Pipestone Week 6

I worked some more overtime this week and used my one day off to go to Blue Mounds State Park again, this time with bird researchers Arjun and Cassie. We hiked around admiring grasslands birds, then returned via a "trail" that weaved through the woods at the base of the cliff. We continued this way, listening to the eastern wood pewees above us until the trail tapered out into nothing in a weedy field. We had some theories about what the plant might have been, which led to me calling the rangers down there the next day. Among the blooming prickly pears, we discovered a flower with an interesting name, Venus's looking glass.

Venus's Looking Glass

The gigantic prickly pear at the beginning of the trail at Pipestone National Monument started blooming this week. It will have quite a few flowers on it when they all open. Other flowers I have not yet identified have been opening here and there.

Prickly Pear Cactus

Milkweed

Along the Casey Jones State Trail, the only reliable place where my cell phone works (but not if I don't stand up straight!), some yellow coneflowers and black-eyed susans have begun blooming.

Yellow coneflower

Within the park, I observed a kingbird fighting off a nighthawk, living up to its "tyrant flycatcher" family name. Another time, while listening to a bluebird that I could not see, waiting for it to appear, I was surprised when it suddenly flew down to chase a wren in the tree where the bluebird nest had been, then peck at a nighthawk perched in a nearby tree in one long swoop.

I also had the pleasure of observing two white-tail fawns still wearing their spots. They just watched me. I didn't have my camera.

Prairie Phlox

Within the park, a small group of sun dancers is encamped at the Sun Dance grounds. While the group leader has come in to the visitor center a couple times to sign in to quarry the pipestone, I haven't seen much of the group. I am content to let them do their thing and be alone. It is interesting to walk around the park and hear the singing and drumming from a short way off.

We continued presenting our evening programs at the Pipestone RV Campground. I rustled up 15 people for my show, which doesn't sound like much. Compared to Glacier, though, I'm reaching a proportion of the park's annual visitation a power of ten higher per show.

European honeybee on smooth sumac

Pipestone Week 5

The Water Tower Festival, which celebrates the anniversary of the pouring of the all-concrete watertower in Pipestone, MN, went on this weekend. Events included a medallion hunt (if I had known the clue, I might have found it because I am probably one of the only people who regularly goes to the site!), a concert and street dance, and of course, the event for which we have been striving for these many hours, the parade.

Mike Bender and Nathan King with the Pipestone National Monument Water Tower Festival float.

We had a little confusion trying to find the right line-up spot since we had only vague, oral directions. A few 23 mph. laps around the neighborhood and we finally got directed to our line-up spot, #55!

We were stuck behind a group throwing candy out for kids and in front of a drum line. Between the panic caused by the candy-throwing and the attention-hogging of the drum line, it made us feel pretty insignificant in our silent car.

The wind was blowing out of the northwest (which has now brought us some cool, dry air, thankfully) and when we got the Cushman cranked up to full speed going down the road, we lost one of our foam antenna balls. The rest survived the parade, but by the time we fought the headwind coming back to the park, we were short three antenna balls (out of 4) and two antennas.

It was a good showing for the park, which, I was told, had not participated in the parade in years. I hope that next year, the parade theme would fit my new float design "Electric car, electric guitar, Pipestone ROCKS!" Someone would just ride in the back playing electric guitar. I told the superintendent of my plan. He seemed concerned that the hamster in my head was picking up speed.

We couldn't have pulled off the float without the help of John Lentz and the others in Resource Management and especially Clark Burmeister in Maintenance, who did the construction work. I came up with the design and painted it.

Blue Mounds State Park - Minnesota

I got an early start for my tour of Blue Mounds State Park, located just north of Luverne, Minnesota. The park is basically a big quartzite hill with prairie on top of it, a treed area at the base of the hill, and a small lake. A large portion of the grassland is fenced off and contains a group of bison.

I got started on the trail at 6:30 AM because I knew it was going to be a hot and sweaty day. The high was supposed to be in the low 90s and the humidity was about 100%.

Humidity!

The park touts 13 miles of trails, but three of them are parallel. There's even a few places where I'm sure I could play catch with someone on the other trail. I chose the middle route, the Upper Cliffline Route. The view was nice.

Upper Cliffline Route

The biggest surprise was that I spotted two birds I had never seen before, and one I had seen only once before. Grassland birds are tough to ID because the grass obscures them so well, but the dickcissels were calling regularly. I thought "Dick-ciss-el" was an easy way to remember the call, but it sounds more like "rap-rap-rap." I also saw the grasshopper sparrow, which I identified because I heard a sound I did not recognize. Researchers from the University of Nebraska have been searching daily for grasshopper sparrows within Pipestone National Monument and have only seen two (and caught them both!). I also saw bobolinks, which were great to see, too!

Dickcissel

As I continued down the trail, I came to a cliff face. According to the sign, it used to be a quarry for the quartzite. It was an striking feature that came seemingly out of nowhere. Some optimistic hikers had built a peace sign and a smiley-face out of loose rock at the bottom of the cliff.

The historic quartzite quarry

Upon reaching a point near the end of the trail, I found a sign introducing the "Rock Alignment." The sign said that it was not known whether the line of rocks was historic or an archaeological relic, and stated that parts were built using different techniques, possibly at different times. I wandered down the trail, which got abruptly thinner and brushier - not well-maintained - for quite a while before I found the rocks down in the forest.

The Rock Alignment

As I looked at the rock alignment, I immediately recalled two archaeological sites I have visited in the Northern Rocky Mountains. One was a low-lying wall of green siltite imported from elsewhere in the mountains located about half a mile west of the Many Glacier Hotel at Glacier National Park. The wall, I was told by University of Alberta - Calgary archaeology professor Brian Reeve, was used for driving animals like sheep toward a killing zone. I also thought of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Alberta, where bison were driven off a cliff using a variety of land managment practices and a "funneling" landform, though I do not recall whether rock walls were employed there. In either case, this rock wall was located in a funnel shape toward a cliff. There is no reason for a settler to go about building a tiny wall there, as the sign suggested might have been the case. Before it toppled over with the wind and time, the wall would have been just tall enough to crouch behind and attack or drive bison off the steep side of the bluff. I don't want to sound arrogant, but the Rock Alignment's purpose seemed clear.

If all that intuition were not enough, in 2003, on a University of Wisconsin field trip to Wyoming, we bumped into Jim Brandenburg on the way back to Wisconsin. He took us out near his family's farm at the base of the Blue Mound and told us that when he was a kid, they found bison bones and teeth along the base of the cliff. It all fits together.

I walked the whole Bur Oak Loop, on which the Rock Alignment was located, and ended up at a visitor center that used to be someone's house. It would have been an awesome house, but maybe it's better that everyone gets to enjoy it as a visitor center. I took a break since I was absolutely dripping with sweat and watched the nighthawks zooming around overhead. One repeatedly swooped overhead in a high-speed dive, its wings making a distinctive "whoooov!" sound as it zipped by at high speed. Checking my reference book, the males are apparently the only ones that exhibit this behavior, and its purpose is unknown because it is not clear to whom the dive and the noise are being directed. Based on my observations, the nighthawk will fly around beating its wings a few big beats followed by a few quick flutters, calling, slowly ascending until an appropriate height is reached, then it will sweep its wings back, break, and dive straight down, sometimes pulling out close to the terrain, all the while making a noise like an Indy car passing by.

My plant intuition served me well on the return trip down the Mound Trail, which parallels the bison paddock fence. I was glad I chose the route because it was where I got the best look at the shy grasshopper sparrow and I saw a couple of interesting flowers. I saw one and thought it looked like larkspur. I saw another flower and thought it looked like a penstemon. I checked the flower book when I got back and I felt pretty proud of myself - they were a prairie larkspur and a pale beard-tongue (penstemon). Even though the flowers are different, all those laps around the Beaver Pond in Glacier paid off as I seem to know a lot of prairie flowers I didn't know I knew!

Prairie larkspur

The sun was getting higher in the sky, heating up all the moisture. I could see strange-looking, ominous clouds gathering in the west. I headed back to the car, thinking that with the baking sun cooking my skin that it had to be at least 11:00 in the morning. It was just past 9:00. I felt like a big wimp, heat-wise.

The walk was nice, and I got to try out my new uniform backcountry hiking boots, which I really like. I have been hiking boot-less since I left my old pair in Tanzania, hoping someone there would get use out of them.

Work has proceeded swimmingly on Pipestone National Monument's parade float. I spent part of my days this week painting the sign, which we engineered to fit into the bindings for the standard railings for the electric truck. One of the maintenance guys took care of the cutting and the carpentry and he's been phenomenally upbeat about the process. Now we just need a banner for the sides. I'm kind of excited to drive it in the parade on Saturday. Until then, I'm keeping the design a secret.