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Category: Door to Nature

  • Door to Nature: Hepaticas

    A very small wildflower genus with gigantic popularity will soon be carpeting many of the deciduous woods of eastern Wisconsin. Its genus name and common name are the same, Hepatica. Even though Gray’s Manual of Botany refers only to the trailing arbutus as mayflower, many people mean hepaticas when they speak about mayflowers. The sequence […]

  • Roy Lukes: The Brown Creeper, Chief Tree Inspector

    The show is on and we revel, being earthbound creatures, watching the parade of birds moving northward. Every day is an “Earth Day” for us birdwatchers. Our fickle spring keeps us guessing how much more cold weather and snow we will receive. Northward migrating birds need emerging insects to help nurture them on their journey. […]

  • Roy Lukes: Pileated Woodpeckers

    Last week I was about to walk into the front yard to fill the bird feeders when a pileated woodpecker produced the most beautiful, loud, resonant “drumroll” from the bottom of the nearby moraine that I’ve ever heard. I paused to listen to his love call two more times before finishing my task. No sooner […]

  • Roy Lukes: April is Sparrow Month

      In case you may have forgotten last spring was colder than normal and many of the returning nesting bird species arrived later than they did this year. The first American woodcock was heard last month on March 9. In 2015 it was first reported on March 31. One of our favorites, the eastern bluebird, […]

  • Roy Lukes: The Unwelcomed Cowbird

    There is a bird that has been wintering in the South that will very likely be visiting your feeders before the end of the month. You can bet your bottom dollar that not many people will be rolling out the red carpet to welcome back the brown-headed cowbird. However, like them or not, they are […]

  • Roy Lukes: Barred Owls

    One of the owl songs we are patiently waiting to hear is that of the barred owl. You may make your own phonetic analysis of what it is “saying.” My interpretation is, “Who cooks for YOU – who cooks for YOU?” Invariably the owl many people refer to as the hoot owl or swamp owl […]

  • Door to Nature: The Sweet Water of Spring

    Each day, as we get closer to spring, the white ribbons of hard grainy snow along the driveway through our woods become smaller and smaller. Soon skunk cabbages will be poking their new pointed forms up through the snow in the wet swamps of the southeastern part of the county. They are the genuine harbingers […]

  • Roy Lukes: Winter Tree Silhouettes

    Slowly, bit by bit, amber droplet by amber droplet of fragrant sticky sap, the bouquets of balsam poplar twigs are coming to life, adding wild perfume to our home. Within a week or two their light green leaves will be unfurling and it is then that the balmy aroma will have reached its highest peak […]

  • Roy Lukes: The Mallard Duck

    Perhaps it’s the beautiful snowfall continuing throughout the day that got me thinking about the last glacier and its incredible benefits to mankind in the Midwest. Undoubtedly the glacial till, eventually resulting in some of the best farming country in the world, can be listed as the number-one benefit. Ask the average person to name […]

  • Roy Lukes: The Fearless Sharp-Shinned Hawk

    A fearless Blue Jay-sized predatory bird caused me to turn slightly chicken many years ago. The experience undoubtedly helped me to respect these important little “thunderbolts” much more realistically than if I had just read about their attributes in a book. My teaching year just ended and I had come to visit with my parents […]

  • Roy Lukes: The Basswood, A Budding Valentine Tree

    Today, the day of hearts and hugs, I remember the time Charlotte and I went on a long hike into the woods in search of the Valentine tree. Actually these trees of special interest were liberally scattered throughout the course of our outing. They grew within the deep woods, at the edges and along every […]

  • Roy Lukes: The Gray Fox

    The first gray fox that I ever saw was being lured at night 53 years ago by meat scraps to the lighted front yard of Murl and Mildred Deusing along the Baileys Harbor shore. The small floodlights appeared to have little to no effect on the creatures. A red fox, skunk, raccoon and gray fox, […]

  • Roy Lukes: Winter Memories

    With the professional football season winding down, I think back to the NFL championship game in Green Bay on December 31, 1967 between the Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, the game often referred to as the Ice Bowl. Before the playoffs had led to that game, I had made plans with Tom Erdman to trap […]

  • Roy Lukes: Mourning Doves

    How well I remember the early spring of 1952 when I was a junior at the Wisconsin State College at Oshkosh, learning how to become a teacher. One of the biology professors had posted a large chart in one of the halls of the main building on which he invited those students and professors interested […]

  • Door to Nature: The Eastern Hemlock Tree

    Years ago Charlotte and I visited our neighbors a few miles southeast of us and enjoyed wonderful stories by the homeowner, 92-year-old Alfred Flock. He told of their barn and house being framed and beamed with Eastern Hemlock that had been cut in their own woods when he was a child. Even though hemlock lumber […]

  • Roy Lukes: Hairy Woodpecker

    The Hairy Woodpecker, that bird without so much as one hair on its body, is one of my favorite birds on our property. I say this from an ecological viewpoint and not from what these wood “chiselers” had done to our wooden house built in their woods. It has been known for a long time […]

  • Roy Lukes: Land Stewardship

    The New Year is approaching and it is a good time to hike on the land and “take stock” of all the great preserves we have in Door County. The old year is waning and it is time to think of the natural world and make a few resolutions for the New Year. In addition […]

  • Roy Lukes: Early Christmas Greens

      What else could it be but wishful thinking, sitting here at the kitchen table in the early hours browsing through Norman Fassett’s book Spring Flora of Wisconsin? Four 10- to 20-foot Hemlocks in our front yard add a small bit of rich green to an otherwise predominately gray and brown landscape. Several widely scattered […]

  • Door to Nature: The Christmas Bird

    If the label “Christmas Bird” were to be given to any one species in a predominantly evergreen-tree back yard, it would be the Cardinal. Just one male in his fiery brilliance seems to make the scene come alive. And the more subdued female, wearing her usual patch of orange-red “lipstick,” also stands out beautifully against […]

  • Roy Lukes: Native Squirrels – the Tree Planters

    iI is early December and nature’s tree planters are still hard at work.