I decided to learn more about the rocks of Lake Superior, knowing that agates were “a thing.” So, I went for a walk along the beach near my apartment. Lo and behold, there was a Lake Superior agate at the water’s edge! I also found what I think is Silver-Beaver rhyolite.

I finally bought a rock picking book to learn to ID rocks on the beach. Looking through the pictures, I think I see a lot of rhyolite and flow-banded rhyolite. I’ll look closer tomorrow.

Unfortunately, my neighbor below me doesn’t like birds, and apparently I thereby spoiled it for everyone by putting a feeder out in the main area. Now everyone has to take theirs down.

Wilson – March 2017 I.O.C.- 2018

This is a photo from outside Pelican Lake Recreation Area (Watertown, SD) that shows a prairie pothole in all its current glory: taken over by agriculture. An astonishing proportion of the Prairie Potholes Region (PPR) has been converted to agriculture, so this is what many of them look like now. Agricultural use has already significantly […]

This is the next facet I did not explore with my dissertation, so I’m all the more excited to get started thinking about these questions and expand my perspective. Wetland modelling in the study regions allows us to think about several aspects of the landscape, such as presence/absence and number of wetlands based on certain […]

Unfortunately, there’s no great equivalent to Mike’s site (yet…) for my new home state. So, I’m using Douglas Co. as a proxy of what I might see right across the border. This week’s peak butterfly is eufala skipper, though it’s very rare. I don’t really expect to find it, but good to be on the lookout.

That’s an abridged title of my new project, which is an NSF Macrosystems (Heffernan et al. 2014) grant. I saw the job posting for this project on Ornithology Exchange, which is how it caught my eye. There is a project goal similar to what I have done for my dissertation, and I look forward to […]

Today is my first day at the Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI) so here’s a shiny new CV to reflect it. It was typical first day stuff; I met a lot of people, filled out paperwork and got my new office. I don’t have my desktop computer yet so I’m waiting on that. I’m mostly catching […]

At the entrance to the garage are royalty crabapples. My balcony overlooks a row of planted white spruce, and the closest deciduous tree is a silver maple. There are fairy rings of mushrooms growing in the lawn below. The lawn is likely a blend of Kentucky bluegrass/fescue/rye. Out in front of the building, there are radiant or red splendor crabapples (possibly both).