Amazing Heron Video

Posted by Kirk Mona Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Those of you who follow the Twin Cities Naturalist page on Facebook may have already seen the video below I shared it there yesterday. If you are not already following on Facebook you can follow this link and click on "like."

This video was taken by Jessie Garza out in Washington state. It has been shared over 1,000 times so far as it is truly amazing. Great Blue Herons are opportunistic feeders and will take food where they can get it. Be sure to watch the whole video!

Backswimmers Bite

Posted by Kirk Mona Monday, July 7, 2014

I took my first job as a naturalist about 17 years ago. I was a summer seasonal at Tamarack Nature Center in White Bear Township, Minnesota. I learned many valuable things that summer but one of the first was a staple of the naturalist trade; Dip netting. 

Take a group of kids down to a lake or pond, scoop around with nets from the shore or dock and empty the contents into kitchen tubs, cool whip containers or whatever you can find. 

The exact mechanics might vary a bit from program-to-program or nature center to nature center. Sometimes we were just looking see what was there. Sometimes we would sort all the macro invertebrates we would find, putting predators in one, tub scavengers in another and decomposers in yet another. In one of my favorite versions, we would sort the animals into small tubs by species, with the kids doing all the identifying, and then tally up the results and look at population dynamics. There are many variations but in the 17 summers, springs and falls I've done dip netting there's always been backswimmers. 

I learned what backswimmers are the very first time I went dip netting. They are one of the more common critters we find.  They are a little less than a centimeter long, swim on their back and use long oar like legs to propel themselves through the water. 

I've seen more than a few backswimmers  in my life. I conservatively estimate I've done somewhere around 510 dip netting programs in the last 17 years. That works out to somewhere around 15,300 students. 

I've scooped backswimmers into buckets, I move them around with spoons and screens, I've had hundreds of kids doing the same.

This weekend though, I learned. something new about backswimmers, they can bite! 

Why didn't anyone ever tell me this? Does everyone else know that backswimmers can bite and I somehow missed this bit of information? How did no backswimmer ever bite one of those 15,000 school kids? 

 I was doing a dip netting program this weekend and wanted to show the public a little backswimmer scurrying around inside a kitchen tub placed on the dock. Some folks had arrived late at the drop-in program and I wanted to catch them up on what we'd been seeing. I used my hand to try the scoop up the little innocent looking backswimmer or maybe just make a little pool in my palm so it could swim around and people could get a good look. The backswimmer did not appreciate my hands-on pedagogical technique. 

I felt a pinch on my pinky finger and quickly pulled my hand out of the water. "Ouch," I said, "I think he just bit me!"

I was quite surprised as I had absolutely no idea they could bite. I was also not ready for what happened next. Instead of the pain going away as I would expect from a tiny pinch from a tiny bug, it got worse and worse. A strong burning sensation spread through my finger as though I had been stung by a paper wasp. 

I saw this as a great personal learning opportunity so here is what I have learned. 

Backswimmers are in the insect order Hemiptera making them "true bugs." True bugs are those insects with piercing mouth parts. Yup, sounds right. They are in the family Notonectidae. 

I'd love to tell you the genus and species of the one that bit me but there are 400 species worldwide and many can only be identified by experts examining differences in the male's genitalia under a microscope. I'll pass on that endevour. 

The reason the bite hurts so much has to do with the hunting technique of the backswimmer. They catch prey with their legs and quickly pierce their skin or exoskeleton with their sharp beak. The backswimmer injects digestive enzymes and other chemicals into the animal which paralyze it and begin to dissolve the insides into goo. Once nice and juicy inside, the backswimmer can suck the prey dry. The enzymes are irritating and burn like the sting of a wasp. 

So, there you go. Backswimmers have a very nasty bite. If 15,000 kids over 17 years managed to not get bitten though you must need to really tick them off to get bitten. 

Must be my lucky day. So far my insides have not liquified. 
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Lily-leaved Twayblade Orchid

Posted by Kirk Mona Sunday, June 22, 2014

While training a volunteer in on plant survey techniques in the prairie at Lowry Nature Center, natural resources staff found a rare orchid. I headed out to look myself and was able to snap this photo.

This is the lily-leaved Twayblade orchid. I was trying to find more info on it online but was initially stumped as I only knew the common name "Twayblade orchid". There are quite a number of plants that go by the name Twayblade orchid and most of them are in the genus Neottia. I searched around the read up on the genus but nothing seemed to match what you see in the photo.

It turns out this is what is commonly called the Lily-leaved Twayblade and it is in a completely different genus. The scientific name of this orchid is Liparis liliifolia. Note that "lilifolia" literally means "lily-leaved." I prefer this common name over some others for that reason. It is less confusing. That's the problem with common makes though, they hold no sway and you can make up your own if you really want to. Some other common names of this plant are Brown Widelip Orchid, Large Twayblade, Purple Twayblade, and Mauve Sleekwort. How's that for confusing? Want to make it more confusing? The reason I had trouble finding the exact species is that the Neottia genus are in deed the "twayblades" while the Liparis genus comprise the "false twayblades".

Okay, so do we call this False Lily-leaved Twayblade? No, that would imply that there is a true Lily-leaved twayblade in the Neottia genus. How about Lily-leaved False Twayblade? That's probably better and more accurate but a mouth full. You can see why scientists and botanists simply stick to Liparis liliifolia.

This particular plant or patch of plants is particularly interesting when you consider this map from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. This map shows which counties have recorded occurrences of Liparis liliifolia.


Liparis liliifolia has never been recorded in Carver County before making this discovery a county record.

Why is it called a Red-Bellied Woodpecker?

Posted by Kirk Mona Tuesday, June 3, 2014






What bird names have you always thought were puzzling?

Partial Leucistic Rose-brested Grosbeak

Posted by Kirk Mona Friday, May 9, 2014

Spring migration is one of my favorite times of the year. On Wednesday, I added 10 new birds to my year list of birds. Thursday I added six more and then today, Friday, I added an additional 11 birds. They just keep coming and it makes it a fun time of year.

One of the birds I look forward to seeing every year is the Rose-brested Grosbeak. People sometimes ask about the name, Grosbeak is derived from the french grosbec. Gros is simply old French for large. The moniker sure fits these beautiful birds.

While at the Lee & Rose Warner Nature Center this morning I checked out the feeders to see what was there. There were numerous Rose-brested Grosbeaks but one caught my eye.

This is a female, though her coloration is aberrant. She is exhibiting partial leucism which I have written about before in other species. Leucism is distinct from Albinism.

Albinism is the total lack of pigment in the body. An albino bird would have all white feathers, pink legs and pink eyes. A leucistic bird has regular colored eyes and legs and the feathers are either paler or they have white patches. The cells of a leucistic bird are damaged and cannot make the pigment necessary for the coloration of some of their feathers. Only the affected cells are white and leucism only affects feathers, which is why the legs and eyes remain the correct color. In contrast, albino birds lack the pigment melanin in all of their cells so their eyes and legs are also not the normal color. Albinism is systemic, affecting the whole body so you cannot have a partial albino.

The partial leucistic grosbeak is interesting. You can see the breast still retains some of the yellowish-orange wash of a female but there is extra white, especially on the head and back.

How much for that book?

Posted by Kirk Mona Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Have you heard the joke that asks what the difference is between a large pizza and a naturalist?

A large pizza can feed a family of four. 

Basically you have to do this job for the love of it. That means when collecting books I have to be, shall we say, price selective. That leather bound Francis Bacon natural history book from 1631 I saw on eBay for $2500 is not in the cards. (No one bid on it by the way so apparently it wasn't in anyone's price range.)

I have a fairly low dollar amount I never go above for books and while it means that I miss out on many books it also means the ones I do get are a great deal. 

I'll go a little higher on something really spectacular but having a firm budget in mind when you go looking for books is a good idea. 

With that in mind, here are a couple if books I came across that were simply well out of my price range (but wonderful!)

First up is this 1917 gilded edition of Birds of Britain by J. Lewis Bonhote. Look at that cover! I've been known to buy a book just for an exquisite cover. The bird motif is great and the use og gilding got shading on the wings is fantastic. The orange-red cloth boards makes the whole thing pop.

The asking price? Why just $350. Ouch. No thanks. 

Of course, you can get the same book in the 1927 edition without gilding and on boring tan cloth boards for just $23. Kinda boring though once you've seen the one above right?

Sometimes a cover is boring and what's inside is the real treat. That's the case with all of the Naturalist's Library series of book by William Jardine. Published in the early 1800s the drawings are real eye candy. 

Unfortunately, each volume goes into the hundreds of dollars. They are probably a good value but not likely to grace my shelves any time soon. The owl is from a multi-volume set on birds of the UK and the hummingbird from a two volume set on just hummingbirds.

What are your favorite nature books? Let me know!

Bloodthirsty Beavers?

Posted by Kirk Mona Friday, March 28, 2014

Photo Credit: Steve (CC license)
A while back a friend forwarded me an Associated Press story about a man in Belarus who was killed by a beaver. The article was full of references to beavers becoming more aggressive in the region.

Here's a line from the second paragraph of the story, "It was the most serious in a string of beaver attacks on humans in Belarus, as the rodents have turned increasingly aggressive when confronted by humans after wandering near homes, shops and schools."

Really? Are we to believe that beavers are somehow increasing their aggressiveness? Was this what they talked about at the last secret trans-national beaver convention?

Let's take just a second to strip away the sensationalist writing style and practice some actual journalism here. The facts in the story speak for themselves once you ignore the reporter's "when beavers attack" angle to the story.

A fisherman was driving down the road and saw a beaver. He got out of the car and grabbed the beaver so his friends could get a picture of him with it. Naturally, the freaked-out beaver thinking it was under attack fought back by biting the guy. Tragically, the beaver bit into an artery in the man's leg and he bled to death.

I say TRAGICALLY because a tragedy is defined as something horrible that happens that is completely avoidable. The beaver did not aggressively demand to be picked up and then bit the man. If you pick up a wild animal it will usually bite you. People should know better than to try to pick up a wild animal for a photo op.

The beaver didn't flag down the car, open the door and attack the man. Beavers are not becoming more aggressive, people are becoming more disconnected with nature and fail to see that there are consequences for their actions. Let's go back to the second paragraph of the article with some emphasis added my be in bold.


A more accurate version of this sentence would read, "It was the most serious in a string of beaver injuries to humans in Belarus, as humans have turned increasingly aggressive when confronting beavers wandering near homes, shops and schools."

Beavers have not suddenly snapped and decided to start attacking humans. They have not mysteriously increased their aggression. It is humans that are becoming increasingly aggressive in their confrontations with beavers and as a result the beavers are reacting by defending themselves like they always have.

If you purposeful hit your head against a wall and it hurts should you blame the wall? If the man had failed to wear a life jacket and drown while fishing would there be articles about how the lakes in Belarus are becoming more aggressive and killing people?

Let's all be safe out there. Wild animals are wild, treat them with respect. They are not teddy bears, puppies or kittens. If you don't want to be attacked by wildlife, don't try to grab it, harass it, feed it or get too close. A little common sense goes a long way.

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