And then there's the leak. My current theory is that the rigid pond liner, being both plastic and light-absorbent black, expands when warmed by the sun, and contracts in the evening. When placed in the ground lined with sand, this wasn't be an issue, however nothing outside of NOTHING will keep a watertight seal between expanding rigid liner and rubber liner that’s been insulated and pinned down with 500+ pounds of sand and rock. That means that even though the two are bolted together, every day the caulk, sealant and waterfall foam that bind the two is stretched, ripped, torn, pulled out of place just a little more.

Which of course, means more lost water. Which means constantly adjusting the timer on the spitters. The solution's simple; rip the rigid liner out and replace it with rubber liner; which means replacing the current shelves and island planter with cinder blocks topped with some rock.

Sometimes it feels like there just aren't enough hours in the day

Early preparations for our pond garden have begun, including carving out a new shelf for a waterfall, and adding some chemicals to the open water to steady the PH and remove excess tanin, making it safer for frogs and their young.

In my first journal entry I noted a telltale sign of beavers once living in this place, dead stumps gnawed to a point. I was not sure how old these signs were, many years perhaps. The habitat looked unsuitable for beaver. Too large of a river to build a dam, too much concrete to excavate a bank den, too urbanized for the likings of a beaver.

Last Sunday I went to the banks of the Mississippi in search of driftwood to use for a taxidermy project. To my surprise the beaver had made a magnificent return. I walked a half-mile or more and beaver sign was everywhere I looked. Stumps surrounded by wood chips, willow branches cached at the waters edge, white sticks that had already been peeled, and beaver scat.

Last October, I watched two gray squirrels squabbling over a mushroom. Although it was deteriorated and chewed up, I believe that it was a Jack O'Lantern (Omphalotus olearius). I went on a little foray afterwards to see what other mushrooms were in the woods and if I could find a fresher specimen to reach a positive identification. I found many woody mushrooms but only took a picture of this individual because of its unique situation.

The boxelder tree where I discovered this mushroom looks as if it has many stories to tell. Since the base of the tree has cracked the trunk forms an archway. The main branches dive into the sand like roots and smaller branches resurge with life and leaves. At one end I can see where a beaver chewed off a limb long ago. And what amazes me the most is that this tree is still alive (Excerpt from 10/25/05).

Today I recognized the same tree by its form, the irregular bow and the knothole where the mushroom once grew, but the beavers have once again added more character. The beavers gnawed off a significant amount of bark and a few branches have been cut all the way through. And for what use? With no dams to build, the sophisticated beavers with their newfound leisure time have began a new abstract art movement. Mallards are flocking to the shores of the Mississippi to catch a glimpse of this exhibit. In another untitled work a beaver has cut down a group of landscaping trees. The beaver that created this controversial work said, "Like it or not, this is a real slice of nature." An estimated crowd of 300 Canada geese was present when the sun opened the gallery this morning.

All humor aside, it is quite evident that urban wildlife has a large presence in the Twin Cities metro area. Today I witnessed literally hundreds of geese grazing on green grass. The field area, a popular recreation area in warmer months, was littered with goose droppings.

People love wildlife, until they create problems. But to me the root of the problem seems to be the invasion of a manmade and altered environment that wildlife must adapt to in order to survive. What I love about the old rugged boxelder and the beaver that felled the landscape trees is that they are nothing like the square and manicured world that surrounds them. Art or not, I think they are more valuable. There is a truth and deep meaning to be discovered behind the creations of nature.

The beaver possesses traits of the highest esteem. They are cooperative, hardworking, resourceful, and wise. Beavers are true to their nature and inspire others to do the same. They have the power to make great changes in their environment while preserving the integrity of natural processes.

There in a bank of snow lay the duck, half frozen to death and showing no signs of perception. I picked it up and it did not struggle. Upon examination it looked OK, other than one of its eyes looking a little weak, and lucky for her the dogs had not inflicted any wounds. I warmed it up in the barn and offered some food, but it would not eat and did not have enough strength the flap its wings. Sadly, the duck did not survive.

Not only was I puzzled by why this duck had landed in the snow bank, but what kind of duck was it? I have never seen anything like it in my life. It had a mottled golden plumage, a light eye line, secondary feathers bordered with white, and a white tail. But there was a lot of white coloration on this bird. I believe that it was a leucistic mallard.

Leucism can be described as a much more pale or dilute plumage than usual. Notice that this duck still has normal pigmentation in its eyes and feet. In contrast, an albino bird completely lacks pigment and would have white feathers. An true albino duck would also have red eyes and pink feet because the blood vessels show through. Leucism can be thought of as a lesser degree of albinism. In Greek "leuc" means "white".

But American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) are winter roosters here in this part of the state. Ravens stay in the north woods year round, but their smaller cousins migrate slightly south, to dense aggregations where scavenging is good. I see them in the evenings too, a steady stream flying northeast on the last light of day, seemingly endless. But just where they go, I have never known. So I endeavored to find out.

Common sense would suggest that they head for the river, where plenty of trees line the banks and the closest thing to a natural order reigns. I decided to explore there after tracing a line, quite literally as the crow flies, from our neighborhood to the Mississippi below St. Anthony Falls and the University. So imagine my surprise when driving back home, just after the early dusk of a pre-solstice sunset, to notice a cloud of crows circling the I-94/35W commons, and alighting en masse in the trees of the neighborhoods that overlook this urban tangle.

The biologist Bernd Heinrich has written a wonderful book about the habits of denizens of the snowy north, Winter World : The Ingenuity of Animal Survival, which will provide answers to anyone who has wondered how turtles get by for six months without taking a breath, or speculated about the marginal caloric economy of a tiny chickadee. I was pleased to find that Heinrich confirmed my observation--ornithologists have noticed over the past 50 years that crows have begun to prefer roosting in cities in the winter, and they tend to choose the brightest, noisiest places. He speculates that they may have learned to do so because such an environment discourages the crow's top predator, the great horned owl.

But why do they get together in the first place? Protection via group awareness is one likely reason. But Heinrich's theory, the result of detailed observations of ravens in the winter woods, is that corvids (crows, ravens, blackbirds, and grackles are good examples) benefit from communal information-sharing about the location of food sources in the lean months. Imagine the mother lode that might satisfy the largest conventions: Heinrich writes that some crow roosts out west contain several million individuals! But even our urban gathering could draw hundreds of thousands of birds.

Michael Nordskog (South of the Taiga)
Animation: Warren Criswell

Fresh snow had covered everything, creating a clean canvas for the wildlife to paint with their tracks and to tell their stories. In the grove, fox squirrels had already come down from their nests of leaves high in the cottonwood trees; one of them is making use of a wood duck nesting box. Last year there were well travelled trails going into a nearby field to find corn, a large enough resource to last the entire winter. Today there are no tracks leading in that direction. Perhaps the squirrels are not feeling adventerous today or they are not as fond of soybeans.

The tracks of a red fox follow the Three Mile Creek as it meanders through the pasture and grove. But I did not have to travel as far as the fox to find a winter treasure. On my way down to explore the grove something caught my eye as I passed the empty coop that my brother and I had built for our pheasants and ducks. Through the chicken wire I saw a motionless bunch of fur lying on top of the snow, gray and fine like velvet. By the look of its long pointed snout I knew it was a shrew, and the length of its tail told me it was a northern short-tailed shrew (Blarina brevicauda). I went into the coop and carefully lifted up a piece of plywood to reveal the story of the shrew frozen in time.

It lived in a cozy subnivean nest with straw and feathers for insulation, but for a shrew this is not enough to ensure survival. Unlike small mammals that hibernate, shrews remain active during winter. Where snow had blown under the plywood, its tracks had covered every inch. The shrew must meet energy requirements on a daily basis in order to survive. Any heat lost to the environment must be balanced by its own production of heat.

A large amount of mealworms provided another clue to the life of the shrew. None of these were alive, but rather a food cache created by the shrew in preparation for winter. According the Animal Diversity Web, short-tailed shrews 'consume and metabolize as much as three times their weight in food per day' (http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Blarina_brevicauda.html).

Shrews are insectivores and have remarkable adaptations for hunting. Its diminutive eyes provide a poor sense of vision; instead it uses a form of echolocation to find food in the dark surrounding environment. Its elongate snout has sensitive vibrissae to feel prey as it ravages through tunnels. Upon encountering its prey, the shrew sinks into it with dark red teeth, injecting it with venom.

This small look into the nest of a short-tailed shrew told me much about its life and survival strategies. So why this shrew froze to death remains a mystery to me.

I have this preconceived notion that anything I post on here should at least be relative to SOMETHING to do with Minnesota, be it heritage, history, wildlife or what-have-you. Unfortunately, lately, I have been thinking more in terms of rants. Frustrations. All of which I feel is inappropriate subject matter, so I sat down to really force myself to write something else.

Instead of twisting my own arm, or pretending to think otherwise, I finally decided on this:
A piece of advice.

Take the time to enjoy, while you still HAVE time. Regardless of what manner of fulfillment you choose, from photography to feeding, gardening to getting outdoors and bird watching. It all does SOMETHING. My daughter paints, my wife and I take pictures (when we can), one son goes hiking, another goes fishing/boating and the remaining son loves to camp.

It's the time shared that really means so much. If you find that you like doing something, share it. It's well worth it!

I assumed that all of the squirrels in our south Minneapolis neighborhood were eastern grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis). But upon close inspection of their snouts and pelage, I learned that our house was beset by fox squirrels (Sciurus niger). One clear behavioral difference is the way they build their nests: fox squirrels gather twigs and leaves into a crotch near the trunk of the tree; greys prefer nesting out on a limb. It's tough to distinguish on this basis when they've become squatters, however. Fox squirrels tend to be bigger (up to 3 pounds!) and longer and have reddish-orange to pale yellow bellies, while grey squirrels have mostly white bellies. Grey squirrels tend to favor areas with denser forests--parks moreso than neighborhoods.

There is always a quiet period after the armistice, and then one day you notice a bold new rodent exploring your backyard. Our redoubt now theoretically impregnable, I don't see any need to breach the peace. Sure, they occasionally knock the feeder down, and they've managed to make our jack o'lantern even more horrid. But they are thorougly adapted to the urban forest, and as long as they aren't hitching a ride on my hard-earned utilities expenditures, they can have the run of the place. At least until we get a dog.

Can you spot the buck in this photo?
European buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) is another all too familiar and unwanted invasive species. Now is an opportune time to target buckthorn, which retains its green leaves long after our native trees have dropped theirs. Cutting stems and treating them with an herbicide such as Garlon is a good way to combat a buckthorn problem, otherwise like Mickey’s broomstick in Fantasia the problem is compounded, as suckers will sprout from the root system. Lucky you, if your woodlot has not been invaded. But you could enlist as a volunteer to help remove buckthorn from a local park.

Although I photographed this butterfly nearly two weeks ago, I was reminded of it once again because of the cold weather. How does such a fragile looking creature manage to survive the winter? The butterfly in question is a comma (Polygonia spp.). Here is its winter form, which I learned emerges in September and October before hibernating. Hibernation is a loosely used term; only warm-blooded critters are capable of true hibernation. Cold-blooded animals, such as insects, amphibians and reptiles, have adopted different physiological strategies in order to survive. This action is termed diapause or torpor.

I was on the look out for signs of deer and other wildlife, thus seeing a butterfly in late fall was a pleasant surprise, basking atop fallen oak leaves on the trail. With its angled wings folded, the comma is well camouflaged. Its beauty is soon revealed with wings apart, brilliantly orange with black markings in contrast to its drab surroundings. I first encountered commas in the woods of northern Wisconsin one summer. While driving down dusty Forest Service roads swarms of these butterflies would unfold before me. These forest dwelling butterflies seemed to have an affinity for the wet spots on the road and also animal scats.

Have you ever put an insect in the freezer for a few minutes and then let it thaw out? I discovered this while collecting bugs for a grade school project, and was amazed at how they apparently came back from the dead. Finding shelter behind bark, in hollowed logs, and etc. provides some insulation, but is this enough to overcome temperatures below freezing? Some species of adult butterflies, including commas, are capable of producing glycerol, which acts as antifreeze and effectively lowers the freezing point of their cells as the concentration increases. Parts of their body can freeze solid, however the structure of their cells remains intact because glycerol prevents the formation of ice crystals. What an amazing feat this is.

Michael Nordskog (South of the Taiga)
Image: University of Minnesota Press

I recently attended a gathering at the Tamarack Nature Center in White Bear Lake to open their series on nature and art. Murray Olyphant lectured about his late friends Francis Lee and Florence Jaques. Lee was a noted wildlife artist, one of the best ever, and arguably Minnesota's greatest painter of any style. His wife Florence wrote a series of timeless travel and conservation books illustrated by her husband. They spent the last 20 years of their lives in the Twin Cities suburb of North Oaks.

I wrote a magazine article earlier this year about Lee and Florence Jaques, and I have delved into their biographies. But this was my first chance to meet a bunch of their contemporaries--a good third of the crowd was octogenarians who, a generation younger than Lee and Florence, had clearly revered them. Olyphant himself is an accomplished portrait artist--though he prefers the term portrait "engineer"--and he provided plenty of insight into Lee's technique that my untrained eyes would never have caught. Among the many attendees were Art and Betty Hawkins, who first met Lee and Florence at the Delta marshes in Manitoba, a visit eloquently chronicled by Florence in Canadian Spring (1947).

This gathering represented to me the most important generations in American conservation, those who took the stand that our natural resources were not limitless in the face of America's growing prosperity. Without their diligence we would not have a BWCAW in Minnesota--it could just as well be a series of reservoirs devoid of virgin forest, probably ringed with fly-in lodges and private vacation homes. Lee and Florence Jaques were acquainted with some of the greats of that movement: Sigurd Olson, Ernest Oberholzer, and William O. Douglas just to name a few. Those that remain among us have wonderful stories to tell, tales of journeys to the far north long before the ubiquity of paved roads and air travel; warnings about dwindling greenspace; distant memories of life's simplicity.

Events honoring the art of Lee Jaques are rare these days, and members of my generation and younger who recognize his name are few. But two institutions in Minnesota continue to celebrate his art: the Bell Museum of Natural History on the U of M's Minneapolis campus, and the Jaques Art Center in Aitkin, his hometown. Lee painted backdrops for many of the Bell's wildlife dioramas, and those installations alone are very much worth the price of admission. (I recently read that his background paintings in various museums total close to 30,000 square feet!) The art center in Aitkin honors its favorite son with exhibitions of his work and workshops on a variety of artistic skills for residents of the region. Lee was a pioneer in his ability to portray birds in flight, but his paintings are compelling for many reasons beyond mere technique. He mastered the Minnesota landscape with strokes that are both starkly realistic and beautiful.

Apparently our squirrels have had enough of the bully on the block, so to speak. I watched two squirrels seemingly plan a counter-siege against the main raider of "their" cracked corn, a blue jay.

The antics were pretty amazing, especially when one considers that this same blue jay has probably chased these same squirrels away on several occasions.

I know from experience that gray squirrels are rather ingenious, but this seemed like some serious planning. The squirrels were taking turns, one grabbing food while the other sort of distracted the jay. One squirrel, probably the team leader, would hide under or very near our deck, while the other squirrel, a temporary guinea pig, would head straight for the feeder. This 'guinea pig' would then immediately be chased over the hill in our yard by an apparantly unimpressed blue jay. At the same time the team leader would head for the feeder and "load up" before the jay came back. At which point, the whole process repeated, sometimes with the squirrels trading duties, sometimes not.

After about an hour of this, it seemed the jay just gave up, not being able to eat in peace. It then seemed as if the squirrels weren't quite as interested in the food, since it was now "too easy". They took turns making a mess out of the feeder, and then picking the corn up off the ground, but left within about ten minutes of the blue jay's departure.

Thinking that that was the end of the show, I went about telling the rest of the family in the house about what I had witnessed. And there, as I was pointing out the layout of the scene, was the blue jay again. Looking around, we also noticed the squirrels weren't far away. No doubt dividing up the booty from their recent highly successful raids.

It took NO TIME at all, and the squirrels were back at it. With a slightly different approach this time. As the jay was finally settling in, and making quite the mess, by the way. The squirrels seemed to decide a frontal assault would be fun. They both ran, one on the ground and the other went over the deck and across the branches of a nearby tree, to face off almost squarely in front of the jay.

I kind of got the impression, that this was the first moment that the jay realized that there were TWO squirrels, not just one, that had been interrupting his meal. So obvious from his assessment and immediate "run for the hills" demeanor.

Now, of course, I wish I'd had a video camera. It's not often, in fact it's almost quite rare, that one gets to witness a blue jay getting his 'comeuppance'.