With its haunting call, its distinctive black and white plumage, and its intense, almost otherworldly red eyes, the Common Loon is an icon of northern Minnesota wilderness. But some researchers believe future generations of the beloved bird in this region may be in jeopardy.

Now, there’s a concentrated research effort by the National Loon Center in Minnesota to find out whether the same declines are present there. While scientists are at the helm of this work, ordinary people with a love for the loons provide passion–and power.

People like Captain Starr Bockenthien, who takes groups of visitors out on the water in Crosslake, Minnesota, to catch a glimpse of the enigmatic bird.

For her, the loons have provided calm and happiness. And her enthusiasm is infectious. “It is refreshing every day,” she said. “Every day is a new day with the loons.”

Bockenthien hopes if people catch her passion for the loons, they’ll also be motivated to protect them.

Image: Natasha Bartolotta (left) and Jodi Eberhardt (right) watch for loons from the National Loon Center’s StewardShip, on the Whitefish Chain of Lakes in Crosslake, Minnesota.

Protecting the Common Loon

Michael begins reading to us from 2 Esdras 4...and points out how it is like us today in different ways.  Esdras wanted to see the origin of the wicked.  Man is in pursuit of understanding all things in their environment.  If you know why you are here, that begins the end of your sufferings to see and you look at things differently.
We are given to understand what is upon the earth, only...not in the heavens or under the sea.
The good cannot come until the evil that is sown is harvested.  (wheat and tares )
Don't try to know everything before the end...given a date - we procrastinate...given a process - we continue to purge.
God sets the timing.
The events mentioned in 2 Esdras 5 are also found in Biblical scriptures as confirmations....trumpet sounds...bleeding wood - caused by sap exposed to a certain hot gas - Geological warnings of the time.
Satan will utilize the Holy Scriptures to make you fight against someone else.

02 03 2023  2 Esdras 4 - 5 - Man's Pursuits Vs God's Timing

For many in Minnesota, the signs of fall include the leaves changing color, pumpkins, and football. But for bird watchers, the primary marker of the season is the fall migration. And there's no more dramatic way to observe the migration than at Duluth's Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory where birders gather to watch hundreds – sometimes thousands – of raptors make their way south for the winter. Journalist Matthew Schneeman attended the Hawk Weekend Festival at the height of migration to witness the event.  

Support for MinneCulture on KFAI has been provided by the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund. Photo by Sean McLaughlin, courtesy of Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory.

Birders flock to Hawk Ridge to observe the fall migration

This is the high pitch sounds of a Goldcrest calling as it moves through the trees opposite my listening station in Dorset UK

Goldcrest - Regulus Regulus

Sapphire Planet

Bird Migration pt. 2

Songs for Silvertown and the Île de Gorée, August 2024
A participatory voicing through the Tate Institute
With thanks to Paul Tecklenberg for the recording

A site-specific sonic response to the derelict Tate Institute and its connections to sugar industrialist and founder of Tate Britain, Henry Tate, the route of the British colonial sugar trade and enslaved African peoples, and the migratory pathways of songbirds between London, UK and Dakar, Senegal.
With thanks to all at the Tate Institute revitalisation project ReinsTate.

Songs for Silvertown and the Île de Gorée

Song #10 in The Singing Grove album.

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I fell in love with Snowy Owls as a Grad Student at The Raptor Rehab Center of Minnesota back in the 1980s. They breed at the top of the world in the frozen Arctic and were not normally seen in the United States. But in irruptions, Arctic birds sometimes showed up in record numbers much farther south than their usual winter range. 1983 was an irruption year for the species.  

Snowies were inexperienced in the ways of humans, and we received many injured birds at the clinic that year. We helped many of them, and in so doing I got to hold them in my arms, feel the gentle softness of their luminous white feathers, and gaze into their blazing amber eyes. 

I have never forgotten that experience.

Snowy Owls now winter regularly in the US, thanks to climate change. Their complex Arctic ecosystem has been altered by global warming. This is a very bad thing for the Snowy Owl. They, like so many other animals unique to the Arctic biome, are in trouble. But now I once more have the joy of encountering these phantoms of the frozen wilds –– from a respectful distance, viewed through my binoculars and camera.

I still adore Snowies. They are sacred to me.  And so I wrote this song to share the mystery and majesty of these stunning phantoms of the Arctic. I hope you fall in love with them, too! I hope you care enough to save them.

∞∞∞
 
Music, lyrics, vocals, Celesta, and digital Bowed Glass Bowls by Diane Laura Rains. Hammered dulcimer by Stu Janis.

Copyright © 2018 by Diane Laura Rains. All Rights Reserved.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ LYRICS ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

∞∞The Solstice∞∞

White foxes are sleeping
in their cool tundra bed.
Sharp shards of color
fold the sky overhead.
Ghostly and silent
in the calm winter air,
pale wings are hunting.
But the prey isn’t there.

In the snow is an owl.
And the snow is the owl.
And the owl hears the singing of Arctic ice
in the blue of the longest night.
In the midnight of shimmering light.

∞∞The Journey∞∞

Leaving home skies behind,
she seeks what she needs
over lands unfamiliar
far from Greenland’s cold seas.
Strange lights pass below her,
in a world upside down.
Endless miles! She keeps going
‘til she meets fertile ground.

In the snow is an owl.
And the snow is the owl.
And the owl hears the singing of engines in flight
in the din of the busy night.
In the midnight of airport lights.

∞∞The Window∞∞

Away again, yearning
for quiet and space
to shelter through Winter
with some measure of grace.
Then a field near a farmhouse
with one window aglow.
For now she will stay here;
she has nowhere else to go.

A child sees the owl.
And the child is the owl.
And the owl hears the singing of awakened sight:
spark of wonder in a mind burning bright,
like a candle flame in the midnight.

∞∞The Future∞∞

And we are the owl
seeking light from the faded year.
Will the midnight hear the singing of its darkest fear
as the snow and the owls disappear?

The Singing Grove

The Snowy Owl

Buy the album

MinneCulture is KFAI’s award-winning audio storytelling program. We produce audio documentaries exploring Minnesota’s art, culture, and history — stories about musical sensations, small town heroes, cultural icons, local lore, and everything in between.

Excerpts from sound works, projects and collaborations
http://www.ciclover.com/
These works address communication through voice and language and the interplay between hearing and listening – the vocal, the spoken – and seeing and reading – the visual, the written. Using collaboration and performance with field recording, digital imaging and the spoken/written word I am currently exploring an expanded approach to language within species and across species through a framework of everyday experience – the ordinary and the quotidian.

Ceol Sidhe is the married musical duo of Diane Rains (aka Crow Bard) and Stu Janis. [How do you say our name? "Kyohl SHEE"]

The Irish Good Folk (known also as "fairies") make astonishing music, called "ceol Sidhe" in Gaeilge, the Irish language. Bewitching, alluring, sometimes a little dangerous! It travels on the wind and lands where it will.

The music of Ceol Sidhe duo explores and celebrates the beauty and mystery of fairy music. We sing of the vast splendor of stars. Of an enchanting island hidden in magical mist. Of ancient goddesses and the alluring realm of Fairy. We sing of hearts both human and Fae.

∞∞∞


Header art: Greek Girls Picking up Pebbles by the Sea, by Frederic Leighton, ca. 1871

New tracks tagged #Bird Migration