Travel on the Gravel

Early May is the silly season for birds in these parts of the northern plains, as all sorts of ephemeral migrants pass through. Yellow-rump warblers, black-and-white-warblers, unidentified warblers, Harris sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, I don't know what all, topped off with a rose-breasted grosbeak at the feeder this Monday morning. All this is sort of interesting, but it is the appearance of certain prairie birds, not the forest or boreal birds, that warms my heart. Monday morning, as ZZ and I jogged the dog down the section road, I remarked that a particular fencline bordering a certain tract of pasture was where I always saw the first bobolink every spring. Sure enough, that very morning, a bobolink sat trilling from a fencepost. Here's a more peculiar mystery. How are goose droppings appearing around my birdbath and flower beds? Just here and there. To my knowledge, geese have never lighted on my lawn. It's a mystery.

Not physically, of course, just virtually. I'm not through blogging images from the New Zealand trip in March. These come from an overnight in Oamaru, a port city on the east coast of the South Island. The two most interesting towns in New Zealand, architecturally, are Napier (the Art Deco City) and Oamaru (the White Stone City). Here is a collection of buildings in Oamaru built of the distinctive white limestone of the region.
Australian Mutual Provident Society
Bank of New Zealand
Bank of New South Wales
Kipling Legend on ANZAC Monument
Opera House

I have the honor tomorrow of presenting a program once again for the 50-year reunion of the NDSU Alumni Association. This will be at 10:00 AM over at the Ramada. It will be Great Plains folksong, mainly. I'll sell autographed books for the benefit of our chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the honor society for student historians. The alumni are a cordial audience, as you might imagine!

Warm (up to 80 degrees) weather over the weekend may have raised false hopes of spring, but it was good while it lasted. The native plum and juneberry bushes in our back yard burst into bloom Saturday afternoon. Rhubarb now is in its glory. Having received a bagger-sealer as a birthday gift, I resolved to export some of the wealth via UPS to the less fortunate in southern climes, starting with my mother in Kansas. My gal ZZ decided then that her mother in California was similarly deprived, and so we packed a box for her, too. Snaps from the rhubarb patch: rhubarb1.jpg - rhubarb2.jpg

I have the happy privilege of meeting the public in Devils Lake this afternoon and evening. I'll drive there this afternoon and at 4:30 convene a discussion of Custer's My Life on the Plains with teachers of the district. Later in the evening, at 7:00, I'll present a public lecture under the title, "The Comedy of the Commons: My Life on the Post-Colonial Plains." This is all done under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities; Sam Johnson of Lake Region State College is the ramrod of the project. The discussion and lecture will take place, I think, in the Heritage Room at LRSC.

For some years my Plains Folk columns have been distributed across the northern plains by NDSU Extension. The readership in newspapers has been considerable, judging by my mail and by encounters in taverns and airports and other public places where people have introduced themselves and made conversation about the column. Reluctantly, given that happy history, I have elected to remove the column from that channel of distribution and take it to another venue. Plains Folk will be back before the public of the northern plains. Watch this space for developments.

A fascinating letter comes from Mr. J.B. Martin, of Hamilton, North Dakota. He writes in response to a Plains Folk column wherein I speak skeptically about reports of quail in North Dakota in the 19th century. It seems an early taxidermist in Hamilton mounted various game birds in cases, including not only a passenger pigeon but also some quail, "a little smaller and slightly lighter color than the bobwhite of farther south." Ben Sell, an early businessman of Hamilton, is reported by Martin to have said the quail "were a native along the ridge at the edge of the valley. They were hunted hard and a bad winter finished them in about 1912." The quail mounted by the taxidermist is said to have been shot near Park River. Mr. Martin provides information to follow up on the birds in cases, and this is something I'll have to chase. Quail in North Dakota? What's the deal with this? Many thanks to Mr. Martin for opening an intriguing mystery.