Choosing a Wildflower Guide

NewcombFor beginning naturalists, the vast number of wildflower guides can be nearly as daunting as the innumerable species of plants waiting to be identified.

It’s easy to find guides to wildflower identification in stores or online, but finding the right ones can sometimes be a matter of finding the right seller. I like to visit the gift shops at nature centers, wildlife refuges, and parks. They carry books specific to the state, region, or habitat type where they’re located (plus, buying from them helps a good cause). Continue reading →

A Sort-of Easy Approach to Identifying Flowers

Marsh marigold

Marsh marigold

Marsh marigolds are blooming in the soggy bottomlands along the Baraboo River. I was on the 400 Trail in southern Juneau County this morning, looking for birds, but I kept finding wildflowers, too. The sky threatened rain, but nobody seemed to care. American redstarts sang in the trees, a pair of wrens chattered in the brush, and in the distance a pair of sandhill cranes gave a unison call.

I paused to photograph a chokecherry in bloom. At least, I thought it was a chokecherry. Because my purpose was birdwatching, I had a bird book, but no wildflower guide in my pack. Continue reading →

A Silphium by Any Other Name

Bloodroot

Bloodroot

Any naturalist afoot in Wisconsin this month is looking for wildflowers and finding plenty. Every week brings another “birthday,” as Aldo Leopold called a species’ first blossoming of the year. Along the Baraboo River, I can look forward to a changing array of woodland, wetland, and prairie plants flowering from spring through summer.

And this spring and summer, as I do every year, I will look up and try to memorize the names of all the plants I don’t yet know. Continue reading →

Mysterious Trills, Plunks, and Peeps

Herp ID

Many states’ natural resource agencies have frog identification tips on their websites

Birds are singing along the upper Baraboo River this week, proclaiming their territories and trying to woo mates. But as I ran along the Elroy-Sparta Trail yesterday, I heard other voices as well. Wood frogs were calling, “quadda-quack, quadda-quack”. Chorus frogs were singing in short, ascending trills, and spring peepers were “peep, peep, peeping” in the wetlands along the trail.

The frogs have recently emerged from hibernation and, like songbirds, are calling for mates. This is a sound of spring that I heard – but didn’t recognize – for most of my life, until one day when my husband brought home a cassette (yes, we’re that old) entitled, “Wisconsin Frogs.” I listened, astonished, to the long trills of the American toad and the various grunts, chirps, and trills of eleven frog species. “I thought all those sounds were insects!” I exclaimed. Continue reading →

Brush up on Birdsong

You can’t always count on birds to demonstrate their songs, as this Western Meadowlark is doing.

 

Since moving to Wisconsin, one of my rites of spring has been the drive to Nebraska for the sandhill crane migration…and the long drive home afterward, often through a snow storm. One thing that brightens the trip is my little stack of birdsong CDs. In fact, I listen to them almost any time that I’m in the car in March and April.

I’m not talking about mood-music CDs – the ones with wood thrushes singing while Clair de lune plays in the background. Mine are ear-training CDs for birders. Continue reading →

Migration on the Platte River

I’m away from home for a while, and here’s why. This is the place that taught me what it means to be a naturalist — and why it matters. My own photo gives barely a hint of what it’s like. To see more, type “Platte River sandhill cranes” in your search engine, and enjoy.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Winter Melts

For those of us who are drawn to flowing water, a spring thaw holds special allure. I took a late-afternoon walk today through the village of Kendall, six miles upstream from my home. There the Baraboo River, barely three miles old, gushed noisily between its soggy banks. I could see how far the stream had risen by the number of saplings that were surrounded by rushing current.

Continue reading →

Scouting the Marsh

Otter tracks on the ice.

Otter tracks on the ice.

In Sauk County, where Highway 33 follows the Baraboo River down a gentle incline toward the Wisconsin River, there’s a large wetland that I’ve often admired, especially on fine days when the water glistens in the sun. But whenever I’m driving down Highway 33, I’m on my way to…someplace. So I never stop.

Today, when the temperature rose toward thirty degrees and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, I said to my husband, Mark, “Let’s take a walk.” Continue reading →

Public Lands

Before I had the good luck – and the good sense – to marry a wildlife biologist, I never knew there were so many places where a person might take a walk.

Sure, I knew of a few state parks and faraway national parks. But in Lake Mills, if I wanted to be alone with the red-winged blackbirds, I settled for walking the gravel shoulder of Faville Road, where cars only occasionally zoomed by at 55 mph, and only one farm dog regularly chased me.

If I had looked at a county map, I might have seen several irregularly shaped green blobs within an easy drive of my home: Continue reading →