Finally, Another Great Horned Owl Sighting!

I’m thrilled to say we finally saw another great horned owl in my atlas block tonight, about a year since my only other sighting! We staked it out as it was hunting, and we lost it when it flew almost parallel the road toward 11th street. We drove down 11th street hoping to relocate it, […]

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Climate-Induced Phenotypic Mismatch

Will this lingering, late snow make it easier to spot mammals that dramatically molt between seasons? I’ve been seeing posts on the local naturalist groups of molting snowshoe hares and ermine, who are adopting their summer color perhaps too fast for this (very) late spring! For instance, check out this photo posted today to the […]

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Extreme Unseasonable Spring Weather

Yesterday, I tuned into an ultra-conservative Eau Claire radio station with a local host denying climate change. She had on a meteorologist who also didn’t believe in climate change, so I don’t know if this piece was to some degree reactionary or just a coincidence. Anyway, while I’m tempted to rant for myself against this […]

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My Top 10 Favorite Things About Being a Birder

I’ve always had a natural curiosity about birds for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t really get hooked into birding until I learned more about it in undergrad. When I took ornithology lab, I learned how to learn bird song, and I learned more about my local birds (including seasonality of occurrence). […]

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#NameThatBirdSong Updated List

I run a science communication (#scicomm) game on Twitter every Weds using the hashtag in the post title. At noon central time I post a challenge bird of the week! 🙂 This week’s bird is the red-winged blackbird! Meanwhile here’s a compilation of the last few months’ birds… red-tailed hawk western meadowlawk eastern whip-poor-will mourning […]

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April Wildflowers of the Upper Midwest

These are some of the earliest bloomers in Wisconsin (by no means an exhaustive list). golden corydalis Pennsylvania bittercress Carolina whitlow-grass field pennycress little-pod false flax hillside blueberry blue bugle low calamint phlox downy sand violet wood-sorrel hoary puccoon violet great-spurred violet lance-leaved foamflower nodding chickweed crane’s-bill buttercup prairie creeping Carolina anemone dandelion prairie false […]

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