Wings are one of the main ways that life gets to Hawaii. From huge frigatebirds, to champion marathoners like Pacific Golden Plovers, and elegant additions like Hawaiian Stilts, they all have a unique story.

Whenever I visit the smooth, gray rocks on the North Shore of Lake Superior, I find myself crouching low to examine the colorful patchwork of lichens who have made their home in such a seemingly perilous place. I never expected to do the same thing on Hawaii!

From out of a vast, dark sea, a small area of lights appeared below. The landing went smoothly. As my parents and I descended the stairs onto the tarmac, steamy air made us regret our long pants and sleeves. With almost magical speed, we’d just arrived on the most isolated populated landmass in the world: Hawaii. As different as this tropical paradise is from the Northwoods, I still found plenty of natural connections. 

Continuing past the concrete ruins, my friend and I followed the scar of the old road to the top of a cliff. Smooth, dark rock peeked out from beneath dry leaves and grass. Kneeling for a better look, we found stripes of red, black, and gray with smooth, waxy, and sparkling surfaces. Crustose lichens had found toeholds in each tiny crack, so the surface was also decorated with little blobs in shades of brown, white, and yellow. These lichens may be much younger than the outcrop, but the rock...

From laughter, to curiosity, to other forms of internal medicine, birch polypore is a common fungus with a lot to offer. 

Orion has been my favorite winter constellation for many years. Sometimes subtitled “The Hunter,” it seems apt that Orion is lying on his side these days, perhaps resting up from early mornings of deer hunting. Traditionally, of course, his quarry was more mythical—chasing the beautiful seven sisters of Pleiades, doing battle with Taurus the Bull, fighting a scorpion sent to tame his ego, or hunting the constellation Lepus the Hare.

Out in the middle of Sugar Bay, a small shape interrupted the glimmering ripples. Even in the poor light at a fair distance from a moving car, I could tell that this was a loon by their distinctive silhouette. The loon’s gray-brown back, full white throat, and pale cheeks confirmed them as a juvenile, a young of this year. While this loon is on the late end of migration, I wasn’t worried for their safety. Juvenile loons have been navigating their fall migrations alone for millennia. 

“November is a sigh; a sigh of weariness after the tumult of summer, a sigh of resignation over projects yet undone, a sigh of regret for hopes unfulfilled. It is a sigh of frustration that no matter how we try, the world seems to be sinking deeper into the morass, and a sigh of sadness that neither we nor those around us seem to live up to our expectations.” So wrote Lois Nestel, the Museum’s founding director and naturalist, over three decades ago. It is a gray sentiment, to match the gray...

The icy hike was beautiful, and “snowflake birds” swirled ahead of my car all the way home. Real snowflakes chased me from behind, and soon accumulated six inches of the white stuff. Snow buntings and needle ice foretold the coming winter, and as I write this, it has arrived!

Autumn on the Alaskan tundra was a whole new spectacle. With ground-hugging shrubs—all of them circumpolar species who grow around the top of the globe—instead of tall trees, it looked like the land itself was drenched in a rainbow swirl of melted crayon. But caribou were the official reason I’d come here, to the Toolik Field Station on the North Slope of the Brooks Range in 2018.

As with humans, the weirdest organisms are often the most interesting.

Dampness cooled my fingers as I lifted softened wood out of the limp maple leaves. In order to make sense of the small log, I assumed the hunched posture of nearsighted people everywhere. My field of vision narrowed, and I became immersed in an alien world. The variety of shapes and colors colonizing this stick were dazzling! Suddenly, something wet and shining loomed ahead. As I watched, the slug extended their beige-colored form and undulated across the lichen field on their single,...

This week we’ll discover the origin of a mysterious sound in the night.

Wind whooshed through the pines and spruces who bristled across the spine of our rocky point like quills on a porcupine. I snuggled more deeply into my sleeping bag. The day had been gusty, our paddling fierce and steady against whitecaps, with white lines of foam streaming down the lakes. Once the sun rose again, we’d be paddling upwind into a three-and-a-half mile fetch. Would the breeze slacken or strengthen overnight? I tensed at each gust and relaxed in the quiet, trying to foretell the...

We listen for elk in habitat created for talking to submarines.

Feeling squinty, I lifted my head to let my eyes rest on the soft greens and browns of the forest again. The tender light on the glistening surfaces made it feel like a fairyland. As my mind wandered around all of the living beings hidden in that scene, the phrase “turtles all the way down” popped into my head. Here in this forest, the sequence isn’t all turtles. It’s spruce trees and raindrops and fungi and ladybugs and mites and weird friends and all the senses we have to perceive them....

"It was 7 o’clock at night at the Northland College Geology Lab, and for the past four hours, I had been peering down a microscope, absorbing the stunning images of a rock cut so thinly that light leaked through it. The microscope I had been using magnified the tiny sample hundreds of times, revealing hidden intricacies between grains mere tenths of a millimeter in size. Each view was a tiny stained-glass window. However, magnification alone was not what made this mineral thin section so...

Just back from leading a “Boundary Waters with a Naturalist” trip for the Museum, I’m turning over memories in my mind. Each one has a unique sparkle or hue; some edges are rough, others liquid; some are common and numerous, while others are one of a kind.

Pelecinid wasps are similar to ichneumon wasps in that adults drink nectar, and they have long ovipositors for depositing eggs directly in the larva of another species. They just happen to be in their own family – Pelecinidae. And, while scientists estimate that there might be 100,000 species of ichneumon wasps worldwide, the Pelecinidae family contains only three species, with only one occurring north of Mexico. This was it: Pelecinus polyturator, the American Pelecinid Wasp.

The 20-foot high cliff was window into the Superior Craton, one of the very first land masses to form when the planet was young. The original rocks likely included basalt from the ocean floor and volcanoes; granite from some of the first-ever continental crust; and mudstones formed as early Earth weather eroded rocks into smaller pieces and re-deposited them. Then, they were all buried deeply by more rocks being piled on top and the actions of plate tectonics, heated to 600-700 degrees...

This week I discovered nine places to find delight.

A light breeze brushed through the pollinator gardens surrounding the Museum. Happy children and singing birds filled the Museum courtyard with sound. All this noise didn’t bother me; I zoned into the pollinator garden. I was completing my weekly butterfly survey as a participant in the Wisconsin Statewide Community Science Project.   Jillian Finucane is from Madison, Wisconsin, and is currently studying Geological Engineering at University of Wisconsin – Madison. As a lover of the...

Why does kale get to just sit there and grow, doing the only thing it really wants to do, while I have to toil away, tilling the soil, planting the seeds, watering the garden, and weeding away any competitors? By offering up its tasty, nutritious leaves, the kale has seduced me into catering to its every whim. “…the garden suddenly appeared before me in a whole new light, the manifold delights it offered to the eye and nose and tongue no longer quite so innocent or passive. All these...

It wasn’t a long message, just a note to correct a typo in an earlier text. “That should have said I love how you quote Mary Oliver! Not…I love how you Mary Oliver!” I chuckled—my brain’s own autocorrect had skipped right over the phone’s autocorrect fail. So often, even when someone’s words come out in a funny order, we still know exactly what they mean. But now I re-read the original typo and felt a little fizz of joy. Leaving out a single word had essentially turned Mary Oliver into a...