Prairie Flowers at St. Olaf Natural Lands

Today was such a gorgeous day -- downright chilly by normal July standards, but thoroughly refreshing and invigorating. I hadn't been over to the St. Olaf College natural lands for quite a while, and decided to visit the prairie restoration loop, which proved to be a sea of yellows and purples.

As has been typical this year, I hardly saw any butterflies and just a few bees. In the photo below, you can see orange pollen building up on the bee's "pollen basket" on its leg. The flower is purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea).

The tall yellow sunflower-like plant below is compass plant (Silphium laciniatum). The common name comes from the tendency of the lower leaves to align their edges in a north-south direction. The compass plant is said to be very long-lived, surviving as long as a century. Botanists use the term forb for herbs (non-woody plants) that are not grasses or grasslike, so the clover above and compass plant below would both be forbs.

I'm very much a beginner at dragonfly identification, but it looks to me as if the one below is a twelve-spotted skimmer (Libellula pulchella). I've been seeing these quite often in recent outings. Today they zigged and zagged along the path ahead of me, rarely landing or staying long in a good spot for me to get a photo, so I was pleased to be able to get this one.

The forecast in southeastern Minnesota is for quite a few more pleasant days ahead, with highs only in the 70s F. and nightly lows mostly in the 50s. That's great sleeping weather, and perfect for getting out and about. Enjoy!

Tree Swallows

The two swallows I see most often in Northfield are tree swallows and barn swallows. Tree swallows are recognizable by their white undersides and iridescent blue-green backs. Barn swallows have a reddish-brown underside with a steel-blue back. Both are beautiful birds that are a great pleasure to watch as they swoop through the air catching insects.

Tree swallows like to nest in bluebird nesting boxes, and often beat the bluebirds to it. That is why people often put up two boxes near each other. If there is only one box, the tree swallows get there first and the bluebirds are out of luck. If there are two boxes, there will be one left for the bluebirds because a tree swallow will tolerate a bluebird next door, but won't tolerate another tree swallow so close. 

These photos were taken at the St. Olaf College nature area. The bird above, sitting on a fence post at the edge of the path near two nesting boxes, let us get surprisingly close to take this photo. Below, two swallows out of a group of five or six are seen swooping around a different set of nesting boxes.

Green Heron

We walked the pond trail at the St. Olaf College nature area this evening and saw this Green Heron in a tree.

Green Herons are much smaller than the more commonly seen Great Blue Heron; they are similar in size to a crow.

 These shots were taken from quite a distance away -- maybe 70 yards or so -- through the spotting scope and represent my most successful digiscoping efforts so far with my new camera. It helps to be working with a bird the size of a crow (or green heron) rather than a tiny songbird.

This post is my submission for this week's Bird Photography Weekly.

Prairie and Sky

Here are more photos from the St. Olaf college natural lands taken Saturday morning. The St. Olaf wind turbine dominates the landscape if you're looking anywhere in its general direction. The two wind turbines in Northfield, one here at St. Olaf and the other owned by Carleton College but standing on land slightly east of town, have come to be iconic symbols of this small city.

The tall prairie grasses (I believe Big Bluestem is what we're seeing here) bent and swayed in the breeze.

Light purple wildflowers in the aster family and goldenrod were common, as well as plenty of other plants I can't identify, like the greenish spikes below.

Can anyone tell me what these huge spikes are? They must have been close to ten feet tall. I have seen similar things on a much smaller scale, but have no idea what they might be.

Cedar Waxwings on a Septemberish Day

A fresh and breezy, almost chilly, but blue-skied and golden morning called us out of doors today. We hadn't been over to the St. Olaf College nature area for several months, so off we went around midmorning. The wind seemed to be keeping the birds out of sight for most of our walk, and although I was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved top I almost regretted leaving my jacket in the car . A few mallards on the pond, a hawk (probably a northern harrier) flying low over the prairie areas, and a crow or two were all we had seen until we were about three quarters of the way around and reached the south side of the pond-loop trail. Passing some wild plums (above), we were suddenly aware of birds ahead and soon saw that they were fruit-loving cedar waxwings.

The photo above shows two cedar waxwings in a tree -- one in sun with its back to the camera and one above it, shaded and in profile. (Click on the photo for a larger view.) You can see a hint of the red wingtips, like drops of red wax, on the wing feathers on the more-visible bird. These, of course, are what give the bird its common name.

We set up the spotting scope and although the birds kept moving one did land on an exposed bare branch not far away for a minute or so, long enough for me to get the shots above and below. I was very pleased with these; while certainly not perfect, they are some of my best digiscoping results ever. You can clearly see the bright yellow tips to the tail feathers, the lovely yellow-to-rosy buff blush of the breast transitioning to the head, and the flat crest and black bandit mask that are among the instantly distinguishing features of this gregarious bird.

It was a nice way to finish up the walk. Earlier we had appreciated the tall prairie grasses and wildflowers waving in the wind, and I'll have a post about them in a while.

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.

Nature Photography Class

The winter nature photography workshop offered by Dan Iverson through Northfield Community Services was, to everyone's gratitute, postponed from last weekend, when the temperatures were below zero, to yesterday, when they were in the upper 20s or even higher by the time we got outside.

After an hour of classroom time during which we discussed the basics of aperture, shutter speed, depth of focus, and the trade-offs between all of the above (most helpful to those students who had cameras with manual settings, which my point-and-shoot Nikon Coolpix does not have), we headed out to the St. Olaf natural lands between the base of the wind turbine and Northfield Hospital.

Winter photography presents particular challenges on a sunny day, because with snow on the ground there is just so much light to deal with. However, the low position of the sun in the sky creates wonderful shadows even near midday; in the summer photographers have to get out there early or late in the day to get the same effect. Shadows on the snow added dramatic impact to several of my favorite photos of the day.

If you'd like to see some of the photos I took, you can click through on the album below for the larger version and view it as a slideshow if you wish. I've included some comments about each.

Nature Photography Class

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.

STOGROW Farm Open House... and Square Foot Gardening

I stopped by the STOGROW farm open house this afternoon. STOGROW is St. Olaf College's student-run garden research and organic works farm. The farm uses organic and sustainable methods to produce fresh produce that it sells to the Bon Appetit kitchens on campus. Bon Appetit then uses the produce in daily meals for St. Olaf students and for the various organizations that visit St. Olaf during the summer.

Not only does the farm feature enough tomato and squash plants to feed an army, it is an educational garden, demonstrating a variety of techniques such as raised beds, French intensive double-dug beds, and square-foot gardening (read on for more about that).

Mel Bartholomew's book Square Foot Gardening, and now a companion website, advocates planting modest amounts in neatly divided square-foot plots, making them easy to take care of and allowing people to grow some of their own food in a small space. I highly recommend it for people who would like to do just that. His website shows permanently constructed divided beds, but you can approach the technique more simply; I've often just laid twigs on the ground to mark my squares.

STOGROW Farm Tour this Saturday

I'm planning to stop by the STOGROW farm tour this Saturday. STOGROW is St. Olaf College's student-run garden research and organic works farm. The farm uses organic and sustainable methods to produce fresh produce that it sells to the Bon Appetit kitchens on campus. Bon Appetit then incorporates the food into daily meals for St. Olaf students and for the various organizations that visit St. Olaf during the summer.

They're hosting a summer festival Saturday, July 21, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event will include tours of the natural lands, beekeeping demonstrations, music, face painting, sheep shearing, and food . The festival is free and open to the public. More info is available here.

The farm is located just west of the St. Olaf campus, at 8997 Eaves Ave. (just off Highway 19 on the "hospital" road), directly behind the Cannon River Watershed Project.