Into the Polar Vortex - and Out the Other Side

Wowee, what a ride it's been -- barely edging above zero the last two days after a low in Northfield of -23 F. Monday morning. It was warm last Friday, and then we went down, down, down, dropping 54 degrees in 48 hours according to this line graph, courtesy of the Carleton College weather database. That horizontal blue line is the zero point, and the top of the graph is 32 degrees -- the freezing point. The National Weather Service announced on Sunday that "historic and life-threatening cold air" had arrived, and I heard a TV host quoted as pointing out that at the coldest point it could be 50 degrees warmer and water would still freeze!

We topped off all our feeders on Saturday to help the birds get easy fuel to keep their inner furnaces burning through these frigid days and nights. It's hard to fathom how such tiny creatures survive such conditions, but it appears that many or most of our usual visitors are still with us.

To follow up my New Year's photo of a house finch in snow, here is another, enjoying the sun before it got so very cold. Welcome back, warmth!

Owl City

My life owl score:

• May 1959 to December 2011: no owls seen in the wild. Not a one, as far as I am aware.
• January 2012: Three owls (individuals and species) seen so far.

Go figure.

One trick is: go where the owls are, when the owls are. Hmmmm. Very smart.

Three weekends ago we went to the airport in search of a snowy owl that had been reported there. And there it was, with a group of birders with binoculars and spotting scopes all pointing at it. (I forgot to take my camera. Rats.)

Two weekends ago on one of those nice mild days, we went for a walk near the pine plantation in the Carleton arboretum, hoping to see a great horned owl that a couple of people had spotted there in the day or two previously, and one flew out of the trees right over our heads. (I had my camera, but didn't have time to do anything with it as the owl suddenly appeared.)

This evening, an "owl hearing walk" led by two of the arboretum student naturalists was publicized, and about 22 people showed up for it, mostly students. They told us they couldn't promise any owls, but they would take us to some likely areas. Before setting off they played sound clips of the calls of the owls we had some chance of hearing, and we were shown photos of the owls as well.

 Well, off we marched, in two straight lines just like the little girls in the book Madeline, because we were staying clear of the groomed cross-country ski trails down the the middle of the path.

Our guides took us to the floodplain alongside the Cannon River, where some of the larger and older trees in the arb are found. And there, before long, we came abruptly to a halt, because there was a barred owl 20 or 30 feet off the ground in a tree right next to the trail.

 Back at the orientation talk before we set out, we learned that a quick way to tell whether you are looking at a barred owl is to look for very dark eyes (it's the only owl around here with dark eyes) and a yellowish beak. Yep, a barred owl is what it was.

And there you have it. Owl species #3 for the month, and the year, and my life. And the very first owl I have photographed. It posed nicely, didn't it?

After a short time it flew to a tree a few dozen yards further from the trail, and we stood and watched it as best we could for a while. We didn't see or hear any other owls on the walk, but that one great sighting was well worth the rather vigorous outing -- except for that one long pause and a couple of brief ones, we walked very briskly indeed over variable terrain in increasing darkness for considerably more than an hour. Thanks to Carleton senior Emma, who kept me company as I straggled at the end of the line for the last 20 minutes or so of the walk.

Then I went home and fixed myself some nice hot mulled wine.

Thanks, Jared and Owen, for leading the outing and teaching us some things about owls. Here is some more good information about looking for owls in this area, from the Carleton naturalists.

Hundreds of Mallards at Sunset

Just east of Northfield, returning from a walk in the northern leg of the Arb (where we had hoped with luck to spot a great horned owl, and in fact one flew over our heads without warning), we saw a large, swirling flock of birds over a field. They proved to be mallards. They landed in the corn stubble, but soon took to the air again. Soon afterward, skein after skein of geese flew eastward away from a stunning sunset behind them. Who knew there were so many geese and ducks spending the winter here?

Mallards over fields at sunset

Mallards - close to 150 in this crop alone

Carleton College Chapel with geese

Carleton College at sunset

Bluebirds at the McKnight Prairie

Carleton College's McKnight Prairie is a place I'd been hearing about for quite a while, but I'd never been there until we went early this morning. This rare remnant of original prairie is great habitat for grassland species, including a variety of sparrow species plus phoebes, kingbirds, tree swallows and bluebirds, all of which we saw. We saw song sparrows, field sparrows, chipping sparrows and savannah sparrows and heard but did not see clay-colored sparrows. The pair of bluebirds we saw had something in their beaks every time we saw them outside of their house. I'd never had a chance to get good bluebird photos before. The four close-ups below were taken through the spotting scope.

Male Eastern Bluebird

Male Eastern Bluebird

Until yesterday I assumed that the McKnight Prairie was an area within the Cowling Arboretum that I'd never happened to stumble on, but in fact it's a 33-acre preserve several miles northeast of the arboretum in Stanton township. The two hilltops within the fairly narrow strip of land were never disturbed and though the surrounding land was once cultivated, it has been recolonized by native prairie grasses and other plants. It was here that whooping cranes were spotted last summer.

Female Eastern Bluebird

Female Eastern Bluebird

Bluebird pair on fence wire

Skywatch Friday

I so love the photograph I took of the pearl-gray sky over the Cannon River in Northfield, Minnesota, earlier this week that I am reposting it for my first-ever offering for Skywatch Friday. This is the scene I see from the river's edge in front of the building where I work, and I have photographed this view numerous times in different seasons and different weather. I never tire of it.

The tall building is the historic Ames Mill, which produced prize-winning flour in the 19th century, not too long after the founding of Northfield. It is still in use today as part of the Malt-O-Meal cereal company's production plant. The golden dome visible just above the left (west) side of the bridge belongs to the State Bank Building, built in 1910 in the Egyptian Revival style and now home to a local law firm that has done much to restore it. In the violent hailstorm of August 2006 (another video here), the dome was damaged and remained covered with tarps for months, but it has now been restored to its golden glory. The not-so-lovely green plastic fencing visible at the lower right is a temporary part of a riverbank relandscaping project designed to encourage taller grasses and discourage Canada geese.

Northfield is best known for being home to two fine liberal arts colleges, Carleton College and St. Olaf College, and for being the site of the defeat of the Jesse James Gang when they tried to rob the First National Bank and were routed by stalwart citizens. The anniversary of the occasion is celebrated with a major community festival, the Defeat of Jesse James Days, each September.

The Brown Season: November in the Arb

The Carleton arboretum was raucous with crows but otherwise peaceful in the early afternoon on this partly cloudy but relatively mild November day. The crows were congregating near the river. Several flew from the far side of the river to treetops above us as we walked. I happened to catch one just about to land on a branch in the shot below. As the path we were following curved away from the river, we left their constant cawing behind us.

While the sky was mostly blue overhead and to the north, looking south toward Carleton's Skinner Chapel (visible in the photo below) there was quite an accumulation of pearl gray cloud. With the sun quite low in the southern sky three weeks from the winter solstice, even when we had clear sky above us we were never in direct sun.

A burst milkweed pod displayed its silky contents as we approached the savanna restoration area.
The sign below describes the oak savanna ecosystem that was prevalent in the area until settlers interfered with the normal pattern of natural burning that is necessary to keep the floor of the savanna clear. Invasive, non-native buckthorn is now one of the principal plants interfering with the restoration of the savanna. (Click on the photo to read the information on savanna restoration.)

An area of restored savanna is below.

The path rejoined the river at a sharp bend; below is the view looking back to the south, with a skim of ice at the water's edge holding some of the recent snow dusting that did not last long on the ground.

Despite some light snows earlier in the month, we are still in the brown season, before the arrival of the snow cover that typically lasts two or three months or more in southern Minnesota, providing plant roots a protective mulch against the bitter subzero cold that usually visits us at some point each winter. When we first moved here in 1990, we were told that there was typically snow on the ground from Thanksgiving until March. Our winters have tended to be shorter and less snowy more recently, with white Christmases less certain.

This Thanksgiving I am thankful to live so near to places like this, where in a matter of moments town life fades away and a quiet trail beckons onward.

First Hard Frost

The temperature dipped into the 20s yesterday morning and left swaths of frost across the Bald Spot at Carleton College. The cold triggered leaf-drop for many trees that had been holding onto their brilliant foliage for what seemed like longer than usual this fall; golden leaves were falling like rain all around town.

Carleton & Kenyon Local Food Ventures Featured

Rob Hardy let me know about an article in today's Inside Higher Education about the growing momentum toward bringing more local foods into college dining halls and student special-interest houses, with particular spotlights on Carleton and Kenyon Colleges. It's a topic I've written about before, having been particularly impressed with the dedication shown by Kenyon's Food For Thought program.

Here is the article, titled "Campus Food From Around the Corner."

Thanks, Rob!

Tam Lin: Fairy Tale Set at Carleton

I've just been rereading, for about the fourth time over the past fifteen years or so, Pamela Dean's novel Tam Lin, a modern retelling of an old Scottish ballad, set at a thinly disguised Carleton College of the early 1970s. It's part of Tor Books' Fairy Tale Series and was originally published with the cover at left in 1991.

Janet Carter, daughter of a "Blackstock" English professor, has grown up around campus and is now a student there. She befriends a group of drama-loving Classics majors whose speech patterns, cryptic references to age, and intimate knowledge of Shakespeare hint that they are no ordinary college students.

Anyone who knows the Carleton campus, the Arb or Northfield will enjoy the very recognizable descriptions of place in this novel, which combines a dark magical tale with a college coming-of-age story. College buildings are renamed in decipherable ways: Laird Hall has become Masters; Nourse has become Ericson; Burton has become Taylor; Evans is Eliot (as in George, as in Mary Ann Evans). Janet and her roommates shop at Jacobsen's for fabric to decorate their room. The book was reissued in 2006; the new cover (at right) shows a recognizable bridge over the Lyman Lakes. There is a nice description that will ring true for anyone who has appreciated the view of Carleton from the rise in Highway 3 north of Second Street.

Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennett attended Carleton from 1971 to 1975. Her author's note states:

Readers acquainted with Carleton College will find much that is familiar to them in the architecture, landscape, classes, terminology, and general atmosphere of Blackstock. They are earnestly advised that it would be unwise to refine too much upon this. Blackstock is not Carleton.

That may be so, but it's nice to imagine that it is. You'll never think about Classics the same way again!

More on Food For Thought

I recently wrote about the Food For Thought curriculum at Kenyon College, as I was fascinated and delighted that a top liberal arts college would build a whole academic sequence exploring the value of local, sustainable food production. When her dad and I delivered our daughter there last Thursday and ate lunch in one of the cafeterias, I noticed Food For Thought signs around the serving area, encouraging all who eat there to think about where their food comes from and who produces it. The college has been buying at least some of their produce from local providers since 2004. I found more about the program's outreach to the entire college community on their website:

Kenyon’s efforts to educate about food do not stop at the classroom door. Working with the College’s dining service, AVI Foodsystems, Food for Thought has begun to turn the cafeteria into a classroom with materials about food and local rural life. Signs at food stations highlight local ingredients in menu selections. Tabletop displays, many created by students in conjunction with their coursework, explore the history of agriculture in Knox County, offer biographies of local food producers, and examine the nutritional value of the foods we eat. Plans are underway for a series of student-produced films on local agriculture, to be shown in the dining hall on a large-screen monitor.

I'll continue to follow this program with interest, and to be equally interested in what our local colleges are doing along these lines. I know that St. Olaf has the STOGROW farm, and that the Bon Appetit food service buys much of the farm's produce for use in the dining hall there. There is a nice discussion of Bon Appetit's contributions to sustainability at St. Olaf in this report.

Carleton has its Farm Club Organic Gardens, and their site says they have sold produce to the food service providers in the past. In conversation with a Carleton faculty member not long ago, I was given to understand that Carleton's current food service provider, Sodexho-Marriott, is not set up to easily allow individual sites to support local food producers. I understand the economic benefits of contracting with large suppliers, but I hope they'll find a way to build in some flexibility in that regard. There is more information about food and sustainability at Carleton in this report, which notes that "an emphasis is being put on purchasing from Food Alliance certified farms in the Midwest" but acknowledges that as of the date of the report, that proportion is less than 2% of the food budget.

Academically speaking, I see that in Carleton's biology department, David Hougen-Eitzman -- who with his wife, Laurie, operates the Big Woods Farm CSA in Nerstrand -- teaches a seminar on sustainable agriculture. At St. Olaf, student research on agricultural practices has been put to use by farmers who rent St. Olaf land, and incorporated into biology and environmental studies classes, according to their Natural Lands webpage.

It's good to see the interaction between these institutions of higher learning, which are not land-grant universities offering standard programs in agriculture, and the status of our food and our local farms.

Birdwatching While Playing Tennis

I’m an easily distracted tennis player, with modest skill and less stamina. I only play at all because my younger daughter is determined to play a great deal this summer and improve her game, and as she has improved, so have I. I’ve even stopped calling what we play “VBT” (Very Bad Tennis). We enjoy ourselves and it’s good for us both. I even win the occasional game, though never a set. She’s working on hitting with spin, and will soon leave me in the dust.

The Northfield Middle School courts, where we often play, are set atop a gentle rise at the edge of town, bordered by farm fields as our main street passes the last of three schools in a row and suddenly becomes rural highway. Playing tennis in the early evening, I’ve come to expect to hear — if not to see — nighthawks out there. The nighthawk is a handsome bird with an unmistakeable piercing — the books say nasal — cry and strongly angled wings, with diagnostic white bars appearing against the dark wing when seen in flight. I hear it before I see it, and then my eyes are off the tennis ball and scanning the sky, hoping to see one or both of the pair I’ve seen before.

Tonight all the courts we usually frequent were in use or, in the case of the high school courts, closed for resurfacing, and we found our way to the deserted Upper Arb courts on the east edge of the Carleton campus. There were no nets, but we decided to ignore the fact and just hit the ball around. A casual game of Ultimate Frisbee was taking place on the adjacent playing field; I could see the sweat darkly staining some T-shirts on this mild but muggy evening.

Suddenly I caught a glimpse of some really large wings passing behind the tall trees bordering the courts to the south. Thinking it was a possible great blue heron, I paused between shots to see the bird emerge, flying with steady purpose to the northeast into the Arb. It was not a heron, it was a large, dark raptor, perhaps a juvenile eagle that didn't yet have its white markings, very clearly carrying something in its talons — a fish seemed most likely, but perhaps a rodent or something else. I couldn’t tell, and it quickly disappeared over the trees. Man, I wished I had my binoculars. I’ll have to bring them next time (and I’m only half kidding).

The Ultimate players cooled down on the side of the hill where we sled in winter, and then traipsed away, leaving us with sole possession of the whole field. We played a little longer, and when we switched sides so that I was again facing the field, I saw that about three dozen Canada geese (several sets of parents with their so-quickly-adolescent offspring, I presume) had wandered up from the Lyman Lakes and were grazing all over the field like so many pastoral sheep in the golden light of the fading day.

Nets or no nets, I’ll be happy to play on those courts again.