Afleveringen
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Gathered around a bonfire on the Winter Solstice, the hostess asked us each to share one moment from the past year that made us go, âWow!â Despite the fact that my year had included rafting the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, my favorite âwowâ moment happened on a river much closer to home. One lovely afternoon last May, I set out with a friend to paddle an upper section of the Namekagon River. Approaching a bridge, a burst of twittering, movement, and flashes of yellow in the alder shrubs drew my attention. Squinting, I thought I spotted a black cap on one of the tiny heads, and quickly pulled into an eddy.
Sure enough, our binoculars revealed a flock of half-a-dozen or more little birds, âyellow as a lemon, with a smooth, black capâŠâ as Mary Oliver described them. Laughing in delight, we felt like weâd just conjured these Wilsonâs Warblers with her poem.
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Chickadees cache as many as one hundred thousand food items per year. Not only do chickadees remember their seed cache sites, but they also remember details like which food items were the most favored and which seeds have already been eaten by them or by a thief. To support such an incredible memory, chickadees grow 30 percent more neurons in the fall when caching behavior peaks. Last April, researchers at Columbia University added to our understanding of chickadee memory. They discovered that chickadees create âneural barcodesâ and essentially create their own system for inventory and checkoutâjust like at a grocery store!
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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While digesting one of the many rounds of holiday feasts and leftovers, with plates of cookies in between, a headline caught my eye: âBig brains or big guts: Choose one.â As much as the post-holiday-dinner-brain-fog is real, I donât love the implications of those options. Luckily, the article wasnât about humans. It was examining birds in cold, highly variable habitats, and their struggle to survive. Essentially, birds have two options: spend energy maintaining a big brain that allows them to find high-quality food, or spend energy maintaining a large stomach that can make low-quality food sufficient in high quantities. According to the research, if you are a bird who needs to survive cold winters, you must choose one. Thereâs no middle ground.
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In a landscape of winter white, bits of color really pop. Recently I was on the North Shore of Minnesota when they received several inches of fluffy, wonderful snow. The forest seemed decked out for Christmas with clusters of bright red mountain-ash berries adding color in the woods along the ski trails, around town, and on the rocky shore of Lake Superior. Ruffed grouse appreciate them even more, Iâm sure, as they perch in the dark purple twigs and nibble both berries and buds. And now the trees have given me a bit of a mystery to nibble on too...
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The lack of leaves in this âsee-through seasonâ reveals aspects of the landscape otherwise obscured. For example, âCheck out that nest!â I exclaimed to my friend, and we admired the small cup suspended between a Y in the sugar maple twigs. The placement of the nest, plus the few pale strips of paper from a bald-faced hornet nest woven among grass, bark, and pine needles, told me that it was likely built by a red-eyed vireo.
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On a recent hike in Virginia, a song burst out of a bush beside us. The white-throated sparrow riffed on their usual song, experimenting with a gravely âsweet can-a-NA-da can-a!â âJazzy!â We laughed to each other. I donât usually expect birds to sing in their winter habitat. Birdsâ songs are typically used to attract mates and defend territories, and therefore are most useful in spring and summer. So, we figured we were hearing a young male practicing for the coming year. As it turns out, that was only part of the story.
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Head down, I hurried toward the post office. Then, a spot of color made me stop and smile. A single yellow dandelion and its star of vibrant, toothy leaves nestled into the grass. Iâve always loved dandelions. And, the dandelion may be more useful than I ever imagined! The Kazakh dandelion, a relative of the one in your yard, is an excellent source of natural rubber.
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Once upon a time, and by that, I mean 1.9 billion years ago, the atmosphere was filled with carbon dioxide and methane, and the first inklings of life had only just begun. Volcanic activity in the early oceans, and erosion off the few continents, enriched the water with iron and silica. Cyanobacteria bloomed in those mineral-rich seas, and they also produced at least one type of toxin: oxygen.
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Light from the dining hall at Upham Woods Outdoor Learning Center spilled out, down the hill, under the pines, and onto the bank of the Wisconsin River, where a handful of environmental educators were waiting for a night hike to begin.
I almost hadnât joined the group. This was the final night of the Wisconsin Association of Environmental Education annual conference, and I had a long drive home the next day. Being sleepy for that wouldnât be ideal. But it had been years since Iâd been on a night hike, and I didnât want to miss out.
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An odd series of hollow little clucks and rattles emanated from a patch of lichen-crusted rocks. Was there a friendly alien hiding nearby? Or maybe a Star Wars character that only Han Solo can understand? With short, jerking movements, the camouflaged chatterboxes revealed their identity: ptarmigans.
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The wool of my favorite old rusty orange sweater felt warm and scratchy as I stuffed it into my backpack next to a jacket and camera. The low gray clouds hung onto their rain, but wind gusts flung water drops off the trees as I walked to my car. As soon as I turned onto the gravel road, though, I knew Iâd made the right decision. The much-needed rain had washed dust off the autumn leaves and saturated their colors. This was a perfect day for a scenic drive through a rainbow forest.
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Ever since I discovered how to read the glaciated landscape of Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, Iâve been fascinated by these massive forces of nature. Admiring them from afar, seeing them up close, paddling among icebergs, touching their iceâŠglaciers are even more amazing than Iâd expected. This week Iâve been busy leading field trips, but Iâve been dreaming of a time when I was a participant on two field trips that involved paddling near glaciers in Alaska.
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By Elliot Witscher with Emily Stone
In the bright sunlight and heat of the afternoon, the cool, fresh, flowing water from a pipe in Prentice Park in Ashland, WI, was a welcome treat. I wasnât expecting to find a unique geological feature in an unassuming city park. But walking down the hill from the parking lot, we found a plain metal pipe, surrounded by gravel, with water gushing from it. Standing in a circle with the 20 other people also taking the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training, I learned from Professor Tom Fitz that this was a flowing artesian well. -
As our water taxi motored into the harbor, a gray-headed water bird floated around the corner of a barnacle-crusted rock. A Pacific Loon!
Having spotted one new species of loon, my interest in seeing the others grew. The afternoon that I arrived at the Toolik Field Station to prepare for doing caribou research, I took a short walk around the base to get a feel for the area. The tremolo of a loon flying overhead sent a thrill down my spine, and I watched the large bird land on the far side of Toolik Lake. Were they a Common Loon? They sounded similar. But the logo for Toolik features a Yellow-billed Loon, and I was sure the scientists would have chosen them deliberately. Now that Iâd seen the most similar loon to the ones Iâd left back home, my last goal was to see the most different loon. -
A small group of first graders nearly vibrated with excitement as they gathered in a circle on the carpet at the front of their room. They remembered me from last school year, when Iâd brought tubs full of nature stuff to their kindergarten classroom. For those first Museum Mobile visits, we focused on exploring nature using our five senses. Now, as first graders, I explained, we get to practice those skills againâŠby using our eyes to make observations about spiders! I was heartened by the wave of enthusiasm â not fear â that rippled through the group.
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Floating down the river, exploring the side canyons, relaxing around camp, I was always on the lookout for both the novel and the familiar. A giant insect Iâd never seen before but knew immediately to be a Tarantula-hawk Wasp caught my attention just as easily as the glossy black feathers of a Common Raven. After a few days of pointing out something Iâd noticed, or explaining the basics of a geological feature, I found more questions coming my way from the other participants. With each teachable moment, I felt more connected to both the canyon and my fellow rafters. I wasnât surprised at the way this unfolded, and probably, neither are you.
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Due to a stuffy nose, Iâm not recording a new episode for you this week. I did pull forward this episode from 2023 about the elk herd near Clam Lake.
Morning mist hung low in the sky as a dozen elk ran across a clearing. A similarly sized herd of Museum members held our breath and grinned at our good luck. It was luck 3 billion years in the making.
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Curtains of vibrant lights were moving just above the horizon. The aurora! My jaw must have dropped as I stumbled backward to lean against the car, and tears welled up as I tilted my head back for a better view. The moon hung full and bright on my east. To my west, spruce trees were silhouetted against the faint, rosy afterglow of the setting sun. And all across my southern sky, northern lights danced in curtains of green and white and pink. The curtains were woven of many wispy streaks, as if I was seeing the individual particles of solar wind blazing through our atmosphere. Northern lights are not just an awesome benefit to living on Earth; they are an absolute necessity to our survival. Our Earth defends us. And the result is unspeakable beauty.
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With the rough, rolling, cold, wet ferry ride behind us, we disembarked gratefully at the Windigo dock on the southwest corner of Isle Royale National Park. Isle Royale, a 45 mile long and 9 mile wide bedrock island, is teeming with life that somehow made the treacherous journey. We hoisted our packs and started off down the trail. Before long, we met several pairs of hikers just ending their trips. We asked about their route on the island, their hometown, and which ferry they took. In essence, we asked âHow did you get here?â Mostly they used the water route, but one couple arrived by air in a float plane. Historically, making winter crossings by dogsled was also common. Isle Royale is not an easy place to get to, or to get around, and yet life surrounded us on all sides. Soon I started asking âHow did you get here?â to everything we saw.
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