatter on the floor. “Great”, I thought, “unless that’s a client, last night will my last for a while”. It seemed harder and harder to make a living in this crazy town. There’s only so many cheating husbands for me to track, so many murders I could trace before the mob realized what I knew and came after me.

It was a hard line to walk. I couldn’t blame Tony’s organization outright, and the subtle hints I’d dropped went nowhere. No surprise, really, as Tony owned the cops too. I was beginning to suspect that he had also been behind the somewhat suspicious “disappearances” of some of my more recent cases … and clients. Maybe it was time to call it quits, escape this life and start over in Florida. It was warm in Florida. You didn’t find your clients floating down the river in Florida. Florida would be nice.

I opened the door to yell out “I’m retired”. Then I saw her. A bird no other. She kept her distance and wouldn’t look me in the eye. All she said was “I got your name from a friend. I don’t have anyone else to turn too”. Then she tossed a bundle of cash in my direction with “That should cover two weeks. Details are in the envelope.”

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Then she flew away.

As I watched her fly, the wind moving over her feathers in a way I hadn’t in oh so long, and I thought, “One more. I’ll take one more case and then retire.”