If you take a walk around the Lyman Lakes or Cannon River these days, you can see many anglers. Indeed, with the nice weather and mosquitoes not out yet, fishing could be the most enjoyable activity in nature around the waters. Fish are pretty abundant in the Lyman Lakes, and…
Arb Notes
Northfield is in full color: blue phlox and false-rue anemone are in bloom, the wild plums are on display and hundreds of brightly-colored tropical birds are finding a temporary home in the Cowling Arboretum. Warblers are pint-sized songbirds that belong to the family Parulidae. Most are neotropical migrants, traveling every…
With temperatures rising and the sun (kind of) shining, it would seem that spring has finally sprung! With spring comes new life in many forms – wildflowers are blooming and trees around campus are finally leafing out. My favorite spring emergences, however, are the baby Canada geese (Branta canadensis) emerging…
As the wind picked up and chilly raindrops battered midterm-wearied faces, the student naturalists took shelter in a patch of conifers next to the McKnight Prairie. While idling beneath the safety of the canopy, they came across one tree, the base of which was littered with white droppings. Investigation check—pass.…
There are many “ologies” in the world that relate to living organisms. Entomology, ornithology, mammalogy; the list goes on. One lesser-known discipline is mycology: the study of fungi. Fungi are a diverse group of organisms. There are 144,000 described species, with as many as 3.7 million more that remain undiscovered.…
I often walk down Highway 19 on my way to the Arb, and I always keep an eye out for a friend of mine — he’s a lovely blue-gray color and likes to stand in the water and rocks in the little Lyman Lakes waterfall next to the bridge. He’s…
Despite the unexpected snow this last week, spring is still on its way! Many forest wildflowers in the Arb have adaptations to deal with these kinds of weather disruptions and are thus able to start blooming even when it’s more chilly, taking advantage of the available light before the trees…
On our weekly Arb walk this Friday, the Naturalists spotted the body of an opossum (Didelphis virginiana) near the entrance of the Lower Arb. Commonly known as Virginia Opossum, these critters are about the size of a house cat, with a gray body, white face and pink nose. Opossums are…
Ubiquitous, overlooked and implicated in superstition, the American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) might be Northfield’s most fascinating organism. American Crows range across the wildest and most urbanized settings on the continent. Crows are a resident species at Carleton, meaning that they can be found here at any time of year. One…
On February 2, Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow in a sunny Pennsylvania town. His prediction: six more weeks of cold fronts and snow flurries. Three weeks later and a thousand miles from Pennsylvania, groundhogs in the arboretum are at the tail end of a long winter spent below ground. …