July 20, 2020

When the description of a wildflower uses feet instead of inches, you know you have a colossal plant! And at this one spot on the backwaters of the Mississippi River in Houston County, Minnesota I found 3 stands of blossoming behemoths! Where am I? The Amazon?

I was meandering back from Iowa where I had dropped off the boys for a week of “Nana Camp” at Bridget’s mom’s. The night before I camped at Minnesota’s Beaver Creek Valley State Park. It is in Houston County which is the southeasternmost county in the state. This is in the “driftless” region, an area that was missed by all of the last glaciers of the Ice Age and retains its high hills, meandering creeks, coulees and valleys. It is an area pockmarked with limestone caves in the karst topography. The hardwood forests have more in common with the southern midwest than the rest of Minnesota. As a result there is a plethora of unique species to Minnesota in this region.

I stopped at the Reno Landing on the Mississippi River to explore the dike and look for Minnesota’s rarest lizard (future blogpost!) when I noticed my first “mega-flower.”

It was the huge blossom of the American Lotus (Nelumbo lutea). The flower itself can be as big as your head (4 to 8 inches across) and the leaves dwarf the flowers at one to two feet across!

At first I wasn’t even sure this was a native plant, but a quick check of my Minnesota Wildflowers app on my iPhone confirmed that it is indeed Minnesota’s largest native wildflower. This was Lifer Number 1 (a species I had never seen in my life before).

The American Lotus is only found along backwaters of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers and a few inland lakes (Lake Minnetonka) in Minnesota. And their populations seem to be ephemeral, and not blooming every year.

I wish I would have brought my kayak to actually get up close and personal with these aquatic mammoths. Next summer!

I then spotted a flower I had never seen before. Lifer Number 2. I didn’t even know where to start looking in my Peterson Field Guide nor my iPhone app to identify this monster. It emerged in a cluster from the backwaters to a height of three feet. Atop a stalk was a showy umbell of stunning magenta blossoms with 6 petals (or was it 3 sepals and 3 petals?) maybe half a foot across.

Once I got home, my copy of Field Guide to Wisconsin Streams came to the rescue; the plant was Flowering-Rush (Butomus umbellatus), a non-native species that is in the Flowering-Rush family (Butomaceae)

Then on the way out I spotted a huge and robust stand of Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata). Hundreds of purple-blossomed spikes stood a couple feet above the dense tangle of large arrowhead-shaped leaves.

In the next post I will show a few photos of the lizard I found at this site.

April 1-2, 2019

I took a quick trip out to the prairies of west central Minnesota to witness the amazing GOOSE MIGRATION of 2019. April 1-2. Numbers like this haven’t been seen in Minnesota in many years. In fact, Steve Millard, who has lived in west central Minnesota for 46 years says he’s never seen the migration this good!

Reasons for this more easterly path of migration this year may be that the snowpack and a frozen James River in South Dakota have forced the geese to migrate farther east. I was mainly in Stevens, Grant, Wilkin and Otter Tail Counties. Snow Geese and Greater White-fronted Geese dominated, but also some Canada Geese and a few Ross’s Geese. Several thousand Tundra Swans (870 in one flooded field near Nashua, Minnesota!) and constant skeins of geese overhead. The sounds are probably my favorite part of the experience.

There was lots of snow along windrows and shelter belts. Most lakes were still frozen but meltwater pools dotted many fields.

Snow Goose flock near Nashua, Minnesota on April 2, 2019 (Wilkin County)

Greater White-fronted Geese near Elbow Lake, Minnesota (Grant County)

I really love Greater White-fronted Geese, and they were one reason I made this hasty trip out west. I rarely ever get to see them in big flocks, so I was thrilled to find this amazing bunch just 0.8 miles east of the city limits of Elbow Lake, Minnesota. You can see that they are all on “high alert” but they soon relaxed and continued preening, resting and sleeping.

[Canon 7D with Canon EF400mm f5.6L lens; 1/800 second at f8; ISO 320; hand-held]

Greater White-fronted Geese near Elbow Lake, Minnesota (Grant County)

[Canon 7D with Canon EF70-200mm f4L USM lens; 1/500 second at f7.1; ISO 250; +0.33 ev; hand-held]

Greater White-fronted Geese near Elbow Lake, Minnesota (Grant County)

[Canon 7D with Canon EF400mm f5.6L lens; 2x teleconverter; 1/640 second at f11; ISO 640; hand-held; braced on car]

Multiple skeins of geese overhead near North Ottawa Impoundment (Grant County, Minnesota) on April 1, 2019.

Steve Millard, who has lived in west central Minnesota for 46 years says he’s never seen a goose migration this good before!

[Canon 7D with EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 lens at 55mm; 1/800 at f8; ISO 250; +0.33 ev; hand-held]

Northern Harrier at North Ottawa Impoundment (Grant County, Minnesota)

[Canon 7D with Canon EF400mm f5.6L lens; 1/320 second at f5.6; ISO 320; +1.66 ev (a mistake!…leftover from previous shots); hand-held]

Tundra Swan flock just east of Nashua, Minnesota (Wilkin County)

870 Tundra Swans settled into this flooded field along with Snow Geese and Greater White-fronted Geese. The sun only shone for about 10 minutes on the two days I was out there.

Snow Goose flock and old Windmill (Wilkin County)

I saw this old windmill about the same time I saw the flock of geese feeding in a cornfield. I knew that I wanted a shot of the flock in the air with the silhouette of the windmill, so I waited, and waited, and waited. Just as I was about to give up, something spooked the flock and they obligingly took wing. It would have been great if they’d come a bit closer, but I still like the shot.

[Canon 7D with Sigma 50-500mm lens at 113mm; 1/640 second at f5.6; ISO 1250; -0.66ev; hand-held]

Snow Goose flock near Nashua, Minnesota on April 2, 2019 (Wilkin County)

[Canon 7D with Canon EF400mm f5.6L lens; 1/400 second at f5.6; ISO 1250; hand-held]

Snow Goose flock near Nashua, Minnesota on April 2, 2019 (Wilkin County)

[Canon 7D with Canon EF400mm f5.6L lens; 1/400 second at f5.6; ISO 1250; hand-held]

Snow Goose flock near Nashua, Minnesota on April 2, 2019 (Wilkin County)

The three photos above were a single flock of Snow Geese that had rested the night in a flooded field. I got a few photos of them sitting (below) before they erupted in unison. The sound was amazing…deafening. They quickly settled back down.

[Canon 7D with Canon EF400mm f5.6L lens; 1/640 second at f5.6; ISO 1250; hand-held]

Snow Goose flock near Nashua, Minnesota on April 2, 2019 (Wilkin County)

99.9% of the birds you see in the above photo are Snow Geese….even the ones with dark bodies. If it has a white head, it is a Snow Goose (in this photo). The white-headed, dark-bodied geese were formerly a separate species called “Blue Goose.” We now know that they are the same species as Snow Goose. The goose in the front left corner that is all dark with an orange bill, is a Greater White-fronted Goose.

[Canon 7D with Canon EF400mm f5.6L lens; 1/640 second at f5.6; ISO 1250; hand-held]

Two Ross’s Geese with Snow Goose flock near Nashua, Minnesota on April 2, 2019 (Wilkin County)

Mixed in with the massive flocks of Snows were scattered Ross’s Geese. These are much smaller birds with a short stubby bill and greenish patch at base of bill. They lack the “grinning patch” of Snow Geese. Ross’s also have a snowy white head, as compared to Snow Geese whose heads are often stained a bit yellowish. You can see two Ross’s together here in the front middle of the photo (one facing left and one facing right). They are all heading to the High Arctic to breed.

[Canon 7D with Canon EF400mm f5.6L lens; 1/400 second at f5.6; ISO 1250; hand-held]

“God Light” and a pair of Trumpeter Swans (North Ottawa Impoundment, Grant County, Minnesota)

[Canon 7D with EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 lens at 49mm; 1/1600 at f5.6; ISO 250; -0.66 ev; hand-held]

Farm fields were mostly free of snow, but anywhere there were trees you found huge drifts of snow still.

Old Bait shop in Otter Tail County, Minnesota

Abandoned Rose City General Store in Rose City, Minnesota