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Cable Natural History Museum

Connecting People to Northwoods Nature

science natural sciences

All Episodes

6:29

341 – First Grade Spiders

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/09/26

A small group of first graders nearly vibrated with excitement as they gathered in a circle on the carpet at the front of their room. They remembered me from last school year, when I’d brought tubs full of nature stuff to their kindergarten classroom. For those first Museum Mobile visits, we focused on exploring nature using our five senses. Now, as first graders, I explained, we get to practice those skills again…by using our eyes to make observations about spiders! I was heartened by the wave of

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6:24

340 – Grand Canyon Connections

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/09/19

Floating down the river, exploring the side canyons, relaxing around camp, I was always on the lookout for both the novel and the familiar. A giant insect I’d never seen before but knew immediately to be a Tarantula-hawk Wasp caught my attention just as easily as the glossy black feathers of a Common Raven. After a few days of pointing out something I’d noticed, or explaining the basics of a geological feature, I found more questions coming my way from the other participants. With each teachable

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7:48

339 – Listening in Elk Habitat

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/09/12

Due to a stuffy nose, I’m not recording a new episode for you this week. I did pull forward this episode from 2023 about the elk herd near Clam Lake. Morning mist hung low in the sky as a dozen elk ran across a clearing. A similarly sized herd of Museum members held our breath and grinned at our good luck. It was luck 3 billion years in the making. The post 339 – Listening in Elk Habitat first appeared on Cable Natural History Museum.

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6:53

338 – On Top of the World

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/09/05

Curtains of vibrant lights were moving just above the horizon. The aurora! My jaw must have dropped as I stumbled backward to lean against the car, and tears welled up as I tilted my head back for a better view. The moon hung full and bright on my east. To my west, spruce trees were silhouetted against the faint, rosy afterglow of the setting sun. And all across my southern sky, northern lights danced in curtains of green and white and pink. The curtains were woven of many wispy streaks, as if I was

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7:45

337 – Isle Royale How Did You Get Here

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/08/29

With the rough, rolling, cold, wet ferry ride behind us, we disembarked gratefully at the Windigo dock on the southwest corner of Isle Royale National Park. Isle Royale, a 45 mile long and 9 mile wide bedrock island, is teeming with life that somehow made the treacherous journey. We hoisted our packs and started off down the trail. Before long, we met several pairs of hikers just ending their trips. We asked about their route on the island, their hometown, and which ferry they took. In essence, we

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6:14

336 – Wonderful Waves

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/08/22

Cliffs rose out of the lake ahead of us and soon towered a few dozen feet above our heads. Millenia of waves had worked their way into weaker layers of rock and then continued to enlarge them grain by grain. Some hollows were still tiny, but others formed deep alcoves. They spoke of the power of persistence. As we rounded one corner, a sea arch with one leg out in the lake framed our view. In another spot, multiple caves had coalesced into a maze we could paddle through.After hours on the water, we

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5:59

335 – Sarah Talks about Lampreys

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/08/15

Sarah Montzka is about to start their senior year as a wildlife education major at UW Stevens Point. This summer, as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, they taught our Junior Naturalist programs, assisted with live animal care, and showed a real talent for finding and appreciating the oddest parts of nature. This week Sarah will tell you all about lampreys! From drab lichen mimics to shimmering green wings; micromoths smaller than a grain of rice to underwing moths the size of my palm; we

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6:14

334 – Mysterious Moths

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/08/08

The main event of the moth workshop came after dark. Kyle hung a white sheet with a mercury vapor lamp across an old driveway. Then he painted fermented banana goo onto the trunks of trees along the drive. Until almost midnight, our little group walked from tree to tree to the sheet and back, with stops at patches of blooming milkweed in between.From drab lichen mimics to shimmering green wings; micromoths smaller than a grain of rice to underwing moths the size of my palm; we were captivated by

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6:25

333 – Studying Tough but Fragile Plants

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/08/01

Butterwort, primrose, and eyebright are arctic disjuncts, or northern plants who have been separated from their main populations. “We're very interested in these species as the vanguard of climate change for the Arctic. Whatever is happening here is what we expect to see happening farther north, as the climate continues to warm,” said Dr. Briana Gross, an Associate Professor at UMN-Duluth.The post 333 – Studying Tough but Fragile Plants first appeared on Cable Natural History Museum.

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6:31

332 – Common Butterwort Eats Bugs

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/07/25

I met a new friend this spring, and I’ve been heading up north to visit them every chance I get. We didn’t meet online exactly, but I did use an app to figure out their location. You see, I read about them over the winter, and just had to find out more about their life! They are a little odd – they supplement their diet with insects and make an unusual kind of yogurt – and they may not be hanging out this far south for very much longer. Being a botany nerd, I call this new friend of mine Pinguicula

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6:27

331 – Spilled Pennies

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/07/18

Keir, who specializes in moss, passed around tuft after tuft of green Dr. Seussian inventions. The scientific names he gave with each sample slipped through my brain in a fog of unspellable syllables. I admired each one eagerly, though, in awe of the kaleidoscope of leaf shapes, textures, patterns, and colors.I was crouched down, admiring the round, glistening leaves of a unique moss sprinkled in a thick jumble across a small bowl between cedar roots, when Keir finally spoke words I recognized

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6:39

330 – Avian Anglers

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/07/11

I pretty much stopped fishing after my dad stopped untangling my line and tying my hook. The few times I’ve tried as an adult, I’ve come up empty-handed. So I have the utmost respect for osprey, who catch at least one fish for every four dives. How do they do it? Osprey, eagles, kingfishers, and green herons have adaptations that make them excellent anglers.The post 330 – Avian Anglers first appeared on Cable Natural History Museum.

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6:22

329 – A River of Life

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/07/04

With a quick push from shore, my old green canoe caught the current and we swept downstream on the Namekagon River. The recent rains have filled the river with more water than I’ve seen in a couple of summers, and warm days have filled the river with life.I’m not sure that we’d been searching for anything in particular when we decided to paddle on the Namekagon, but what we found was a river, that, in the words of Mary Oliver, is “touching every life it meets.” The post 329 – A River of Life first

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7:13

328 – Finding the Lady’s Slipper

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/06/27

Coggin and I followed Karen’s memory through the dark swamps in search of this rare flower. The dirt path wound around spruce, fir, birch, and cedars. A hint of color caught my eye. There, almost crushed by the tip of a spruce tree blown off in some strong wind, the white and pink of the Ram’s Head orchid glowed through the gloom. Since the fungi, forest community, and pollination have to coalesce perfectly for an orchid to bloom, we felt lucky to be in the right place at the right time. The post

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6:44

327 – Old Turtle

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/06/20

The old turtle scraped at the sand with her naily toes as the kids gathered in a wide circle around her. Sometimes I get questions about dinosaurs on field trips, but they don’t fit into the Museum’s focus on Northern Wisconsin species. Today, instead, the first- and second-graders got a close-up look at a creature whose species has existed on Earth for over 40 million years, with direct ancestors much older than dinosaurs.The post 327 – Old Turtle first appeared on Cable Natural History

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6:47

326 – A New Coralroot

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/06/13

The fleshy stem bore no leaves, just a sprig of beautiful little flowers on the upper half. Each blossom looked like a whimsical elf.Coralroots exist underground for much of their lives, and their flowering stalk may not pop up every year, or in the same place. So, while widespread and not uncommon, coralroots can be hard to spot – or at least that’s my excuse for never having seen one before this year! The post 326 – A New Coralroot first appeared on Cable Natural History Museum.

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6:34

325 – Flowers from Stone to Sand

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/06/06

As I climbed back into my car with a camera full of more lovely wildflower photos, I smiled at my good luck. Here in Wisconsin and Minnesota, we have quite a variety of habitats and soil types in a relatively small area. I can explore rich soils and maple forests filled with trilliums, wild oats, and large-flowered bellwort one day, then delight in the bedrock home of bird’s eye primrose (and a not-yet-booming mystery plant) the next. And now here I was enjoying prairie flowers in a barrens! What

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6:00

324 – A Festival of Birds and Nature

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/05/30

This week I attend a festival of birds and nature.The post 324 – A Festival of Birds and Nature first appeared on Cable Natural History Museum.

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5:45

323 – Beautiful Bird’s-eye Primrose

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/05/23

Last week, with evening sunshine glinting off the riffled waters of Lake Superior’s North Shore, and a surprisingly warm breeze wafting over the spit of wave-washed bedrock, a flower caught my eye. Rock-hopping over, I discovered the pink petals and yellow centers I’d been looking for. Notches in each of the five petals gave them a lovely heart shape. At the base of the flower’s wiry stem was a little rosette of bright green leaves with wavy edges. This flower was one of dozens all sprouting from

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5:54

322 – The Speed of Spring

Cable Natural History Museum ·

2024/05/16

Even though I wish my beloved spring ephemerals could last longer, each spring I also cheer them on in their race against leaf-out. In many ways, the speed of spring is what makes it such an amazing season!The post 322 – The Speed of Spring first appeared on Cable Natural History Museum.

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