Blindsided by birds
John starts the report with a new-to-me fun fact: Sandhill Cranes eat junebug grubs!
For some reason, I assumed that the stately cranes I see stalking through fields or along the shores of wetlands would eat food that matched the dignity of their slow, composed strut. They seem like the kind of bird that would know a dessert spoon from a salad spoon, you know?
I was wrong! As it turns out, their appetite better matches their dinosaur-like voice than their stately stroll. They’re voracious omnivores with a taste not just for grain and plant roots, but also berries, frogs, nestling birds, and insects.
At this time of year, one of their favorite foods are big, tasty junebug grubs! To me, that's like the bird equivalent of catching Jackie Kennedy spraying EZ-cheese into her mouth, but hey - Nature is full of surprises!
The grubs live about two inches under the surface of the soil and have spent the summer busily eating any roots that dare venture to that depth. This creates an uneven distribution of roots, with the top two inches of soil thick with interconnecting roots but a ‘dead zone’ around two inches under the soil.
Unfortunately for the grubs, their eating habits work in their predator’s favor. Creatures like Sandhill Cranes, skunks, coyotes, and raccoons find it all too easy to pull back the loosely attached turf and feast on the grubs beneath.
On the move
The Sandhill Cranes aren’t the only birds John is watching, of course: he’s also seen flocks of robins, white-throated sparrows, and Northern Flickers beginning their southward migration, and watched as the numbers of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks and Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have dwindled down to a few remaining juveniles. (Did you know that fledgling RBGs have different colored underwings? Males have red under their wing-pits, and females have orange. They are undergoing their first molt now and changing to more adult-like patterning.)
The Ruby-throated Hummingbirds at John’s feeder are dwindling. On Friday, he spotted 6-8 fighting over the nectar. On Saturday, he spotted just two that stopped by for a drink. Since then, he’s only spotted one or two, and the nectar isn’t running out as fast- definitely a sign that most of the little hummers have departed!
On Crooked Lake, the Trumpeter Swans are celebrating that all three of their cygnets survived the summer. The resident loon parents also had a successful summer and are swimming with their juvenile.
The Barred Owls are regularly calling near John’s house! In addition to their classic “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you-all" call, they’ve been running through some of the deep cuts in their musical repertoire.
John fondly remembers his friend Harry Hutchins, who could make an incredible imitation of a Barred Owl.
Keep watch!
Over the next week, as the green foliage begins to dry up and change color, keep an eye out for evergreen forbs (non-woody plants). Two of note are the hepatica and trailing arbutus. Both will keep their green leaves through winter (though hepatica leaves often turn a purple shade by spring). Having photosynthetic leaves ready as soon as the snow melts helps the hepatica to bloom almost immediately when spring arrives!
Another thing to look for is the pines shedding their needles. (I’ve had to remove many falling needles from my keyboard as I type this article outside under a large white pine!)
White, red, and Jack pines shed their 3-year old needles in fall to make way for newer, more efficient needles next spring. A white pine forest will soon be covered in a wonderfully soft, cinnamon-coated blanket of fallen needles.
In other good news, the deer flies left Grand Rapids around Sept. 1, and John’s only finding a mosquito or two a day. He’s spotted a monarch butterfly, and his nephew in Saint Louis Park saw hundreds of migratory green darners on the hunt near his house.
Plant progression
- Fall colors: Black ash (yellow), round-leaved dogwood (burgundy), American hazel (early stages of change, red), beaked hazel (early stages of change, yellow), woodbine (also known as Virginia creeper, red), maple (yellow, orange, and red), bur oak (flecked with yellow- leaves will drop off once they turn, so the tree appears green longer), birch (yellow), cattail (brown), black chokeberry (half red, half green), interrupted fern (yellow-green), bracken fern (yellow and brown, found along roadsides)
- Fruiting: Nannyberry, black chokeberry, woodbine
- Almost done flowering: Goldenrods, many-flowered aster, flat-topped aster
- Flowering: Burr marigolds, purple-stemmed aster, Northern heart-leaved aster, black-eyed Susans, tansy, alfalfa
That does it for this week! For more phenology, subscribe to our Season Watch Newsletter or visit the Season Watch Facebook page.
Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).
