Late Spring on the Ranch

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is 100 words and a lot of pictures.  Nice day on the prairie today out at Urland Ranch, in Summit South Dakota this morning, dead calm, some views from around and a couple shots up at Sica Hollow State park looking for veeries.....enjoy what i got to see today!

An otter sees his first Olaf, and Olaf sees his first otter on the ranch

American bittern

Black tern

Holy Hawk!

Dickcissal

sharp-tailed grouse

Wilson's snipe

Sica Hollow Veery and yellow lady slippers

yellow lady slipper

Bobolink

Common ringlet

Silvery blue

orange mint moths

Silvery checkerspot

Olaf's Compilation of Photographs is out!

My Photographic compilation is ready!  Thanks to Dr. Jeff Rapp and Karen DeBaun for encouraging me to put a compilation together of my 30 years of photographs, it was like hearding cats, reviewing 400,000 shots this winter but I selected 100 pages of them and put them together is an attractive book, writing a little blurb about the 50 places in the world I included that seemed to have bits and pieces of "Paradise" in them and included a little thought of what other have thought about these places.

I didn't include Iowa, because Kinsella already wrote "Is this heaven? No, it is just Iowa."  I've previously based Nirvana stories in Kansas in my novel "The Enumerator," California and Oklahoma in "Curse of Panther Creek" so having written 90,000 words, I think I covered those locations and I had to draw the line somewhere.

I looked at very good photos from diverse places like Argentina, Ibiza, Mexico, England, Germany, Trinidad,  Bermuda, and many many locations in the US etc and I just didn't feel it, had a bad vibe, or I just said "no,"  and didn't include them.

So if you want to support this, $20.00 for a copy

drop me an email and I can give you details of getting one and you too, can own a piece of Olaf

Storolaf@yahoo.com

Here is the description on the book:

The search for paradise takes you on a worldwide photographic tour with author, adventurer, outdoor enthusiast, and birder Olaf Danielson as he searches for idyllic settings and Eden. 

Often traveling to the place less traveled and the place less clothed, Olaf looks at the concepts of paradise through the vision of others as well as his Nikon camera.  Unlike many, Olaf actually found paradise, however temporary, on an island of St. Martin before it was destroyed by Hurricane Irma in 2017.  He tries valiantly to find a new and better place.  Olaf and various members of his family travel from South Africa to the Brooks Range of Alaska, and to even the most isolated human settlement on earth—Tristan da Cunha.  Along the many journeys and millions of miles of travel (over 350,000 miles in 2016 alone), he ponders questions like:  what  really is paradise?  Is it something even attainable?  How many societies of the past found Eden and now the location is lost?  Is there a light out there signaling us to these shores of bliss?

A sample of the many birds, landscapes, butterflies and interesting things that my lens has found

King Penquin, South Georgia Island

Monaco

A Talayot, Menorca Spain

Collared aracari, Costa Rica

Corsican Wall Brown, Corsica, France

Gunsight Pass, Glacier National Park, Montana

I only wish I could paint some of these scenes.

thanks

Olaf

Prairie Tracks

Have you ever arrived home and saw something strange?  One time we saw a one way track of foot prints, but thankfully no person.  Another time had tracks doing circles in our driving area.  Would these tire tracks coming off of the road seem strange to you?

How about if you drove in your yard and you turned the other way....

Wtf?  is right.

Luckily we are not in Minneapolis and St Paul, and our daughter is safely home as her local Cub Food Store was ransacked today near Hamline University.   We were listening to that on radio.  I was off doing mowing, my wife and I were returning  from the cabin today to water and mow the grass.

 My daughter called us, something sounded wrong. "Hey someone is at the door and he says he hit one of our trees."  I'm like how could anyone hit one of our trees, they are way off the road and the ditch is 12 feet deep. "is he drunk?" I asked.

"sounds okay. He is very polite."

I was somewhat confused as to what really happened, and we were still 25 miles away but upon driving home it was true, someone had murdered one of our spruce tree we've been growing for years.  These were long past the Christmas tree stage and this one, got all decorated each winter for the last decade.  Crap!

He even ripped the stump out, pushed the tree back and didn't miss my car trailer by that much

How he didn't roll the Suburban....some what shocking

My daughter took a picture of the rig which looked exactly like the Old 1995 Suburban we traded in for the Cash-clunkers program back in 2010 to get a new Subaru.  Maybe the old car gods are getting back at us....for unceremoniously ditching the family car.

So we had a late Arbor Day massacre here, a sudden death of one tree, could have been worse.
I called the guy who was long gone, he wanted to do the right thing, make it right, asked what he could do....."hey, you owe me a tree."  He agreed with the plan.

We'll see how happy he is when he learns what the cost of replacing a big spruce like that one costs, it is not going to be cheap and probably almost as much as the old Chevy is worth.

Birds....well, the mourning doves are nesting in the spruce next to this one thankfully but otherwise
migration is winding down

Bay breasted warbler

a way out of range Northern Mockingbird in Robert County SD last week, might be a county record

Only the third South Dakota blue-gray gnatcatcher I've seen

Weather has been iffy and now the bolus of birds have largely passed just as the crazy driver taking out my yard trees has passed by, we'll see if doing the right thing includes forking over 500 bucks for a tree.  Now I got to figure out what to do with the remains.....

A sad day.....

stay safe

Olaf 

A visit to Corona (virus)

Some of you, I suppose, figured I'd be posting photos of the ultra rare crescent chested warbler today from Arizona, and despite it all, I'd be down on the west slope of the Chiricahua Mountains finding a great bird, but well...that would be irresponsible.  To put it simple, I just can't go.  You see, today is day #10 in my probable experience with Corona, Coronavirus, or COVID-19.  Nine days ago when I suspected I was coming down with it, I fully expected to be on a ventilator today, or dead.  I was writing letters to my wife and children last week but I got too sad and could never finish. I was writing down all of my passwords and thinking about my past.  I had been a good run. Such is this dreaded disease, one that moves fast but slow enough that you sit and wait, hoping for the best but fearing the future. It seems you either got it hard, or you hardly get it, luckily, I got off easy.

I say presumed, as my wife made contact with two clinics, one never responded and the other: we didn't meet the criteria for a diagnostic test.  I even wrote to the State department of health for South Dakota, wondering if since I had been thinking if things got bad in Grant or Day County SD, and knowing if we had it, we'd volunteer as doctors to help, and since both counties, have as of yet have had no confirmed cases, it may be good to show it is around to keep people from being reckless, that email, went unanswered.  I will only say to you, trust me, people with this disease are closer than you think.

It was an odd illness and an odd feeling.  I dreaded the nights, not that they were so bad, but that the unknown awaited in the morning.  It is hard to sleep when one thinks about would I be short o breath, would I even wake up in the morning?  But each day I did, and so did my wife.  We had GI symptoms, a persistent gut ache that was just there to remind you that things were wrong.  We had a really mild Upper respiratory symptom, a little sore throat, headache, a severe case of malaise, and well, some night fevers, but I am not complaining, it was pretty calm.  It was odd at times, though, I could feel something wrong in my chest and occasionally had to force myself to breath....the rare times I coughed it was like I didn't want to stop and then...I did, and I said a prayer every time the coughing ended, and it was only rarely.

It is clear that we either got it from buying milk in town or from our two sons, which if you work backward, our son Tyko was in Seattle late before they closed the city down in March and timing wise, he could have brought it back, then gave it to his brother (he is now holed up in Madison WI with his twin) and then they came to visit two weeks ago, thinking they had been isolated for a week and had never had any symptoms.  Six days later, I had a fever....So, at least it was the West Coast variety...I think that is a milder strain, but it is hard to know.  Oddly, our cat was also diagnosed with mild pneumonia at the VET last week, he had a UTI to boot, but he seems to have also gotten by with a slight case.  Kitty is out stalking again but it makes you wonder...did Tiger have COVID?  The Vet didn't think it was worth the test which he wasn't sure he could get.  There was a real tiger with COVID in New York....

I also might have been lucky as I did have Yellow fever vaccine series a year ago, another RNA virus and there is some studies that if you get your immune system turned on for RNA viruses, yellow fever is an RNA virus, oral polio is maybe a better one, that can help you fight it off, but who knows.  Yellow fever was a nasty vaccine for me so anything it helped with later is a good thing.  I also spent the worst days in the sauna, figured what didn't kill me made me stronger and the Finns had good survival numbers

The fact that we probably got it, considering how out of touch we've been with people, makes it important to realize how contagious this bug is.  The USS Kidd has not made port in over a month , yet, cases suddenly appeared on the ship at sea, I think we experienced the same situation.  It harbored in our kids for a month until they spread it to us.

You may ask, why have I been going out?  Well, we haven't seen anyone.  Even talking to a neighbor who seemed to want to get closer, I stayed 10 feet apart.  I felt the fresh air helped clear the lungs as did moving.  We tired quickly but we still went looking for stuff, the birds are migrating and in some cases, our deck was the best place.  I am lucky to be where I am and seeing each bird made me believe that it would be the last time I would ever see the species....kind of a last of life list.  It was very very macabre.

A pair of Solitary Sandpipers, part of a "Contradiction" of solitary sandpipers, the approved name for a group of them, a group of solitary birds?  A true contradiction

Wilson's snipe

common loon and FOY red-necked grebe

field sparrow

Harris sparrow

Black and white warbler

white-throated sparrow

Well, the stories and thoughts of (my) our demise have luckily been premature, now we just wait to fully get rid of this virus (assuming our symptoms are over and we did beat it) and then we can worry about the future to find out if we can catch it again, maybe next time, we won't be so lucky.....today, though I think I've lived to bird another day,

There will be other rare birds in Arizona, ones I can safely chase and be safe to the other birders and fliers.  For those of you doing things....take this seriously...The Beast is a beast.  I (we) was (were) VERY very lucky, assuming this was the real deal, and just because it appears that this virus isn't nearby beware of people like me, or others who don't appear sick but yet harbor the Beast.

Olaf

Frogs, frogs everywhere

I live in an interesting place.  I have threatened and endangered butterflies flying around from time to time. We have interesting birds and mammals, and it turns out, we even have some interesting frogs.  I don't pay much attention to frogs but some years our yard is filled with them.  Take the wood frog.  Being from Wisconsin, these early breeders were such a common sound heard in our wooded ponds, I paid no attention to them, sometimes even thinking the singular croaking sound was more birdlike than frog-like.

The South Dakota DNR is out surveying wildlife, mostly frogs by my house, and one of them, Dennis Skadsen, a man I've talked to but never met, told me to look out for Wood Frogs.  I walked out the door and heard some.  I was thinking, "what is the big deal?"   Then I did a little research.

It turns out wood frogs are reportable to the state DNR in my county, as we are in the edge of their range.  Day County is in light green
\

 However other maps show just this distribution, which is very scarce....apparently they are expanding OR they have more people looking for them

Clearly, quite a ways from me, and in the literature specimens have only been reported in Day County South Dakota in 1929....until some were found about 8 miles south of me in 2016, and then a few more, yet, I go out and stand on my deck and hear them the first moment I listen and then photograph one.  Then another....so I don't know what to think.

I do know wood frogs are cool, they freeze every winter including here and then thaw out in spring and resume their lives.  It is a complex and not 100% known process but they prove who they can survive life on the egde

Wood frog, Day County, South Dakota 4/26/2020

Sometimes I wonder about all of this rare stuff.  Maybe my friend is correct and Bachman's warblers are still around, lurking in the shadows somewhere.  Even Ivory-billed woodpeckers....Sort of like yellow rails and Northeastern South Dakota, they aren't here because no one is looking.  So here it is, an extremely rare frog and poof they just magically in my back yard, I suspect they are everywhere.  It all makes me laugh....am I reporting this to the state?  Hell, no.  If I was looking for anything up here, Dakota skippers, wood frogs, rails, the first place I'd look is in my backyard....the state can go sneaking around at night irritating my pets and my daughter, I guess they need something to do.
I've been thinking, I've always had this species of frog in my backyard.

Got a lot of frogs outside right now and there was some serious frog sex going on

Kandiyohi color pattern of Northern Leopard Frog, very sharp looking

Burnsi color pattern of Northern Leopard Frog

Normal morph of Northern Leopard frogs
All three patterns in five minutes of looking

We also have Boreal chorus frogs singing behind my house, they are a bit skittish, quite a diminutive frog but a classic spring sound up north

Boreal chorus frogs

I have seen some birds this week...not everything is...FROGS

Female Red-winged blackbird

gray partridge

sharp-tailed grouse (male) 

White pelican

So we are trying to survive COVID and like the wood frog, none have been reported in Day County nor even Grant County in Milbank but like the frog, I suspect it is also here, just no one is looking for it in the correct locations.

Who have thought a rare frog in my backyard, 40 feet from my pillow....

So stay safe, keep looking in your backyard, you might find something rare....

Olaf

Going to the Post Office and Gullipalooza

I knew I had to break isolation today, I've been thinking about it for weeks.  I had to go to the post office, it is tax day, April 15th and yes, the tax man waits for no man, virus or not.  Now many of you know that payments for taxes have been delayed, but not the actual filing, and yes, I could have filed extensions and I in fact did, but at some point I was still going to have to mail a bunch of tax forms to multiple places and so at some point I was going to have to venture outside and into the wilds of they say and chance the Beast.  Even extensions cost 50 cents to mail and I may need that money.

It shouldn't be so complicated to go to the post office, but alas....no.  Yesterday I schemed, where are some of the lowest volume post offices in the area?  Which counties have no cases of COVID-19?  How far should I drive?  I looked at all of these variables and others to determine where I was going to least likely encounter the bug and settled upon....Grenville, South Dakota, where I happened to be thinking about in my last blog--population 54.  The postmaster had NOT seen a customer since Monday and averages only about 5 a day.  They are open 10 AM until 2 PM, and it has even less than 20 PO boxes in a different room so, I decided that was my ticket and away I drove up towards my cabin to mail my taxes this morning in a almost forgotten spot in the middle of the Coteau des Prairies.

Walking in, masked up, literally holding a rag of bleach in my hand, seemed to be a scene from some dark movie, somewhere.  Was Terminator going to get me?  I opened the two doors, which I should have included in my screening of "COVID safe" post offices, scrubbed the small dest with bleach and then alcohol, and started writing out certified mail orders and return reciepts.  The poor lonely post master, seemed healthy enough and it took about 30 minutes but we got through it all.  I was a little unnerved because even here, a plexiglass shield had been installed between me and the lady, if I stood right in the middle.  To think of that out here, isolated that we are, is a bit daunting and worth hesitating and thinking about it.  COVID-19 is going to get everywhere and kill whatever it wants, I fear, no matter what we try.  I am probably delaying the inevitable, but I guess, that is what I have to try to do.  I succeeded in getting the coveted April 15th postmark and after a full disinfection back in my truck with everything I had with short of fire, and on the way home, I looked for birds, since I was already out and about.

It has been a brutal and cold spring, just awful, we've had snow for the last few days, it has blown like it almost never blows up here--hard and furious well over 30 mph on most days recently and its been cold, today, the sun was trying to come out but still my truck thermometer said 28 degrees at noon, spring has not sprung, maybe it won't and we get to choose between starvation and COVID, some choice.

The ponds have refrozen over after getting the ice blown off by the wind and on many, the only open water were small holes kept open by pied billed grebes trying not to freeze in.  Some were looking in a bit of a perilous state

 I have never seen blue-winged teals walk on ice before (geese and mallards all the time) as usually, being smarter than most of the prairie pothole waterfowl, they come in later, but not this year, the ice is hanging on late and they have arrived in the last few to days to this.  I had never seen a duck slip and fall on the ice before today either.  It is a year of firsts

an interestingly marked teal in front of a sliding bird

The water on Waubay Lake in Grenville is at road level.  With the heavy wind and waves breaking over the road last few days, dead carp have frozen and been left stranded on the road and the place has becaome a buffet for lucky gulls.  I saw five species, Franklin's, and ring-billeds, plus uncommon gulls in these parts, Bonepart's Herring and even a few California gulls were out eating carp.

Bonepart's gull

California Gull

Herring gull next to an abandoned propane cylinder, you probably always wondered where they go when used.

You see such strange views around Waubay Lake

No parking, although getting out might be a little damp

So that was today's outing, now I just have to wait two more weeks to see if the virus found me and wants to take me out, such is the life we have to deal with now in America and everywhere.  In the middle of this, the government thinks people will instantly want to go to restaurants and get onto a plane, shop and go to DisneyWorld and it will be business as usual...That ship, I fear sailed a month ago.  I'm not flying until we get a vaccine and I hope, sincerely hope, someone is working hard on that, instead of fake news, press conferences that say nothing, and "generous" donation of ventilators that haven't been made yet, let us see the vaccine makers.  As far as purchasing anything, like a car, a boat, even clothing....sorry, I ordered a part for something in the house last week, they say it will come in June....yea, luckily it isn't a part for the furnace, cause that is running hard.  Hey it will make it to 31 at our cabin today my Iphone says....but I digress.

So there I am, patiently waiting for the viral scurge to arrive to the flyover country of Northeastern South Dakota and I wait for spring.  Only God knows which one will arrive first.

stay safe

Olaf