Column: Nature’s World

My neighbor Crandall stops by.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“Everything is nearly copacetic. Winter hasn’t been what I’d hoped, but it never is. I was supposed to get a tooth pulled but the dentist, Phil McAvity, was going to charge me an arm and leg to yank it, so I just had him loosen the tooth. I sat in the chair at the barbershop and Conan the Barber asked me how I wanted my hair cut. I told Conan, ‘Cut it short with a bare patch above my left ear and longer on the right side so that it covers my right ear. I want my left sideburn above my ear and the right sideburn below my ear to the chin.’”

“That seems odd even for you,” I say. “What did Conan the Barber say?”

“If brains were leather, he wouldn’t have enough to saddle a fly. Conan looked puzzled. He told me that he didn’t believe he could do that.”

“I’m sure you had something else to say,” I add.

“I did. I told Conan. ‘I don’t know why you couldn’t. That’s the way you cut my hair the last time I was here.’ By the time Conan the Barber learns how to cut hair, he’ll have been retired for 10 years.”

Squirrel 1, man 0

Photo of the winner by Al Batt.

Ron Evenson of Houston, Minn., told me that his father watched a squirrel jump over a railing and feast at a feeder meant for birds. Ron’s father didn’t move the feeder 10 feet away as most people would do. No, his plan was more diabolical. He moved the feeder three inches each day. This caused the squirrel to misjudge leaps and nearly miss being able to climb onto the feeder. One day, the squirrel missed. Ron’s father took this as a victory. You could imagine his dismay when he looked out later to see the squirrel happily chowing down on the feeder. Ron’s father became so upset with the persistent squirrel that he ran outside to chase the squirrel away. The squirrel watched as a single misstep left Ron’s father with a broken leg.

Snowy owls

I tried to do a nice thing at an airport. I volunteered without request to relinquish my seat on a plane to a serviceman headed home. I expected no compensation. It seemed like the right thing to do. It was going as planned until the flight was canceled due to mechanical problems.

Norm Smith, director of Massachusetts Audubon’s Blue Hills Trailside Museum, has been doing nice things at airports for years. Smith has been monitoring snowy owls at Boston’s Logan Airport for more than 25 years. The snowy owls’ natural habitat is the arctic tundra — a treeless stretch of open grass. The broad expanse of land around airport runways resembles tundra and becomes winter hunting grounds for owls. Owls find meadow voles and rats fine fare at airports. Smith watched a snowy owl pick off airport mallards one by one. He thought that when there was only one duck left in the flock, the quacker would have considered relocating. It did not and the owl had another meal.

Nepal

A speaker from Nepal at the International Owl Festival in Houston related that while Nepal claims only .01 percent of the world’s land surfaces, it’s home to 9.3 percent of the world’s bird species. Nepal has eight of the world’s 10 tallest mountains. A poor country, he stated the average per capita income in United States dollars is $240.

Birding buses

I spent the night at the home of good friends — John and Susan Kroll of Long Prairie. Over a delicious breakfast of oatmeal smothered in cream and maple syrup, the discussion moved to buses. The three of us have spent time on many buses used at birding festivals. Those buses break down occasionally. I have been on buses that have become stuck, gone into ditches, had transmissions go out and engines fail. John and Susan were on a bus that became disabled. The passengers grabbed their binoculars and went birding on foot. That’s making the best of a bird situation.

Q and A

“What is the difference between a bill and a beak?” The terms are used interchangeably.

“What is the difference between a turtle and a tortoise?” I’ll add another to that mix — the terrapin. All turtles, tortoises and terrapins are reptiles in the taxonomic order called Chelonia. Here are generally accepted differences between types of chelonians. A turtle spends most of its life in the water. Turtles tend to have webbed feet for swimming. They climb onto banks, logs or rocks to bask in the sun. A tortoise is a land-dweller that eats plants. It does not have webbed feet. Its feet are built for walking on land. A terrapin spends time on land and in water, but lives near water. The word terrapin comes from an Indian word meaning “a little turtle.”

“I heard a great horned owl calling. It sounded like two voices. Was it a male and a female?” Probably. The male’s voice is lower in pitch.

“How can I tell a male kestrel from a female?” I grew up with an American kestrel. His name was Henry. He was the most beautiful of birds and considered himself more powerful than either golden eagle or roc. The wing is the easiest way to differentiate the sexes. The male kestrel has blue-gray on the wings while the female’s flappers are brown. There can be a wide variation in individual plumage.

Bluebird Expo

The annual Bluebird Expo of 2011 will be on April 16 at Cambridge High School. The program begins at 9 a.m. At the place to learn how to attract bluebirds there will be exhibits, products, speakers and live birds from the Raptor Center. Speakers include Keith Radel, Jim Gilbert and hot air from Hartland — me. For more information, call 507-332-7003 or 507-210-0961.

Nature lessons

Barn swallow females prefer males with the darkest breasts.

Heckle and Jeckle are magpies and cartoon characters created by Paul Terry. One magpie spoke with an English accent and the other with a Brooklyn dialect.

Thanks for stopping by

“Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.” — Lord Byron

“A sense of curiosity is nature’s original school of education.” — Smiley Blanton

DO GOOD.

Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. E-mail him at SnoEowl@aol.com.