Discovering the world around me.
We put up a bird feeder station this year, and the Eastern Goldfinches (Spinus tristis) have decided it’s an easier way to get that 100% of their body weight serving of seeds than foraging for them in the fence rows and woods. A mixed flock of a couple dozen birds flits about, snacking, perching, fluttering […]
Continue reading Iowa State Bird: Eastern Goldfinch
The Meskwaki tribe was the last Native American tribe to live in Iowa and hunt on Owl Acres. Before they came to Iowa, though, they had a long history of conflict and migration. Their name, which translates People of the Red Earth, speaks to their origins in the St. Lawrence River Valley in northeastern Canada. […]
Continue reading Meskwaki Part 1: Last of the Natives
On a February day, there’s a fresh coat of snow on the ground. About four inches of new snow fell overnight, leaving the world bright and clean. The surface of the snow contains the records of last night’s activity. Every creature that was out and about left its tracks for us to see. Raccoons, birds, […]
Continue reading We Are Not Rodents: Eastern Cottontail Rabbits
Owl Acres formed a tiny part of the tall grass prairie that evolved after the last glaciers receded. As such, it would have seen the changes that made mammoths and other giant wildlife extinct and the rise of native hunter-gatherer groups. For over 300 years prior to European conquest, a group of tribes collectively known […]
Continue reading Namesake: The Ioways
On a frigid evening in late winter, I love to sit in my favorite chair beside a blazing fire in the fireplace. Dave lies on my feet, and I revel in the warmth, and the popping, fizzing, roaring, chuckling, murmuring of the fire. The wood we’re burning is a mix of things gathered from downed […]
Continue reading Teeming with Life: Hackberry
One day last fall, we were making a batch of apple wine from apples we’d harvested from our tree. We mixed the must, put in the apples, and set the buckets on the basement floor where it’s cool and out of the way. Within minutes, a column of ants was lined up to harvest the […]
Continue reading Super Women: Carpenter Ants
Raccoons have captured the fancy of cartoonists, authors, movie makers, comic strip artists, and even video game creators for decades. Rocky Raccoon, for instance, began his cartoon career in 1937, and has outlasted several generations of children and voice actors. Before Rocky hit the big screen, native Americans had created a plethora of tales with […]
Continue reading Masked Bandit: Raccoon
Grass seems to be everywhere. On Owl Acres, it covers the yard around the house, the open spaces around the barn, and the ditches along the road. Most of the species are not native to Owl Acres, though. They’ve been introduced as forage species for cattle, or lawn species for the yard. Most of the […]
Continue reading Beneath My Feet Part 5: Layers of Grass
It was 1:30 in the morning. Bryan woke me with “Listen.” Through the fuzz of sleep, I heard it—a pair of great horned owls singing their love songs to each other. They were somewhere in the woods on the northwest corner of Owl Acres. His voice was lower in pitch than hers, and their hoots […]
Continue reading Ruler of the Night: Great Horned Owl
It’s winter, so it’s not very hard to imagine ice and snow on Owl Acres. But it is hard to imagine thousands of feet of it, compressed into a gigantic glacier that stretches from here back north to the north pole. That’s what Owl Acres looked like though some 2.3 million years ago when the […]
Continue reading Beneath My Feet Part 4: Layers of Ice