Third Time I Went to The MOU Paper Session

Bell Museum of Natural History

Beaver sitting on tail in diorama

Today a sibling and I went (for the third time) to the Minnesota Ornithological Union's paper session.  For the low price of only $4 ($5 at the door) we got 7 hours of education at the Bell Museum of Natural History on the University of Minnesota campus.  We're right across the street from the armory.  Each talk lasts anywhere from twenty to sixty minutes.  Caroll Henderson organizes this and he keeps us to a tight schedule; limiting the questions and guiding the discussions.  Many of the talks highlighted how much more we know about birds now that we can put little computers on them that register the sunrise and sunset.  The data on the sun rise and sun sets can pinpoint where the bird is as it migrates back and forth.  Telemetry can tell you where birds rest or nest.  Gold winged warblers, for example, were thought to nest only on forest fringes.  Probably bird watchers can find the figety warblers better on forest fringes because we thought wrong.  They also nest inside forests. Common loons dive 60 meters in the Gulf of Mexico and often rest 6 miles off shore in Lake Michigan.  The day was full of fun facts and knowledge about birds.  We brought our own lunch and sat on the wooden benches outside the beaver diorama.  Inside that diorama is a beaver sitting on it's tail.  I guess I figures beavers would lay their tail the other way when they sat down but I have to admit I haven't seen that many beaver sitting.  Most of my observations of beaver are of them swimming.  Late in the afternoon the speaker was from the DNR and he spoke about sandhill crane hunting.  When Minnesota decided to allow sandhill crane hunting last year, many MOU members were not happy.  We really didn't have a clear picture of how many sandhill cranes we have in the state.  Only the most northwestern corner of the state is open to crane hunting. 900 birds were harvested in that small section of the state.  Minnesota is one of the top five states as far as the number of birds harvested.  The speaker said we usually don't know how many of a species we have when they are hunted and there is no law that says we have to know the number.  Only mallards and Canadian geese have population numbers yet we hunt many other species of ducks.  He said the federal government said Minnesota could hunt cranes so the state allowed it to happen but only in the northwest.  The northwestern cranes travel to Texas.  And Texas has plenty of cranes.  The other state cranes travel to Georgia and Florida.  The cranes that fly to the southeast are not hunted.  I had to admire the speaker because he maintained his poise in a unfriendly crowd. He handled the very pointed and sometimes hostile questions well.  We had a good day.  It was fun to see some people I know and catch up again.  I definitely want to go again next year.