June 9, 2020

Animal Babies

As June starts many animals are already raising young which you may have seen or heard in your yards or at Fort Ridgely.  I saw a young rabbit in our yard this morning and have attached a picture. 

A young robin was chirping on our front step a few minutes ago and I took its picture too. 

For more information: https://mnbirdatlas.org/species/american-robin/


A goose pair led their young across a road and then back into a swamp next to it.  Notice how big all the young are already.

For more information: https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/birds/canadagoose.html


Robin eggs only take 10-14 days between laying and hatching.  They can leave the nest and be on my front step in another 2-3 weeks or so.  Father robins feed them after they leave the nest for another 2-3 weeks while the female starts incubating another brood of eggs.  Robins usually have 2 broods in a summer but have three some summers and on a very good summer have been known to have 4 batches,  Bigger birds like eagles take much longer to grow and mature.  They are three years old before they have the white head.

Photo by Margaret Maire.  For more information: https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/birds/eagles/index.html


Wildflowers and Bees

Most of the spring flowers are done in the woods as trees have almost all leaved out and keep very much light from getting to the floor.  The exception is the Virginia waterleaf that I mentioned in the last update.  They are all over in the woods and along the woods' edge. There is a honeybee pollinating the flower in this picture.

Wild black raspberries are blooming right now and are covered with bees so I assume there will be lots of berries later this summer.  They are also along the woods' edge.  White campion can be found in some locations around the park and beardtongue is just starting.  Both of these can be found mainly in the prairie. 

For more information: https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/flower/large-beardtongue

The hot weather has shortened the time that the waterleaf and beardtongue flowers are lasting.


Bright yellow golden alexander is found across the prairie too. 

For more information: https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/flower/golden-alexanders 

White  and also red  clover is all over along pathways and in our lawns if you don't use herbicides. You can see a leopard frog in the white clover picture.  For more information: https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/flower/white-clover

Two other prairie plants that are just starting to bloom are fleabane and yarrow.  The wild yarrow is white but many of you have colored versions in your flower gardens 

Fleabane is a many petaled aster that settlers used to wait until it was done blooming and dried out then grind the plant up.  It was put inside pillows to keep fleas away.  

For more information: https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/flower/annual-fleabane


Some of the pictures of flowers have various kinds of bees on them which I will refer to in the next section. 

Bees and other Pollinators

The attached video shows how methodical and fast bumblebees are when getting nectar from flowers.  They do not have to always go way inside the flower like beardtongue here  but in some similar flowers like snapdragons and gentians, like in the second video, they do. Honeybees and other types of bees follow similar patterns and are very busy, as the saying goes!

 

There are many types of bees in both size and shape.  The bumblebee is the largest and the honeybee is a midsized bee.  That was a honeybee on the Virginia waterleaf in the picture in the flower section above. It is the most common bee in the park at least as far as one that is seen by people. The two bees on the golden alexander flower picture were much smaller than both bumble and honey bees. They are golden alexander mining bees.   I am including three other pictures of bees that I think are amazing.  The first is slightly smaller than a honeybee. It is a waterleaf mining bee and the picture is of it on its favorite flower.  Both of these are specialty bees and only go to their flower.  This means they have very short lifecycles and are not around all summer.

The second is a Milwaukee mining bee and is dark brown and black.  The flowers on the raspberry bushes in my garden have been almost entirely pollinated by this type of bee. These three mining bees are called this because all are ground nesters.  They have to mine holes in the ground to call home and lay their eggs in. 

The third is a green sweat bee that was on my chives plants outside our back door.  Various colors of these small sweat bees pollinate many of the plants at Fort Ridgely.  The small bee on the fleabane pic above may be a type of sweat bee.

 

I also include a monarch butterfly picture.  They are back and the milkweed is up and ready for them to lay their eggs on it.  Soon there will be colorful caterpillars on it and then lots more Minnesota made monarchs flying around.  Butterflies also pollinate our flowers and monarchs are only one type of the many colorful butterflies that call Minnesota home.  I will put some more of these in the future updates. 

For more information: https://www.monarchwatch.org/