In just the last week or two, new life has exploded in the Northwoods. To my brain, it feels like a burst of fireworks. Instead of embers sparkling in the darkness, there's been a surge of colorful blossoms, an eruption of vibrant baby leaves, a cacophony of birdsong, and a buzz of movement everywhere I look.

The shiny resin on balsam poplar buds turns to airborne molecules during spring leaf-out. Those molecules contain a myriad of chemicals that are useful to the tree -- and beneficial to us! Thriving in the far north -- farther than any other broadleaf tree in North America -- balsam poplar is poised to make drastic changes to the tundra as summer temperatures warm. Read more about this amazing tree in this week's Natural Connections, or listen to the podcast.

426 - A Prairie-Dweller Moves North

A lump of gray fur in the middle of the trail pulled us up short. The small mammal was about the size of a gray squirrel, but with cute, round ears tucked below their silhouette. I'd never seen a Franklin's ground squirrel before! On various websites I read that these are a species of tallgrass prairies, although they've declined as the prairies have declined. In the southeastern part of their range the squirrels are barely hanging on in grassy roadsides and railroad right-of-ways—the same places where a few native plants have escaped the plow. Several sources suggested that they belong only in the southern and western portions of Minnesota.

So what was this little prairie dweller doing in Northeastern Minnesota?

My companion gasped in the middle of a sentence as a pine warbler darted over my head and landed on rough spruce bark a few feet way. Then he swooped to a rock wall and paused mid-hop to belt out a trill. We watched his stout beak open and his white wing bars vibrate with the effort. Pine warblers are aptly named, as they are rarely spotted anywhere but in pine trees.

First, we squinted, then we peered through binoculars, and finally I zoomed in with my camera to make sense of the dark shapes. The ducks had a funny conehead and a gracefully swooped patch of gray on their side. The pale ring around their dark beak was the most distinctive character. I'm not good at waterfowl, so I wracked my brain for a likely ID…were they ring-billed ducks? That would be logical. But no, a quick peek through the Merlin app's helpful photos confirmed that these were ring-necked ducks. Huh?

Just having returned from a week of birdwatching on the Atlantic coast, the plump-bodied, long-billed silhouette of this "hokumpoke" reminded us of the sanderlings, dunlins, and willets we'd watched scurry ahead of the waves. It's a strange fact that despite their preference for damp thickets instead of beaches, woodcocks are the most numerous sandpiper in North America.

The fish appeared to be a striped mullet, a common species of coastal waters. At first, the mullet appeared to be winning. They flopped and slipped father through the herons bill, surely about to escape the final grip on their head. Then the heron's plan became apparent. All the movement was maneuvering the fish's head to aim aerodynamically into the heron's beak. With one last toss of their head, the fish disappeared.

On the inside, turkey vultures' intense stomach acids can kill the microbes that cause botulism, anthrax, cholera, tuberculosis, salmonella, and rabies. How appropriate that the birds' scientific name—Cathartes aura—means "purifying breeze." Their digestive system is so powerful that it even destroys the DNA of their food. As of March 27, I still haven't seen a turkey vulture in the Northwoods, but soon they'll be showing up on the wind and helping us out with a little spring cleaning!