Avian Ecologist

Shag Bark Hickory Season

Now is the season to start picking shagbark hickory nuts from the forest floor! Unfortunately, though, I don’t live within the range of shagbark hickory anymore. It’s a good reason to head south and forage!

Rare Birds of St. Louis Co., MN – Oct.

yellow rail ancient murrelet brambling gray-crowned rosy-finch thick-billed longspur black-throated sparrow

St. Louis Co., MN Rare Birds: October

The list of rarity records for this month in my county of residence is astounding! yellow rail ancient murrelet vermilion flycatcher brambling gray-crowned rosy-finch McCown’s longspur black-throated sparrow

Jaegerfest

Jaegerfest kicks off today, but we have a collaborator in town so I can’t take off! There has already been a pomarine jaeger photographed this morning!

Twitter Game Roundup

For my weekly sci-comm game on Twitter #NameThatBirdSong I post a bird song at noon on Weds. and ask people to tweet what they think it sounds like (i.e. make up their own original #altmnemonic). The name of the game is a play on that many mnemonics for bird song are some form of onomatopoeia […]

Artist’s Point

My family is visiting for the weekend, so we walked across the tombolo to the end of the island. Then, we drove up to the Susie Islands overlooks before heading back.

Knife River Hiking Trail

(This post is mostly a “placeholder” and a test of my new email signup system. So, if you’ve signed up for email updates of my blog, shoot me an email to let me know you’ve received it!) On this holiday weekend, my beau and I hiked the Knife River Trail this weekend approximately to where […]

Full Moon + Aurora

Well that was unexpected…a filament eruption produced a massive unforeseen storm.

Big Sucker Creek

Today, I went for a walk along this stream!

Indigenous Bird Naming

As I’ve been researching Indigenous bird names from what is currently known as North America, I’ve also been reading a book from a very different part of the world: Mount Bosavi, Papua New Guinea (Feld, 1991). It’s a musicology text, written by an ethno-musicologist that embedded with the Kaluli. He speaks to how well they […]