Notes from the North Country
gregladen | October 5, 2009First there was the question of Goldilocks, a Very Cold Winter Night, And a Strange Sense of Empty-ness. Then, there was The Mystery of The Returned Outboard Motor. Which turned into The Mystery of the Missing Boat Motor Deepens. Then there was the complexification described in What makes a perfect day at the lake?.
And now, I have received the strangest email:
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 12:45:14 -0700 (PDT)
From:BLANKED OUT
To: greg@gregladen.com
Subject: oder.........
My name is Rev BLANKED OUT. and I am sending you an email regarding an order of some Out Board Motto.I will like you to e-…
gregladen | October 4, 2009This is a continuation of a discussion on the role of Global Warming in the decline of moose populations in Minnesota. It is also a discussion of Global Warming denialism.
When I started to write Part II of this post, I realized that one aspect of the argument would probably distract from all the others, could be dealt with quickly and summarily, and makes a nice pithy post all by itself. This aspect is the claim made by commenter Gerard on an earlier post regarding global warming (or lack thereof) in Minnesota.
Gerard made this claim:
The average monthly high/low temperatures for January…
gregladen | October 1, 2009Minnesota moose experts generally agree that global warming is forcing the southern edge of the distribution of the moose northward into Canada, threatening this important US population of this ginormous deer species. Global warming denialists insist that this is the moose's fault, and has nothing to do with global warming. This is the first of a two part look at this question.
This is an Alaskan moose. But someday he hopes to visit its relatives in Minnesota. If they live long enough...
Moose are one of five species of deer that are common in North America. (For those of you tuning in…
gregladen | September 29, 2009When the wind stiffens it blows the fog off the lake and replaces it with a biting spray. And when the wind slackens the sound of air rushing though the leaves and around the cabins is replaced with the crashing of the white caps that stand off from the more protected bay. Either way it is chilly and inhospitable, with ambient temperatures near 40 and a wind chill that might be close to freezing.
In other words, a perfect day at the lake.
This is the perfect weather if you want to be alone, or at least, not dragged into the obnoxious loud fantasy of some motor head's idea of nature, or…
gregladen | September 28, 2009We have had a cool summer here in Minnesota, and this has brought out the miscreants who for their own reasons do not want to get on board with the simple, well demonstrated scientific fact that global temperatures have risen, that we humans are the primary cause, and that this climate change has negative consequences.
There are probably different reasons people do not want to get on board with this reality. The main reason especially for younger individuals is that they have been told by their political mentors to not accept global warming. The political mentors, in turn, reject global…
gregladen | September 27, 2009A very interesting day. I got word in the AM that Derick would be digging a trench across the Cabin property tomorrow, and as an archaeologist I could not possibly skip that, so I ripped a rotten board out of the porch as fast as I could, threw in some laundry, and watched the beginning of the football game.
I was a bit discouraged as the third quarter was progressing and it looked like the Vikings were not going to sweep the 39ers (yes, I'm taking away ten points). So I sawed the rotten board into four pieces. Two went into the garbage (sneaky) and one in each car. The car bits will…
gregladen | September 24, 2009When I am in the mood to fish, and I'm at the lake, I pay special attention to the water.
I notice things moving or splashing. I notice the behavior of the terns, the herons, the bald eagles, the loons, and the mergansers. Those fish eating birds are watching the fish and have a better view than I do, and more incentive as well. But mostly I watch the surface of the water.
And here is what I've learned: Most of the time you can't see below the surface, out any distance from the shore. You can't tell what is going on at the surface because waves, or ripples caused by a light breeze,…
gregladen | September 22, 2009... or, maybe gets shallower. I'm not sure.
This is a follow-up on "Goldilocks, a Very Cold Winter Night, And a Strange Sense of Empty-ness" which was followed by "The Mystery of The Returned Outboard Motor". More information has come in.
The following note was transmitted from the people who had stayed at the cabin during the week the motor mysteriously reappeared:
... I am anxious to tell you about the 4 pound bass I caught off the dock ... bla bla bla ... if you go up this weekend, you will notice an extra boat motor in your new storage building. We went for a walk up the driveway…
gregladen | September 20, 2009If you have not yet read Goldilocks, a Very Cold Winter Night, And a Strange Sense of Empty-ness then please do so now. Only then will you have the background necessary to understand and appreciate The Mystery of the Returned Outboard Motor. As told to us by Jimmy James Watson Bettencourt ...
...
I came as quickly as I could on Laden's request. He was at the cabin, and the note dropped off at my practice by one of his boys was terse. "Come Watson!" and that is all I generally need to be compelled to arrive at my friend's side. When I entered the cabin he did not acknowledge my presence…
gregladen | September 20, 2009So we arrive at the cabin, and something seems amiss. With each new clue uncovered, we are at first disturbed, then aghast, and finally, astonished. None of it made very much sense until we found the note. Wow. The note.
A repost ... reposted for a reason (see next post)
The reason we were there at all was to drop off an old refrigerator and to check on things. There are two cabins, one semi-heated for winter, the other closed down, and into the second of these we would haul the fridge, staying for the night in the first.
Someone noticed a bag of cans, mostly soda, and some beer bottles…
gregladen | September 6, 2009The loons have been strangely silent all weekend, and I have been singularly distracted from them, so it was not until this morning that I realized that the adults are gone.
Well, they are not totally gone, but they are in a transitional phase. I think they are starting to spend time in their staging area. Adult loons, at some point late in the season (and though I shall remain in denial the season is starting to laten) begin to gather at a specific staging area, either a part of a larger lake (as in the case of my loons) or in some intermediary pond or lake. They form a flock, and then…
gregladen | August 25, 2009When it comes to observing nature, it pays to pay attention, and it pays to stay in one place for a while. Coming to "The Lake" many spring, summer, and fall weekends (and now and then in the winter) and paying attention to the wildlife and other aspects of the natural environment allows me to see and experience things not otherwise possible.
Looking out to the north from the cabin is a bay about a kilometer by a kilometer in size. The left side, as I view it, is rimmed half way round by a marsh, which is partly held by a back-spit causing a very small south facing (leeward, in this case)…
gregladen | August 22, 2009I had responded to the general in query "Where are you going to look for birds this weekend" by simply noting that we'd be going to "The Lake" (Minnesotan for a particular lake, the exact lake determined by context). But on the way up Amanda had the idea of going into Crane Meadow National Wildlife Refuge. This is a small refuge consisting of a swampy lake or two and the Platte River (no, not THAT Platte River), that is apparently famous for its cranes.
We we parked and took the biggest loop which was probably about four miles, along the river, to the lake, and back out again. The trail…
gregladen | August 9, 2009Continued...
For this final installation of How the Loon Terns, I'd like to very briefly address four different items of "common knowledge."
Loons are driven off lakes by boaters.
Loons use nursery pools.
Loon are "ancient birds"
"Loons winter in Mexico (or wherever)."
I've already discussed the first of these, and would simply like to restate the idea. During the 1970s or 1980s, depending on where one looked, loons were seemingly getting driven away from their native habitats by boating activity. Then, the loons seemed to start to grow somewhat accustom to boats, and this trend may…
gregladen | August 3, 2009And now, for another installment in our series: How The Loon Terns, an exercise in skeptical thinking using Loons as a waterbird touchstone. (In case you missed it, the previous installment was here.)
Common Knowledge: Loons are driven off lakes by boaters. The literature from the 1970s and 1980s makes it clear that there was a reduction in loon populations on lakes that were previously more isolated, and have become more accessible, and suffered greater amounts of boat traffic. Boats cause several problems for loons, including a damaging wake, and presumably it is bad if a loon is run…
gregladen | August 2, 2009This is the continuation of a discussion of loons, skeptically viewed. I am not skeptical about loons themselves. I know they exist. In fact, I just spent the last half hour watching Mom and Dad loon (whom I cannot tell apart, by the way) feeding Junior I and Junior II (whom I also cannot tell apart) what I have determined to be mostly crayfish, but also the occasional minnow.
In this installment of How the Loon Terns we will look at breeding success.
In this installment of How the Loon Terns we will look at breeding success.
Common Knowledge: When a pair of loons fails to breed, it…
gregladen | August 1, 2009I've been thinking about loons lately. This is not hard do do because every time I turn around there is a loon either watching me fish, yodeling off in the distance, flying overhead, or feeding its babies just off to my right as I sit here writing stuff. This year, the pair of loons that lives in front of the cabin seems to be producing two offspring ... the young ones grew quickly to near adult size and seem fit and healthy as far as one can tell. Last year, the pair living here produced zero offspring.
I had thought the other day of writing something about loons in winter, in part…
gregladen | July 11, 2009There are two lies you will hear from anyone who is into the sport of angling. 1) "It was THIS BIG!" and 2) "Catching fish isn't the point. It's the experience of fishing that matters."
The Mocking Bass. For four years this fish watched me cast lures and live bait from the end of the small dilapidated dock in the lagoon behind the cabin, without ever showing interest in what I had to offer. Two weeks ago I dropped a plastic worm on his head. The worm slid off and rested on the bottom. The mocking bass reoriented towards the worm and took a sniff. I jiggled the worm. And, BANG. He…
gregladen | June 20, 2009The first time I ever caught a bowfin (Amia calva)I was shocked and amazed at this fish. It was green .... really green like beyond fresh water fish green .... with a fancy spot on the upper part of the back of its dorsal fin. And it had one impressive dorsal fin. It was whopping big and took a while to land.
When I caught that fish, I had a plastic worm lure with which I was trying to catch the mocking bass. The mocking bass is a specific individual large mouth bass or, as Julia called them back in those days, "big mouth bass." The mocking bass hangs on a sandy spot that looked like a…
gregladen | June 14, 2009Birdwatching might be a casual activity, a hobby, an avocation, or even a profession (often, perhaps, an obsession) depending on the bird watcher, but there is always a science to it, in at least two ways. First, there is the science of how to do it. In this sense, the term "science" means something vernacular. We as easily say "birdwatching is an art" as we could say "there is a science to it" and here we are using both terms( "art" and "science") in their older sense where science is how we approach things with our minds, and art is how we approach things with our hands.
Second,…