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Ex ori__ the Ver_ilio_ R___e
Exploring the Vermilion Range
May 1 – Each month provides a new reality across northeastern Minnesota.
Weather changes day to day and hour to hour. Plants and animals grow, age, and create young additions to their species. Just like every individual being, every location in the region has its unique character.
What are you observing?
Seeing? Hearing? Exploring?
Following? Researching?
A recent walk at an old quarry site on a 50-degree afternoon, snow melted away, and soil damp revealed lots of small unidentified bees flying just above the ground surface. An Oblique-lined Tiger Beetle, one of the earliest of spring, was a brief spotting.
The year will bring many more and a variety of other species.
Some butterflies have been seen near buildings and along road and trail walks.
Another appeared to fly by and land briefly. Its photo enabled later identification.
This moth named “The Infant” (Archiearis infans) is the only Archiearis species found in North America. Its name “infans” refers to this boreal moth being one of the first emerging from a pupa in spring. Maybe this year I will also recognize one of its caterpillars that feed on birch, aspen, alder, and willow leaves.
The people who find garter snake watching interesting have spent the warmer days of the past three weeks watching them emerge from winter. They come out during the 50-to-60-degree daytime to connect and mate during this narrow window with 24 hours per day above freezing.
Now they have dispersed and will live a solitary summer life. After putting the bird feeders away to avoid bears, raccoons, and squirrels at home, now the time arrives for a hummingbird feeder and bluebird nest box at home.
This forested area along the beginning of the Echo Trail up to the East Arm of Burnside Lake provides daily walks, runs, bike rides, or drives with the forest and wetlands sounds and sights increasing with each passing day. Pileated woodpeckers preparing tree cavities for nests and calling. Broad-winged hawks back this week and a pair circling together in bonding before nesting. At 7:30 p.m. a porcupine in a tree top feeding on the tips of an aspen.
Robins picking up earthworms for the road surface after a rain. Winter wrens, white-throated sparrows, chipping sparrows singing on their territories. A belted kingfisher on the power line over a creek and turkey vultures in flight almost everywhere.
Almost everyone that explores the Vermilion Range throughout the year begins from their hometown or home base. Living in Ely surrounded by Morse Township means the most common daily observations are local with other area hikes and travels as destinations. In May, the recycling/solid waste station is on the edge of town next to the softball fields and adjoining wetlands. All of this was at one time long ago a wetland that was filled gravel from the nearby glacial esker to make the first Ely airport and then later converted some of it to ball fields.
The reason this area can draw attention is due to its wetness from May leading into summer and through fall. Underlying sedge peat wetlands contribute to mud, puddles, wet fields, willows, dogwoods, cattails, tamaracks, alders, and all the migrants and summer residents that depend on that habitat. Killdeers are back and beginning nesting on the fields. Drake mallards are in the pools of water while hens are already beginning to nest. Eastern phoebes and various sparrow species are on the fences. Woodcock and snipe are flushed from the wet edges. Two sandhill cranes on one of the fields last week. Red-winged blackbirds sing on territories. Herring gulls were stopping over for works in the wet fields. Falcons – American kestrels and merlin perch and hunt in the area.
May can be one of the most enjoyable months to explore and find places that can continue to provide discoveries throughout the year.
What’s your favorite place?
