Powderhorn Bird Watch

Work is really interfering with my life lately, plus the esteemed publisher still won't hire a staff for me, and this is a slow time for birding. Those are my three main excuses for a less than stellar column this month.

I will lead with more breaking (or beaking) news. Chickens have returned to the neighborhood. The same family that had chickens several years ago have new chickens—a different color and, so far, smaller than their last chickens, but a good addition to the block in my opinion.

The usual yard birds are bringing young to the back yard and there are new baby rabbits. I am continuing my ongoing talks with the local cats about staying out of the yard.

The park birds are the usual summer regulars: Mallards (with some ducklings), Wood Ducks (with lots of ducklings), and the resident Canada Goose family. The Great Blue Heron is usually on the lake and I had one report of an Egret, but no Green Herons or Black-crowned Night Herons lately. The Eastern Kingbirds are often the most visible songbirds, with Blue Jays, Cardinals Chickadees, Nuthatches, Chipping Sparrows and English Sparrows sometimes seen or heard. The Cooper's Hawks occasionally are very visible flying and calling to each other.
Both the park and the neighborhood are going to lose more trees to Dutch Elm disease as you can see by marked trees in various places. At least the recent storms did not cause any major tree losses.

The native plantings seem to be doing well and are drawing some types of dragonflies that I have never seen before and some butterflies. A few days ago a Red Admiral butterfly briefly landed on my leg and then on my hand as I stood near the shore plantings west of the teahouse. I still need to find a good book that covers Midwestern butterflies, moths and dragonflies, with range maps and color pictures or drawings.

Now for my somewhat regular dog rant: Some park walkers have a new young pit bull. It is actually quite cute and friendly, but they let it run loose at times, and it scares the heck out of some adults and children.

Away from the park, but within the Minneapolis or St. Paul city limits, I have seen deer, fox, skunks, raccoons, woodchucks and wild turkeys within the last month. Most of these observations take place very late at night or very early in the morning (depending on how you look at it).

Away from the metro area, I saw an Indigo Bunting near Becker, a melanistic (all black—the opposite of albino) squirrel in Superior, Wis., and a great double rainbow north of the Cities between a couple of the June 27 intense thunderstorms.

I could rant about the city of Minneapolis mowing down the prairie plantings at the Lake Street YWCA but Doug Grow (and council member Gary Schiff and YWCA Chief Executive Nancy Hite) did a good job of that in Grow's Sunday June 26 Star Tribune column.

That's my ranting for this month. Thank you for all the calls, letters, e-mails and comments.