Bog Lecture; Owls to Orchids

Last night a sibling and I went to the MRVAC (Minnesota River Valley Audubon Chapter) for a lecture.  We had to go all the way to Bloomington to find the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center which, interestingly enough, is just a couple short blocks from the "Park-N-Fly" where I leave my car when I go to the airport.  Would would think a wildlife refuge was so close to the airport?  When you walk out the door of the wildlife refuge, you see the Hilton and Embassy Suites across the freeway.  Sparky Stensaas was the speaker.  My sibling said she wanted to go just to see what a guy named Sparky looked like.  To me, he looked 20 or 30 years younger than I thought he would.  Most birders are way past 60 years old.  Sparky was young and enthusiastic about bogs.  He said bogs fill in from the top down where swamps fill in from the bottom up.  Bogs have organic material below while swamps have mineral matter below.  A person could get wet and stuck in both of them.  And the mosquitoes from a bog bite just as hard as the mosquitoes from a swamp.  Sparky is a naturalist, a photographer, author, publisher and a writer.  He showed a film he made called "Owls to Orchids."  He had scenes from the Sam-Zim bog which is located near Duluth.  I've been there in the fall when the tamaracks were in beautiful golden orange color.  Sparky had amazing footage of the bog in all four seasons.  Besides the beautiful landscape, the clouds and the stars, he showed us gray jays, boreal chickadees, redpolls, great gray owls, northern hawk owls, ermine, frogs, voles, orchids, pitcher plants, sundew, spruce and grouse.  His film was nicely done with close up shots of owls turning their heads, blinking, hunting, feeding their young, eating, yawning, and burping up pellets.  Sparky is a big fan of the Sam-Zim bog and is leading the effort to expand the bog and build a visitor center.  Right now there is really nothing at the bog, not even an outhouse, which makes it difficult for visitors.  He'd like to see some trails put in and more prime bog land purchased.  At one point during the movie he switched from background music (mostly Enya) to a loud chorus of frogs.  Suddenly all we hear is "keck a heck, keck a heck."  Those are wood frogs.  We both had a good time at the lecture.