On July 4th I got down to my BBA (Breeding Bird Atlas) block and spent about five hours surveying. My block is south of Farmington and is rural and mostly agricultural. there is essentially no public land and little habitat of note. While the Vermillion River runs through as a stream, there are almost no ponds. I wasn't expecting much, but I did see some good stuff: Bobolink, Western Meadowlark, Grasshopper Sparrow, Brewers Blackbird, Coopers Hawk, Bank Swallow, and heard a Sand Hill Crane. Sorry, I am not giving directions on the crane, as is on private land and not at all visible from the road.
Dusk found me in southern Dakota County, so it was an easy drive down to the Frontenac area to do my frog and toad survey. Apparently the tree frogs enjoy singing to fireworks. They were everywhere in great numbers, while other frogs were almost all quiet. I heard no toads, although they might have been drowned out by tree frogs. The valley (along Goodhue CR5 west of Lake City) where I always find Whip-poor-wills, had more this year than I have ever heard. At one spot I had at least four different birds singing. While I was sitting at a light at Hwy 100 and 84th Street in Bloomington, I glanced over and found a couple of Chicory plants, best known as the source of a coffee extender associated with New Orleans coffee. While this is a plant I would expect to find here, I realized that I had never seen it before in Minnesota. A day or two later, apparently sensatized to the blue flowers, I found a larger patch in the cloverleaf at I-494 and Highway 52. I found a beautiful grey catapiller that was exactly the color of my neighbor's house, upon which it hit in plain sight. I wonder whether it has the ability to modify its color to match its environ, or whether it has evolved through natural selection over the past twenty plus years to perfectly match the color. I know I have seen this caterpiller before, but I lack a field guide with caterpillers. If you want a picture, I will be glad to send one out. Steve Weston on Quiggley Lake in Eagan, MN [email protected] ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
