Paper Session

Yesterday a sibling and I went to the Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota for the annual paper session of the Minnesota Ornithological Union.  I always enjoy going to the Bell Museum because of the old fashioned art deco architecture and the beautiful dioramas.  This diorama here was so good that as I stood with my nose to the glass I felt I could walk right onto that path below the tree, right the little wood duck who leaped out of it's cavity nest and landed on it's back, and continue on the path down to the lake.  If I could only get past the glass, I could fast forward through winter and it would be spring again.  There are other fabulous dioramas such as the wolves next to cliff on Lake Superior and elk on a prairie, but today this wood duck one is the one I wanted to be in.  In a couple years these dioramas will be dismantled and moved to a newer, better facility on Cleveland and Larpenteur in Saint Paul.  This one seems perfect now.  The gnarly roots of that old oak look so real.  The papa wood duck sitting on a branch proudly watching his ducklings fledge is so perfectly staged that I fear they cannot be successfully moved.  Time will tell.  In any case I totally enjoyed the lectures we got about trumpeter swans, the taxonomy of wrens, the changes we can expect to see at an important birding area at the old Cedar Avenue Bridge, teaching children about the names and legends of birds in the Chippewa language, and the effects of the BP oil spill on Minnesota loons.  Some of the information was simple and some was complex.  When I hear the words mitochondrial DNA I begin to wonder if I'm in over my head.  I have to admit I was treading water for a little while there.  I always learn something though and I have a good time doing it so that is why I return.  Last year I missed the paper session because I was vacationing on Sanibel Island.  If there is a truly good excuse to miss a paper session, being on Sanibel Island is it.