Ptarmigans on Top of the World

Author’s Note: This week I’m at a conference, but on recent hikes, I’ve been seeing a lot of grouse. In 2018, I spent the entire summer in Alaska, and got to meet ruffed grouse’s weird cousins. This article was first published back then. Enjoy! – Emily

Damp oak leaves crinkled under my boots, but few other sounds broke the North Country Trail’s tranquility. Then the whump-whump-whump of a ruffed grouse drumming filled my chest. It’s a sound usually associated with spring, but this male had a legitimate purpose. As young males leave their brood and seek a territory, established males reassert their claims, effectively telling the youngsters to move on. 

The noises of grouse—even the startling ruckus they cause when flushing—are a quintessential part of the Northwoods. But I wonder if they would sound odd to an outsider? This summer in Alaska I met some cousins of our ruffed grouse, and boy did they sound odd to this outsider!

The day dawned frosty and clear. I continued driving north along the Taylor Highway and then east on the Top of the World Highway. As I neared and then crossed the Canadian border, it became clear that the road was aptly named. The views across rocky, round-topped hills were spectacular and generally unobstructed by trees. I pulled over at every opportunity, and at one turnout I found a dirt road scraped into the tundra that disappeared over a distant edge. With the childhood favorite “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” running through my head, I started walking. 

Top of the World Highway just across the border into the Yukon.

Soon another sound cut in. 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.

Our ruffed grouse grow comb-like bristles on the sides of their toes to provide snowshoe-like floatation and traction on icy aspen twigs. In contrast, ptarmigans have feet so fuzzily covered in feathers that their genus, Lagopus, means “hare-footed.” They are well-suited to the tundra habitats they prefer.

Close-up of a rock ptarmigan's feathered feet. Photo by Emily Stone.

Look closely at the feet of this spruce grouse--you can see the pectinations on his toes! Photo by Emily Stone.

Can you see the fringe of pectinations on the sides of these ruffed grouse toes? Photo By Emily Stone.

All grouse and ptarmigan seem well-adapted for snow-shoeing.

Alaska is home to three species of ptarmigans. White-tailed ptarmigans seek out alpine neighborhoods with marmots, mountain goats, and Dall sheep. Their range is limited to North America. Willow ptarmigans prefer the lush vegetation of streamsides and marshy tundra. Rock ptarmigans inhabit high elevations and latitudes where sparse vegetation reveals their namesakes. Both willow and rock ptarmigans are circumpolar, and can be seen in Scandinavia, Russia, Japan, Scotland, and the Alps.

A willow ptarmigan in Denali National Park.

Peering through my camera, I could barely pick out birds among the rocks. Fine bars of dark and light brown, flecked with white, draped over one bird’s top half, while pure white pantaloons peeked out underneath. A scarlet eyebrow labeled that one as a male. Most other birds in this flock of a dozen or more lacked that conspicuous eyebrow and had brown patterns extending much lower—females and young. Based on the location, and the fact that willow ptarmigans would have been more rufous brown, I guessed that these were rock ptarmigans.

Male rock ptarmigans keep their white feathers longer into the breeding season. Photo by Emily Stone.

Ptarmigans seem tricky to identify by their plumage, though, because it is always shifting with the seasons. Most birds have just two different plumages per year—breeding and non-breeding. Ptarmigans molt three times a year in order to stay camouflaged in the ever-changing tundra. A pure white winter coat is the classic look for all rock ptarmigans. Only the outsides of their tails and a stripe from eye to bill remain dark. When spring winds whisper, males don an avian tuxedo in the form of dark feathers on their head and neck, and they strut about with red combs inflated. Meanwhile, females fade into the background with mottled brown and flecks of white. They are so well-camouflaged that Arctic foxes have been observed walking right past them.

Female rock ptarmigans have such amazing camouflage that they are hard to spot from even a few feet away. Photo by Emily Stone.

As the snow melts, the remaining white feathers on males’ bellies really stand out. In fact, their breeding plumage may be a little too eye-catching. The predation rate on male ptarmigans skyrockets during breeding season. That’s probably why they roll in the dust as soon as their mate begins egg-laying. Using this style of camouflage, bachelors and polygamous males can precisely customize how long they stay sexy in order to maximize breeding opportunities. Once they’re safely dirty, a full molt into summer browns can proceed at their leisure. Finally, both males and females gain grayish feathers for fall and then almost immediately turn back to white for the winter.

Of course I didn’t know all of that as my eyes were going crossed trying to see these amazingly camouflaged birds among the rocks. I just enjoyed their odd sounds and the “Where’s Waldo” game of trying to spot them. Although the ptarmigans were nearly invisible, they also were pretty tame. It’s no wonder that they are an important game bird in the far north and have been named the official bird or game bird for Nunavut, Newfoundland, and Labrador. 

Ptarmigans were also important to gold miners trying to survive brutal winters in the late 1800s. Earlier that morning I’d passed through an old gold mining town that wanted to honor the tasty birds who kept them alive through long winters. Unfortunately, Ptarmigan proved too hard to spell, so they ended up naming their town Chicken—just one more thing on the tundra that sounds odd to an outsider.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

A Beautiful Orange Day

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 I’d 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.

The sky began to drip just a tad as I pulled into the parking lot for Morgan Falls and St. Peter’s Dome in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, so I dug the jacket out of my pack before ambling down the wide, flat trail. The pink, purple, and yellow wildflowers were bedraggled from the rain, and a motionless bee clung to one of them, too cold to move.

The hike up was beautiful, too. Even though this trail is rocky enough that I had to look down a lot, there was a carpet of colorful leaves and vibrant patches of happy moss to admire. I even spotted a fat little short-tailed shrew scurrying around the same hillside where I often find fat little bumble bees in May. Both species have venom, although at opposite ends of their bodies.

Gray clouds still hung low when I reached the overlook, but below them was a spectacular tapestry of orange. I visit this overlook every fall, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it quite so orange. In Crayola’s words, the shades included mango tango, atomic tangerine, macaroni and cheese, neon carrot, and my personal favorite, burnt sienna. In science’s word: carotene.

All summer, orange carotene pigments in the leaves captured wavelengths of light that the green chlorophyll could not, and then transferred that energy over to help fuel photosynthesis. Yellow xanthophyll pigments absorbed dangerous excess energy in the leaf and dissipated it as heat. This prevented cell damage, and warmed the surrounding environment. All summer, vibrant green chlorophyll was the star of the show, and outshone all the rest. As chlorophyll breaks down and is resorbed, though, its trusty sidekicks are revealed.

I snapped several photos before the sound of raindrops on leaves told me that it was time to hike back down.

Despite the vibrant colors in the tree canopy, the unfrosted understory was still very green. That’s why two little dots of bright orange at about knee height caught my eye. Looking closer, I discovered that they were orange fruits on a green plant. The fruits were the size of small marbles, and each had a tiny tuft of leaves on top like a strawberry. They sat snugged up on either side of the stem, right on top of two broad leaves with wide petioles. A few inches down the stem, the scene was repeated, but with the leaves and fruits rotated a quarter turn. Below that, a third set of leaves and fruits matched orientation with the top ones.

Ah ha! I’d never met this plant in person before, and the fact that they were growing here, on one of my favorite trails, irked me just a little. I hike here multiple times a year, and often teach about spring wildflowers. Why hadn’t I noticed them before? Why did I finally see them that day? The second question was much easier – three people asked me to identify photos of this plant in the past month!

Orange-fruited Horse Gentian is a member of the honeysuckle family, Caprifoliaceae. The Northern Fly Honeysuckle growing nearby was small and delicate in comparison, though. The cousins share the traits of leaves arranged oppositely around the stem, smooth leaf margins, and roundish, orangish fruits. Fly honeysuckle has delicate woody twigs and much smaller features, while my new acquaintance had leaves the size and shape of bunny ears. In fact, its these big leaves, more suited to a tree than an understory herb, that earns the descriptor “horse,” which often denotes coarseness or a large size.

Northern Fly Honeysuckle

When they bloom in late spring, Orange-fruited Horse Gentians produce 2 to 6 brownish purple, tubular flowers in each leaf axil, where the fruits now sit. The flowers of true gentians are also tubular, and also have 5 petals, but that’s the extent of the similarity, despite the name.

Here's a gentian I found in Alaska. 

This plant isn’t common in northern Wisconsin, because they prefer to grow in rich soil. Still, I will be on the lookout the flowers next spring! My hunch is that they bloom after the mosquitoes have hatched, which makes botanizing much harder. The bright fruits, appearing after the mosquitoes have diminished and colored with orange carotene pigments just like the autumn leaves, may always be easier to find.

You know, I’ve always heard that carotene, especially beta-carotene, is good for eye health. I wonder if there are any benefits from simply looking at it? On this beautiful orange day, I think I might have absorbed some happiness through my eyes.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Paddling Among Icebergs

Author’s Note: This week I’ve been busy leading field trips, but I’ve been dreaming of a time when I was a participant. In 2018, I spent the entire summer in Alaska, and had two chances to paddle near glaciers. Enjoy! – Emily

After hiking up to the Harding Ice Field in Kenai Fjords National Park, I wanted to do more than just look down onto the complex world of glacial ice from high above. Through a friend from Northland College, I discovered that Adventure Sixty North, a guide service in Seward, runs sea kayak trips to the toe of a calving glacier.

I was glad for my brand-new, bright green rain jacket as I boarded a water taxi the next morning in the cold, steady drizzle I’ve come to expect from Alaska. Back at the Adventure Sixty North shop, our guides, Sunny and Nick, had outfitted us with dry bags for our stuff, and supplied any other gear we didn’t already own. After two-and-a-half months in Alaska, I was well-prepared with the ubiquitous brown Xtratuf boots, rain pants, and my cheerfully green jacket.

The water taxi ride itself was spectacularly filled with sea otters, orcas, two kinds of puffins, rocky cliffs and crags, sea lions, a bristle-thighed curlew, hot coffee, and good conversation. We landed on the gravely beach of a glacial moraine about two miles from the current glacial terminus to switch from one type of boat to another. Then we began paddling among bobbing chunks of glacial ice in kayaks.

As we glided through the maze of mini-bergs, Neoprene pogies—which are little hand pockets that Velcro around the paddle shaft—kept our hands warm despite the ice water. About a half-mile from the glacier’s front we paused and floated, admiring the huge, pale-blue tongue of ice that reached down out of the clouds and into the sea.

Suddenly, thunder rumbled. A little bubble of excitement rose up in my chest. I love thunderstorms, and I’ve missed them while in Alaska. This was even better. The ice was rumbling. We searched the blue cliff at the water’s edge for movement, but found none. The movement must have been farther up the glacier, or deep within. After a few moments, thunder rumbled again. This time we watched a chunk of ice tumble into the sea. A small white avalanche of crushed ice poured in behind it, and a wave spread out from the glacier. We gasped and cheered.

Glaciers are constantly moving; that’s what makes them glaciers. During the hundreds of years that snow built up and compressed older snow beneath it, pressed out all the air bubbles, and caused the crystals to reform into dense ice, it wasn’t a glacier. Finally, when that huge mass of ice began to flow downhill or out toward their margin under their own weight, a glacier was born.

Aialik Glacier, the one we were scanning for action, moves forward two to four feet per day. Under pressure, ice can bend and flow. Near the glacier’s surface, however, the brittle ice must crack to accommodate the hidden topography below. A glacier’s speed is due to a combination of the ice’s thickness, the gradient of its valley, and the presence of water at its base. Add in the fact that Aialik is a tidewater glacier that ends in warm, constantly fluctuating seawater, and you have a very dynamic system.

We studied the heavily crevassed surface of the glacier, and all made guesses about which section would go next. Sunny had explained that the spires of ice formed by intersecting crevasses were called seracs. Three out of the seven paddlers in our group pointed to the same, precarious-looking section. Minutes later, thunder rumbled and that heavily fractured serac splashed into the sea. After several minutes more, we bobbed on its wake.

Thunderous calving into the ocean was exciting, but I still wanted to get up close and personal with big icebergs. A few days later I filled the last spot on another kayak trip, this time with Anadyr Adventures in Valdez, Alaska. This adventure skipped the water taxi and delivered us by van right to the shore of a little proglacial lake right outside town. The Valdez Glacier had scoured a deep valley, dammed one end with a moraine, and melted back. Even though this lake wasn’t affected by tides like Aialik Glacier, water still lubricated turmoil at the toe.

Our morning at Valdez Glacier Lake began in thick fog. This canoe soon launched full of four grown men, two of whom carried huge camera lenses. Photo by Emily Stone.

We launched inflatable kayaks onto mirror-calm water in a dense fog. Huge icebergs loomed in the shallows. Someone made a joke about the Titanic, but that didn’t stop us from paddling up for a closer look. Most bergs were heaped with blankets and piles of wet, brown sediments, which indicated that they were floating upright, in the same orientation as when they’d been attached to the glacier. Where chunks had broken off to reveal their inner ice, though, the crystals were huge, sparkling, and made luminous patterns of white and blue.

Up close, the broken and melting sides of the icebergs were a luminous blue. Our inflatable, sit-on-top, tandem kayaks felt very stable and maneuvered easily for a closer look. Photo by Emily Stone.

Glacial ice is dense, with very little air. As light passes through it, the wavelengths of red and yellow light are absorbed, and blue light is scattered and reflected back to our eyes. The deeper the light penetrates into the ice, the more blue it appears. Snow and ice with more air among their crystals scatter light back from their surface.

A few bergs were pure white, at least from a distance. Those had rolled over, exposing their cleaner core of ice (which gains air as they melt, making them white instead of blue), and dumping their sediment load into the lake. Today, the ice dripped placidly, melting bit by bit. Our guide, though, has watched these behemoths split, roll over, and shatter. As I ran my hand along the smooth, wet side of one berg, I was grateful for the contrasting lack of thunder on this adventure.

Although our day began in thick fog, blue sky hovered above. Seeing the lake and icebergs in both lights was a fun part of the experience. Photo by Emily Stone.

After lunch, the fog burned off and revealed a brilliant blue sky. We scrambled up a canyon wall to get a better look at the glacier. The brown and white striped river of ice flowed from around a corner and into view. At the terminus lay a jumble of broken, dirty ice chunks, in the process of detaching fully into the lake. With bright sun illuminating everything, the lake seemed small; in the fog, we might have been on an endless sea.

One of our group explored near two icebergs that have rolled over, exposing clean ice and dumping sediment into the lake. Behind the left hand iceberg you can see the deep canyon containing the Valdez Glacier. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Valdez Glacier is a river of ice, with a healthy dose of rocks and gravel mixed in. It seems to flow relatively smoothly back in the canyon, but becomes unstable and breaks up as its terminus hits the lake it created. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Ever since I discovered how to read the glaciated landscape of Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, I’ve been fascinated by these massive forces of nature. Admiring them from afar, seeing them up close, paddling among icebergs, touching their ice…glaciers are even more amazing than I’d expected…and I’m not done exploring them!

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

A Gift of Geology: Artesian Wells

Elliot Witscher, guest author, was a Summer Naturalist Intern for the Cable Natural History Museum last summer. Photo by Elliot Witscher.

In May, Elliot Witscher graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a degree in Geological Sciences. As part of their experience as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Cable Natural History Museum, Elliot participated in a Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training. This fall, they began work at an outdoor school in Illinois.

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 wasn’t 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.

Professor Tom Fitz teaches about artesian wells in Prentice Park, Ashland, WI.
Photo by Emily Stone.

This random pipe in the middle of a city park doesn’t come from the city’s water system; it taps directly into the groundwater beneath our feet. There is no pump. Nothing brings the water up to the surface except for the pressure that it’s under naturally…with a little help from the glaciers.

That day began at a gravel pit about 30 miles to the southwest, as the crow flies, near the town of Cable, WI. At the intersection of geology and industry, our Master Naturalist class learned how the gravel pit provides various sizes of sand, pebbles, and even small boulders that are used for road fill, landscaping, and foundations.

In the gravel pit. Photo by Emily Stone.

Thousands of years ago, a glacier covered this area, and this gravel was brought here by a power river of meltwater flowing under the ice, creating a sinuous ridge of material called an esker. This is just one of many glacial landforms in the area that is built from sandy, rocky materials. [Learn more about eskers from Emily Stone during a hike on November 9. Find out more at cablemuseum.org.]

Next, Tom Fitz led us north toward Ashland, and we found ourselves traveling forward in glacial history. As the ice retreated north, water pooled up to its south, and Glacial Lake Duluth formed, covering the western half of what is now Lake Superior with much deeper water. Meltwater flowing off the glacier brought clay and other sediments into the lake.

Clay particles are very small, and can stay suspended in water for a long time, especially if wind or currents keep the water stirred up. But away from shore, where the water was calmer and winter ice cover kept out the wind for long periods, the clay settled to the bottom, creating a thick layer. All around the current shores of Lake Superior, this clay layer covered the gravel that was previously deposited by the glaciers. Iron in the clay turned the soil red.

Tom Fitz teaches the group about clay. Photo by Emily Stone. 

In the uplands of Bayfield County, inland and away from the lake, the glacial gravel is exposed to the surface. When it rains, water quickly and easily enters this permeable layer and moves downhill toward Lake Superior. In the lowlands, near the lake, the layer of clay from Glacial Lake Duluth covers the gravel. The water moving through the gravel layer becomes trapped under the impermeable layer of clay. All of the water from the uplands pushes down on the water under the clay in the lowlands, and pressure builds up.

When a well, like the one in Prentice Park, is drilled through the clay layer into the gravel layer, that pressure pushes the water up toward the surface, creating a flowing artesian well—a well that flows from confined groundwater to the surface due to pressure.

These wells are amazing sources of water, but they are limited by one major reality: if too many of them are punched through, the pressure created by the clay layer will be diminished until eventually the pressure will drop too low and the wells will stop flowing. These amazing natural phenomena are limited. If we try to develop too many, they will all be at risk.

Last summer, as I explored the backroads of Bayfield County, I found myself occasionally stumbling across little handwritten signs or Google Maps locations titled “artesian well.” I smiled to myself, thinking about the geologic marvels that led to this important resource. And then I stopped, filled my bottle, and enjoyed some clear, cold water.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Four Out of Five Loons Agree

Author’s Note: I’m traveling quite a bit this month, which means I’ve been reminiscing about past trips. In 2018, I spent the entire summer in Alaska, and saw a few new species of loons. This article recounts those sightings. After leading Loon Pontoon Tours for 14 summers, this was a real treat! Enjoy! -- Emily

The haunting wail of a Common Loon drifted through my barely cracked window one night last May. Amid leaning towers of books and clothes that would soon be headed to Alaska, I gave a wistful sigh. Of all the things I was sad about leaving for a summer, the loons on Lake Namakagon and my duties as naturalist on the Cable Natural History Museum’s weekly Loon Pontoon Tours were near the top of my list.

A Common Loon on Lake Namakagon. Photo by Emily Stone. 

After seven years [now 14!] of studying loons’ adaptations and interpreting their behavior for visitors, I’ve developed a much deeper appreciation for these charismatic fish-eaters. Common Loons are just the most southern-ranging (and therefore the most visible) of five different species of loons, though. Despite their name, they aren’t even the most numerous!

To my delight, Common Loons were a regular fixture in lakes along the highways I traveled during my sabbatical. As I drove from Haines, AK, through a narrow arm of British Colombia, I gawked at my first treeless tundra of the trip. I also spotted two Common Loons, their bills tucked away against the cold, as they floated on a chilly lake.

It was mid-July before I added to my list of loon species. Ed Berg, a retired ecologist and geologist from Homer, had just taken me across Kachemak Bay to see the Grewingk Glacier. As our water taxi motored into the harbor, a gray-headed water bird floated around the corner of a barnacle-crusted rock. I snapped two quick photos, then zoomed in on my screen.

Pacific Loons are the most numerous of the five loon species. Photo by Emily Stone.

The profile was unmistakably loon. Their pale gray head, black and white stripes down the side of their neck, and smaller checkered patch on their back distinguished them from our Common Loons, and narrowed the ID down to a Pacific or Arctic Loon. The two species look almost identical, and Pacific Loons were only classified as their own species in 1985! The range maps for each species made ID easy, though. Pacific Loons are found throughout Alaska, while Arctic Loons are rare visitors.

Other than being slightly smaller than the Common Loon and nesting on lakes above tree line, the life history of Pacific Loons is very similar to our familiar ones. They nest on shore, eat a variety of small fish, need a long runway to take off from the water, and are clumsy on land. In a unique twist, the ones who winter off the coast of Japan have been observed cooperating with each other to concentrate schools of fish.

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.

During my return trip across the Toolik Lake Inlet and back toward the dining hall, I spotted a couple of loons fishing at the mouth of that little creek. Using my camera’s zoom again, I examined the black and white plumage—exactly like a Common Loon’s—and peered excitedly at the pale-colored bill where I usually see black. Not only were these my sought-after Yellow-billed Loons, but the pair was feeding their chick little minnows, in exactly the same way that I’ve watched Common Loons feed their young on my Loon Pontoon Tours! I later read that a pair raises chicks there almost every year.

Yellow-billed Loons are close relatives of our local Common Loons, with similar breeding and feeding behaviors. Photo by Emily Stone.

It’s no surprise that these pale-beaked loons feel so similar to my old friends. Scientists theorize that Common and Yellow-billed Loons only diverged into separate species during the last glacial period, 100,000 years ago or so. Ice separated loons living in the continental U.S. from loons living in the far north along the Arctic Ocean. Many of their breeding, feeding, and behavioral traits remain similar. The Yellow-billed Loon is the least numerous of the five loon species, as well as the largest. And, probably due to their larger size, they also have a deeper voice than our Common Loons.

Now that I’d seen the most similar loon to the ones I’d left back home, my last goal was to see the most different loon. Red-throated Loons were probably the first loon species to evolve their current form, about 21,400,000 years ago. They are also the smallest, and weigh only 2-6 pounds compared to the Yellow-billed’s 9-14 pounds. Due to their size, Red-throated Loons can use smaller ponds, take off directly from water or land without a runway, and breed even on the northernmost coast of Greenland.

Tessa and I had barely started our second day of driving the caribou transect together, when I spotted a suspicious bird on a puddle a mile or so south of Deadhorse. I zoomed all the way in and steadied my camera on the truck’s open window, snapping photos until the bird took off in a shower of water droplets. Eager to find caribou, we got going, too. It wasn’t until I loaded the photos onto my laptop that I noticed the loon’s red throat.

Red-throated Loons can be hard to find in the U.S., but are actually the most widely distributed loon and range across the far north of North America, Europe, Greenland, and Asia. They can get airborne without a long runway, which allows them to use smaller bodies of water. Photo by Emily Stone.

Look as we might on three more days of driving, I never caught sight of that Red-throated Loon again.

Maybe someday—while I’m out looking for gray-headed chickadees in Scandinavia, Russia, or northern Japan—I’ll be lucky enough to spot an Arctic Loon as well. In the meantime, I was happy to return home in time to see the Common Loons on Lake Namakagon. My journey has ended, and their fall migration has begun.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

First Grade Spiders

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 I’d 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. We smelled a sprig of white cedar, listened to acorns rattle in a cup, felt the smooth bone of a deer antler, and looked at the orange teeth on a beaver skull. We left taste for snack time.

Now, as first graders, I explained, we get to practice those skills again…by using our eyes to make observations about spiders! I was heartened by the wave of enthusiasm – not fear – that rippled through the group. No matter what grade Mr. Brinker is teaching at the Drummond Elementary School, I can count on his students to be curious and enthusiastic.

Holding up one of the several spider specimens encased in a little puck of acrylic, I assured the first graders that they were “real but dead.” We also discussed how the spider couldn’t hurt the student, nor could the student hurt the spider in this clever display. These are some of my favorite specimens at the Museum. Lois Nestel, our founding naturalist, did a wonderful job of preserving the fragile beings in a very accessible way. Now, a few decades later, they are still allowing kids to get a closer look!

I handed one spider to each kid, and then started a rhythm of looking, then passing the specimens around the circle. “This one’s shiny!” “Look at how long the legs are!” This one is so tiny!” Their exclamations showed that they were thinking critically. Once all the specimens were back in the tub, I asked for students to share their observations formally, after raising their hands. “Some were really small!” “Some were really big!” “They all had eight legs!” “They all had two body sections,” were the replies.

“Ok,” I summarized, “so we noticed that even though there were different shapes, sizes, and colors of spiders, they all had a few things in common. Now we’ll dress up one of your friends to look like a spider!”

I chose Levi, a particularly enthusiastic student sitting next to me to be the volunteer. First, we put a black tunic over his head. “This is the spider’s cephalothorax,” I explained. “It’s a combination of a head and thorax.” “I’ve never heard that, say that again?” asked Mr. Brinker, peeking out from around his computer screen. One of the reasons I love teaching in his classroom is that Mr. Brinker loves learning new facts and vocabulary just as much (or even more!) than the students. He sets a great example!

Then I tied a piece of black fabric around Levi’s waist to be the spider’s abdomen. Two points at the bottom represented spinnerets for sending out silk. “Spiders have just two body sections,” I reviewed. “Insects have three body parts!” blurted another student, so excited to share knowledge that they answered my next question before I’d even asked.

Then I started adding legs to the costume. The kids laughed when I pulled each gangly, homemade limb out of the bag. Another Museum Mobile educator had made the legs from black pantyhose and foam cylinders. They were jointed and floppy, and when I started attaching them to a strip of Velcro hidden under Levi’s arms, the class erupted in laughter. Through their merriment we were able to count six legs as I attached them, three on each side. “Where are the last two legs?” I asked. And Levi kicked out his toes to show that his own legs were counted in the total of eight.

More giggles erupted when I pulled out the googly eyes and started attaching them to Velcro at the top of the cephalothorax tunic. “All the spiders in Wisconsin have eight eyes, but a few around the world have just six, or four or two or none,” I explained. And then I attached two pointy fangs (made out of black foam) to the top of Levi’s shoulders. I waited until that round of giggles died down to explain that the science word for these is chelicerae. Mr. Brinker perked up again at this fun new word. As I dismantled the spider costume, we reviewed all those things that spiders have in common.

With the time we had left, we talked about how spiders are different, too. First, I laid out photos of different habitats – a pond, a leaf, a flower, and two kinds of webs. Then we matched a spider species to each one – a fishing spider, a jumping spider, a crab spider, an orb-weaver, and a funnel-web spider.

Spiders are amazing. Orb-weaver spiders spin these wonderful webs. Photo by Emily Stone.

I visited Mrs. Ramsey’s first grade class, too, and presented essentially the same lesson. In her class, though, there was one little girl who confided that both she and her mom were scared of spiders. She bravely pushed through, though, and by the end of class she was asking “Where can I learn more about spiders?” Mrs. Ramsey was ready, telling the kids they’d have a unit on spiders in science class soon.

Crab spiders don’t build elaborate webs, instead, they match the color of a white or yellow flower and then wait in ambush for an insect to land. Photo by Emily Stone.

By the end of those two lessons, I was giddy with the kids’ contagious enthusiasm, impressed by the teachers’ ability to inspire and direct curious minds, and optimistic about this community where the children love nothing more than to learn about nature. I can’t wait to visit them again in Winter and Spring!

A jumping spider with two huge eyes! Photo by Emily Stone.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Grand Canyon Connections

The sweet, descending notes of a Canyon Wren cascaded down the sandstone cliff and reached my ears above the rumble of a 30-horsepower motor on the back of our raft. In the days leading up to this rafting trip down the Colorado River, I’d been hoping to hear that sound. I’d come to love the song of the Canyon Wren when I was an intern in Southeast Utah almost 20 years ago.

A Canyon Wren sings above our raft. Photo by Emily Stone.

Little else felt familiar as the sandstone cliffs and dusty shale slopes of the Grand Canyon rose above the 19 of us on that raft. I knew just one person on the trip. Colleen Miniuk is a professional photographer I’d become friends with during Outdoor Writers Association of America conferences. This was one of the many photography workshops she hosts each year, and two years ago she’d convinced me to add this “Grand Canyon Rafting Photo Retreat” to my bucket list. But she was at the back of the raft with the guides, and I sat at the very front with strangers in a strange landscape.

As we slid down the muddy river from our launch at Lee’s Ferry, flocks of little yellow birds swirled among the willows. Who were they? I’d left my binoculars behind due to restrictions on the amount of gear we could bring, and my camera with the big zoom was packed away in a dry bag. A small flock of ducks spooked at our passage and cruised down the river in a tight, wedge-like formation. Who were they?

And then a familiar statuesque form along the shore spread their huge gray wings, crooked their long neck into an S, and vanished into the immensity of the canyon’s shadows. For that instant, I felt at home. I’ve been watching Great Blue Herons disappear around river bends all of my life. During my years as a seasonal naturalist, living and working in Utah, Maine, Minnesota, California, Vermont, and Alaska, I spotted herons stalking through all the possible iterations of shallow waters with fish. They are adaptable and increasing in number.

“GBH!” exclaimed the rafter next to me, as he referenced the movie The Big Year and birders’ shorthand name for the heron. Mike, I reminded myself of his name and decided he might be a friend.

Our first campsite nestled into the mouth of Tanner Wash on a pile of rocks and sand. I set up my cot a little away from the group. Another participant, Larry, intercepted me on my way back to the dining area. “There’s a beautiful patch of flowers with lots of moths right over there,” he told me, and offered to show me the way. Somehow, in just a few hours, he’d figured out that I’m interested in bugs and flowers.

Various species of evening primrose flowers grow beautifully in both the Grand Canyon and the Northwoods. Photo by Emily Stone.

I immediately recognized the four-petaled yellow flowers with prominent cross-shaped stigmas in their centers as one of the many species of evening primrose. Their cousins, Common Evening Primrose, had been blooming along roadsides in Wisconsin when I’d left for this trip. As dusk fell, I tried to photograph the White-lined Sphinx moths and big black carpenter bees who were buzzing among the flowers. The bees were a western species, but the moths are almost as widespread as the Great Blue Heron.

Bats also emerged in the twilight; their tiny forms silhouetted against the darkening blue of the sky. I hadn’t seen that many bats since before White-nose Syndrome devastated our bats back home. Bats fluttered by during morning hikes up shaded side canyons, too, and I even snapped a photo of one roosting on a sandstone wall. Using iNaturalist, I identified them as a Canyon Bat, the smallest bat species in the United States.

(I think you can see all of my iNaturalist observations from the trip by clicking this link.)

Over several nights of listening, I eventually realized that the tiny sounds I heard coming from the sky were bits of the bats’ echolocation calls that dipped into the range of human hearing. Regularly spaced chirps were their “search phase” calls helping them to navigate and locate prey, while the faster “feeding buzz” indicated when a bat was closing in on a moth and needed higher resolution information. We explained these calls years ago in the Museum’s Nature’s Superheroes exhibit, but I’d never heard them in the wild, without a device to shift the frequency.

Colleen Miniuk is a professional photographer, but here she takes goofy photos of the raft as we load back up after a side hike. Photo by Emily Stone.

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 I’d 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. Josh and J.P., our river guides, did a great job of explaining the big picture geology, pausing the raft at Bighorn Sheep, and telling the human history of the canyon, too. Colleen, of course, helped us make great photos.

Thisbe's Tarantula-hawk Wasp. Photo by Emily Stone.

Common Ravens are common to both the Northwoods and the Grand Canyon. This one Is perched on a ledge of Tapeats Sandstone. Photo by Emily Stone.

After a few days of pointing out something I’d 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 wasn’t surprised at the way this unfolded, and probably, neither are you. Long ago, as I was soaring across the country from one naturalist adventure to the next with the Great Blue Herons, I decided that my vocation would always be to teach people about nature in a beautiful place. As it turns out…that’s my vacation, too!

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.