Heartland Safari

A minuscule ant about 1mm long, is pictured from above on a white countertop next to a gargantuan wristwatch and band for scale. Pharoah (or Thief) Ant.

Questionable Identity: Thief or Pharoah Ants

Updated April 21, 2025

I like my coffee immediately upon consciousness in the morning. That requires a fast coffee maker, which we have. It maintains a reservoir of hot water at all times and is ready with no notice to produce coffee. Recently, after eleven years of exemplary service, that coffee maker sprung a leak. Water began to pool […]

Insects and Spiders

Sun-bleached dog chew bone with deep gnawed grooves along its length and at the ends. Work of a woodchuck.

Woodchuck, Whistle Pig, Ground Hog

Updated April 14, 2025

Clancy, our golden retriever, loves to retrieve. He also loves to chew on beef bones. The other day he carried one of his bones with him when he went on a walk. Somewhere along the walk something else–probably a squirrel–grabbed his attention, and he dropped his bone. A few days later on the same walking […]

Mammals

A male Prairie Chicken displays at a lek. Tightly spaced brown and white stripes mark his wings and body. Large orange air sacs inflated to the shape and size of a hen’s egg stand out on both sides of his neck. Two tall feather tufts are erect over the top of his head, looking like rabbit ears. His short fan-shaped tail points straight up.

Lek Dancers: Prairie Chickens

Updated April 7, 2025

There’s a place in southwest Iowa where a most unusual display occurs each year between March and May. It’s the mating dance of the greater prairie chicken (AKA pinnated grouse (Tympanuchus cupido). Rather than pair-bonding like many birds do, prairie chickens have a lek form of mating. The females choose who to breed with, and […]

Spring Is Here

Updated March 31, 2025

Spring is here. Along with the winter-hardy cardinals, finches, house sparrows, downy woodpeckers and blue jays, new voices are joining the dawn chorus. We hear red-wing blackbirds, brown-headed cowbirds, and northern flickers. The juncos haven’t left yet but will soon. Robins have arrived, but they’re being quiet. The life on Owl Acres is waking up. […]

About

Ring Billed Gull in flight. White body, blue grey wings with black tips. Its bill is encircled by a distinctive black ring. The bird has the long, narrow wings of an active soarer.

Population Explosion: Ring-Billed Gulls

Updated March 24, 2025

When I think of gulls, I think of standing on the beach in North Carolina tossing bread to the seagulls and watching them compete for it. I don’t think of gulls on Owl Acres. In fact, there are 17 species of gulls that visit Iowa, the most common being the ring-billed gull (Larus delawarensis). They […]

Birds

View out the front door at Owl Acres. The morning sun lights up a House Finch on the porch railing and a Canada Goose standing out in the yard. The Finch does not migrate. The Canada Goose migrates only as far as needed to find food and habitat.

Migration

Updated March 17, 2025

About a week ago, the wind was howling at up to 60 miles an hour, blowing snow and causing hundreds of car accidents. The juncos who usually hold forth under the bird feeder scurried to the porch where they sheltered out of the wind. An opossum found a protected corner of the porch and curled […]

Birds

A century-old, two row corn planter in the woods behind the house on Owl Acres. The derriere-shaped metal seat pan and frame emerge from the underbrush each fall. The implement is drawn by horses. The farmer rides on the metal seat and has a full workload, controlling the machine with levers and foot pedals, while also driving the team.

More Innovation on the Prairie: Corn Planters

Updated March 10, 2025

Back in grade school, I learned that the native Americans took pity on the starving colonists and taught them how to plant and harvest corn. The instructions included making little hills of dirt with a digging stick, placing four kernels of corn in the hill so they were not touching, adding a fish for fertilizer […]

History

Image attribution: 5 Bird wing types as described in the text. Each wing type equips its bird for its specialized flight regime e.g. soaring, maneuvering, fast flight, hovering etc.

Icarus Envy: Wings

Updated March 3, 2025

It’s cold outside! The dark-eyed juncos shelter on the porch when they’re not cleaning up under the bird feeder. They flap and flutter in consternation and fly away when I step out on the porch. Out there in the quiet day, sparrows and chickadees send their occasional calls into the winter air. They flit from […]

Birds

Asian lady beetle wintering inside the house on a sunny window sash frame. The insect’s shape is an almost perfect hemisphere, with black spots adorning its orange elytra (forewings adapted as wing-cases). On its pronotum (the hard plate covering its thorax), it sports an M-shape mark, typical of this species.

Aphid Eaters: Multi-Colored Asian Lady Beetles

Updated February 24, 2025

Every so often throughout the winter, I become aware of a lady beetle waking up from her diapause to see if it’s spring yet. She’s been sleeping with her friends in odd corners of the house, with a few holing up in the can lights in the kitchen. They fall on the floor. The dogs […]

Insects and Spiders

More archaeology behind the house. The winnowing body of a threshing machine lies on its side, discarded but not forgotten, in the woods on Owl Acres. At its most basic, the threshing machine is a wind box. It blows air upward though an agitated mass of plant materials: straw, chaff, and grain. The grain falls to the bottom and the lighter materials are carried up and away, to be blown into a straw stack on the ground. Moving arms called straw walkers, visible in the photo, work the stems toward the back where they’re blown out. The “shoe,” a shaking frame which carries the sieves, is also visible below the straw walkers. Barely visible through the tangle of brush is the drum-shaped blower housing, source of the wind that makes it all happen. The grain is collected at the bottom of the machine and fed into an elevator for loading to a wagon.

Labor Saver: Threshing Machine

Updated February 17, 2025

Out in the woods on Owl Acres, along with several other pieces of once-valuable farm equipment, lies part of a threshing machine. The inhabitants of Owl Acres most likely used it to thresh oats which were then fed to the cattle and horses. The first step in harvesting the grain—oats or wheat or barley—was to […]

History

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