The Season Watch podcast is the newest addition to KAXE's popular phenology programming. Thanks to John Latimer's dulcet tones and outdoor wisdom, the KAXE community has been asking for more, and we're happy to provide!
You can find the special seasonal production as part of the Phenology podcast feed. Phenology can also be found on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, and Google Podcasts.
It’s my favorite month of the year: August!
At this point, I’ve settled comfortably into my summer routine and still have plenty of warm weather ahead of me. (Plus, I no longer need to worry about the start of the school year taking away my opportunity to spend time outside!)
Whether you love the August heat or not, there’s plenty of good stuff to see out there. I hope this podcast will help inspire you to escape from the indoor world for a while.
While commuting
Keep an eye out for wildlife while you’re on the road. I found a Barred Owl sitting in the middle of the road and unable to move in early August. After a series of adventures, I determined it was a fledgling owl that had landed in an unfortunate spot and gotten heat stroke. (My wife and I were able to rehydrate, cool down and release the owl in better condition back where we found it.)
If you happen to find an injured hawk, eagle, owl or other bird of prey, the University of Minnesota Raptor Center will be your friend! You can learn more here.
On roadsides, there are many yellow flowers. Three that can be distinguished from a distance are tansy, goldenrods and sunflowers. Tansy is an invasive species with clusters of small, pill-shaped yellow flowers. (Not sure if it’s a tansy? Break off a leaf — tansy has a strong scent.)
Goldenrods have, as their name suggests, rod-like clusters of many golden-orange or yellow flowers. They are a favorite of many insects.
Sunflowers come in many forms, though the most familiar is the commercial black oil sunflower. Our native species tend to be smaller (though many are quite tall with large flowers) but have the same overall flower pattern. All sunflowers will have a central, pitted disc with a small flower emerging from each “pit.” Surrounding the central disc are many showy petals, which are actually modified leaves, not true petals. (ID tip: Any flower with this general flower structure is a member of Asteraceae, the aster family!)
While walking
Keep your nostrils open, friends: the wild cucumber is flowering, and it smells amazing! Look for their fuzzy white clusters of flowers emerging from vines with smooth-edged maple-shaped leaves. The dead giveaway for this plant is their distinctive seed pods: when green, they look like tiny watermelons covered in spines. In the winter, they dry to tan spiny balls hanging from the brown remnants of the vine.
Like goldenrods and sunflowers, asters are late-blooming flowers that are most prominent in late summer and early fall. Look for their many-petaled flowers on roadsides, near forest edges, along the banks of lakes and rivers, and in prairies! They can be a bit tricky to identify to species: Minnesota Wildflowers has a great identification tool to help you out.
On the water
As a kid, the vibrant red cardinal flower meant the end of summer vacation and the beginning of a new school year. I've seen many of these eye-popping plants blooming along the shores of the St. Croix. If you get a chance, take a close look at the flower: you can see by the shape how a hummingbird that stops for nectar gets a dab of pollen on its forehead.
Muskrats and beavers are getting busy preparing their winter shelters and food stores. To tell the difference, look first at size: beavers are much larger, weighing 40-70 pounds compared to the muskrat’s puny 2-4 pounds. It can be hard to tell at a distance if they’re swimming, however: the muskrat’s tiny body can look like a beaver head.
Another way to tell is by looking at their tail. Beavers’ tails are flat horizontally, with the flat sides facing up and down. Their tails are also thicker and more fleshy compared to muskrats’. Muskrats have tails that are flat vertically, with the flat sides facing side to side. They use these tails for extra propulsion in the water.
Finally, their lodges are quite different. Beaver lodges are composed of substantial wooden sticks, logs and branches with their telltale beaver-chewed ends. Muskrats’ lodges are generally covered in non-woody plants like cattails.
In the open
Goldenrods are hotspots for insect diversity. Look for goldenrod soldier beetles and narrow-headed marsh flies crawling through the blossoms, and goldenrod galls forming on the stems. These galls become midwinter food for chickadees and woodpeckers (and are great bait for winter fishing!). Galls are a kind of “scar tissue” that the plant forms when insects lay eggs inside their tissues.
Spreading dogbane is one of the first plants to turn yellow in anticipation of fall. Unlike some other early-turning plants like the early meadow rue, which slowly turn a pallid whitish-tan, spreading dogbane leaves become a vibrant, eye-popping yellow, which is perfectly set off by the red stems.
In the forest
Deeper in the forest, sarsaparillas and early meadow rues are also turning yellow. The treetops are beginning to acquire a tinge of color. You can learn more about how trees change color here: John Latimer wrote a whole article about it!
Before the leaves drop off for the winter, get out and identify the trees outside your window. Many times, I’ve ended up in January staring out my window at a big old bare-branched tree and trying to remember what kind of leaves it had in summer. (Smarty-pants naturalists can figure it out by looking at the twigs, bark and growth shape, but my pants are not that smart ... yet.)
If you have a bad memory (like mine), you can cut apart a plastic jug and zip-tie a label to a branch. Or, you can draw a map of your yard (or the view out your window) to help you remember. If you prefer digital, take a picture and add labels using your phone’s photo editing app!
If you need help identifying trees, there are a number of great field guides available. If you prefer digital options, try iNaturalist or Seek. (As a bonus, here’s a great video on deciduous trees of the Northwoods.)
In town
Speaking of trees, enjoy the acorns growing on the oak trees in town. Where I live, the branches of the oaks are weighed down with a bumper crop of acorns. This means they’re also swarming with squirrels and birds!
Crows are flocking together again, after separating in early and mid-summer to raise their young. In rural areas, flocks of crows gather in freshly mown fields to feast on the newly revealed insects. In town, crows have been documented memorizing the schedule and route of municipal garbage trucks.
(Fun fact: Our corvid friends have even been trained to pick up trash, though that may or may not be a good idea. If you have time, take a peek at the creatively titled “Butts for Nuts” article about this program.)
