American Kestrel

Painted Turtle

The painted turtle is the most common turtle found in North America. One of the main reasons is because of their ability to live in areas that have been disturbed by people. Turtle eggs and young are very vulnerable to predation but adult turtles, with their hard shell, have very few predators to worry about. In the wild turtles can live over 50 years but unfortunately many do not make it to that age because of cars.
Although they breath air through their lungs, like we do, they are mostly aquatic creatures. Painted turtles spend most of their life in the water. With their webbed feet turtles are excellent swimmers and spend much of their time hunting aquatic insects, fish, frogs and crustaceans. Since they are omnivores they also eat algae and other aquatic vegetation. The smaller males usually only leave the water to sun. Since they can not regulate their own body temperature they need to sit out in the sun to warm themselves up. Usually their sunning spot is close to the water in case a quick escape is necessary. The larger females also sun but will also leave the water around the beginning of summer to dig a nest and lay their eggs. These are usually the turtles that are hit by cars, especially on dirt roads where they may be digging the nest.

Zonotrichia albicollis

Zonotrichia albicollis, or the white-throated sparrow, is an emberizine sparrow that can be found in the eastern half of North America. White crowned sparrows breed in eastern Canada and the north central and north eastern United States. They winter in the eastern United States as well as parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and northern Mexico.
There are two different color morphs of the white-throated sparrow,the tan crowned white-throated sparrow and the white crowned white-throated sparrow. Unlike birds such as cardinals the color of the white-crowned sparrow does not identify whether it is male or female. There are males and females of both color phase. The reason why both color phases continue to exist is because all males tend to prefer white crowned females and all females tend to prefer tan crowned males.

Tuesday Tweets

Next week I hope to premiere the new meme Tuesday tweets. It will be a meme on birds so if you have a cool picture or drawing of a bird post it on Monday or Tuesday next week and come here and link up. Hopefully this meme will give us birders a place that we can share or awesome shots. I just have to take care of the linking details and then we will be up and running. So I hope to see you all next week.

Bee

Bees typically make good subjects for macro photography. They are usually pretty ambivalent to people and cameras so they are not often scared off like butterflies and dragonflies. You just have to be careful not to bother them too much otherwise you may be the one running.

Clyde Ikins Hardy Water Lily

The Clyde Ikins water lily was created by Dr Kirk Strawn one of the premier pioneers in hybridizing water lilies. It was named after Dr Clyde Ikins, a charter member of the International Water Lily Society.
The blossoms of this hardy water lily bloom from a stalk several inches above the surface of the water. The flowers begin with a yellow tone and then as the season progresses become more of peach color. These photos where taken at the water garden at the Como Zoo over the summer.

Harley's Passing

I received some sad news yesterday. Harley, a special bald eagle that was rehabilitated at The Raptor Center has passed away. Many bald eagles are treated and released from The Raptor Center but because of the special circumstances of his rescue Harley had gained some local notoriety. Harley was found by the side of the road by Brian Baladez up in North western Wisconsin. Even though Brian was riding his motorcycle at the time he did not want to leave the injured eagle to die. So he wrapped up the bird in his leather jacket, strapped it to his bike and drove it to the Duluth Zoo.
The eagle was transferred to The Raptor Center where he was treated for a wing injury and lead poisoning. The local Duluth newspapers heard about the incident and printed the story making Brian and the eagle local celebrities. The eagle was named Harley and about six months later he was ready for release. Brian traveled down to the Twin Cities and had the privilege of releasing Harley Back into the wild in front of a couple hundred people at the Carpenter Nature Center. When Harley was released he was fitted with a satellite transmitter so that his fans could monitor his movements at The Raptor Center's website. In September Harley's transmitter went silence in northern Minnesota near Evelyth. We were all hoping that it was a possible problem with the transmitter but unfortunately Harley's body, along with the transmitter was located by the Minnesota DNR and returned to The Raptor Center. Even though it is sad that Harley has passed on it is important to remember that because of Brian and many other people who helped him out Harley had a second chance at life. He lived free in the wild for two more years then he would have if Brian had not cared enough to stop. He also helped to give many people a small glimpse into the life of a wild bald eagle.

By The Lake by Leonard Dabydeen

Now

I

can sit

here again

and feel the warm sun

and watch fishes swim in the lake.

Cool breeze lingers over my face

caressing me as

I trace the

contour

lake

land.

Clouded Sulphur

Frozen Minnehaha Falls

I decided to get an early start to taking photographs this year so I headed over to the Minnehaha falls over the holidays. Usually the falls are completely frozen over by this time of the year but since the weather has been so warm this winter there was quite a bit of open water. Minnehaha Falls is a 53-foot waterfall located in South Minneapolis. It is located on the Minnehaha Creek not far from where it empties into the Mississippi River. The creek begins at Lake Minnetonka west of the Twin Cities and winds 22 miles through Minneapolis and several south western suburbs before ending at the Mississippi.
The falls is the centerpiece of the 193 acre Minnehaha Park. Typically access to the bottom of the falls is closed during the winter because the stairs leading down become filled with snow. However since we have had very little snow fall so far this winter, and most of what did fall has melted, I was able to make it down to get down to the bottom of the falls to take some of these shots.

Yellow Garden Argiope

The yellow garden argiope, Argiope aurantia, is a large orb weaver spider. The body of the female argiope ranges from 19 to 28 mm long. As with many spiders the male is much smaller with a body length of only 5 to 8 mm. The yellow garden argiope is a diurnal spider, which means that they are active during the day. Each morning they construct a large web, often with a zig zag pattern, called a stabilimentum, down the middle, you can see a small example below the spider in the photo above. No one is sure what the purpose of the stabilimentum is but there are several theories including; camouflage for the spider sitting in the middle of the web, attracting insect prey by reflecting ultraviolet light, and a warning to larger creatures so that they do not accidentally destroy the web. Each night the spider will consume most of the web, digesting any tiny insects that might be stuck on the web and possibly recycling the silk so that she can rebuild the web the next morning.

Coming Soon

Attention nature bloggers. I am working on starting up a new photo meme called the Tuesday Tweets. The theme of the meme will be birds. To participate bloggers will just need to post a photo of a bird and then link back to here. Since Tuesday begins at different times around the world the meme will go live at a TBD time CST on Mondays. The banner below should be included with the post. There will be more details coming up so stay tuned.

Pine Grosbeak

The pine grosbeak is a large northern finch. They live mainly in the Boreal forests in Canada, Europe and Asia. During the winter when food is not as plentiful in their northern home they will migrate south. In North America they will come down into southern Canada and the northern United States. I took these pictures in the Sax Zim bog in northern Minnesota. Usually we only see small numbers of pine grosbeak during the winter but occasionally, during severe winters up north, we will see an eruption with a large number of birds in the northern part of the state.
Pine grosbeak are primarily vegetarians. About 99% of their diet is made up of fruit buds and seeds. During the winter they are often food around fruit trees that still have hanging fruit. Since a growing grosbeak needs more protein then an adult they usually feed their young insects, that they carry in a pouch in the bottom of their mouth, along with vegetation. They also drink water or during the winter eat snow to get their needed moisture.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

The eastern tiger swallowtail is a large swallowtail butterfly that is found in the eastern half of the United States. Males are yellow in color with four stripes on their forewings which is how they got the name tiger swallowtail. Most females look similar to the males however some females are mostly black and often confused for a black swallowtail. At one time the eastern tiger swallowtails range extended up into Canada but in 1991 the Canada subspecies was divided out and became its own species.
This tiger swallowtail has just recently emerged from its chrysalis. You can tell because its wings are in pristine shape. The butterfly in these pictures is drinking salt and amino acids from the wet sand. This is behavior that they typically only do right after emerging. Often groups of newly emerged males will congregate together to drink from the sand so that they have the necessary nutrients for mating. This behavior is called pooling.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all!

May your new year by touched by the beauty of Nature