Phenology

Tuesdays are special around here!  Every Tuesdya during the morning show, we bring listeners The Phenology Show, it's a special time when we focus on and celebrate the amazing natural world around us!  Listeners send in phone messages and emails with observations and questions while our resident phenologist does a deep dive comparing what he's noticed in the week to the same dates in his journals from years gone by.  This week we heard from the adorable Ruth, Axel and Pearl Newstock as they called in a report of a family hike. We also heard from Chris on Hill Lake and Harvey Tjader in the Bemidji area.  In John's official Phenology Report, he discusses butterflies and blooms and more!

Caterpillars Count! is a citizen science project for measuring the seasonal variation, also known as phenology, and abundance of arthropods like caterpillars, beetles, and spiders found on the foliage of trees and shrubs.

We spoke with Dr. Allen Hurlbert about this project.

You can find out more here.

Every Tuesday we focus on the natural world around us during the Phenology Show.  Listeners send in comments and observations from their daily lives and adventures while our resident phenologist John Latimer provides a full report of animal activity, growth and blooms, comparing aspects of current happenings to events in past years.  Take a listen to this week's listener comments and John's full report  below.  In addition to learning about a wide variety of forest blooms, you'll hear about a heron killing a pesky squirrel and another heron killing 12 chipmunks! 

We missed our weekly reports from students this week, but thankfully we received  several reports from other folks in addition to our one student report from Auggie on Northern Sun Farms in Shevlin!  So much in bloom, so much activity, so many reasons to get outside and take note of the beauty all around us here in northern Minnesota!  

Learn how to help a turtle across the road, find out what a snake puked up while Auggie was holding it and discover many, many more observations from him and several other area phenologists in this talkback segment! 

When schools closed in MN due to the COVID-19 pandemic and distance learning began, John Latimer and I weren't sure we'd be getting student phenology reports anymore. 

We did. 

Rob Marohn teaches in the "outer reaches" of the Proctor School District at Pike Lake Elementary.  A group of his class thrived and dug in deeper on Phenology during home learning.  We talked with him this week to thank him for his contributions and on making it through a complicated school year.