The Bad River was re-routed by miners in 1902, which caused more flow to the east side accelerating the erosion. The Copper Falls drop was 30 feet prior to the miners blasting upstream and now is only 8 feet.
Copper Falls
A short video of Copper Falls.
I had to pick up a lot of limbs from the wind and rain yesterday morning, so I was glad to have a sturdier structure to be inside than a covered wagon during a storm. The pioneers were a brave bunch of people to travel west all those miles in just a covered wagon, carrying all their belongings and food to make a start a new life.
Covered Wagon
These Yellow Warblers are busy feeding their young chicks which is extra work with a cowbird chick in the nest too who is so much bigger than the little warblers. So a majority of the insects the parents bring to the nest are given to the bigger mouth of the freeloader.
Brown-headed Cowbird females skips building nests and instead put all their energy into producing eggs, sometimes more than three dozen a summer. They deposit their eggs in other birds nest to raise their young, often though at the expense of the unwilling foster bird’s own chicks. But the cowbirds don’t just dump and run but keep an eye on their eggs and young and if their egg are removed, they retaliate by destroying the host chicks eggs in a term called “mafia behavior”.
The nests of the Yellow Warbler are frequently parasitized by the Brown-headed Cowbird so the warbler often builds a new nest directly on top of one containing the cowbird egg along with their own eggs. Sometimes there may be up to six layers if the cowbird keeps redepositing eggs but it appears this nest is only one layer.
Yellow Warblers Feeding Their Young
The video has some clips of the Yellow Warblers feeding their four chicks and the extra cowbird (but I was mad at the freeloader so I cut out most of the clips where the big mouth was getting all the food).
On this warm, sunny day, it feels like summer and it should since it is officially summer today. And a perfect way to end a warm summer day is to watch the sun set over the water while listening to the ten foot waterfall on the Turtle River in the background. The sky changes color over the forty minute show from the more orange yellow colors while the sun is still above the horizon to the pinkish blues long after the sunset has slipped from sight and it is always hard for me to pick my favorite shot but since it is the first day of summer, I decide the warmer orange glow was more fitting to start off the summer season.
Summer Sunset Over Lake of the Falls
While there are some Lupinus perennis (Wild Lupine) in the state, most of the pretty lupines spotted along the road are the Lupinus polyphyllus (Large-leaved Lupine), a native plant to the Western US but introduced by gardeners to this region. But even though they got loose, they are still pretty.
Pretty Lupines
Today is the 8th birthday of the orphan kitten who I raised since she was a week old and the star of my children’s book. For all the pampering she had as a kitten, she never was a cuddly cat and became ornerier when my other cat Dutch died last spring so she lost her place in the house and now living in the building outside. Apparently no one told her that on a farm, there are always new and cute kittens which can dethrone a cranky cat like this batch who are just starting to wander out from their nest exploring the big world.
Kittens New Explorations
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, round barns were promoted as an efficient design, with feed for a dairy herd stored in the middle and cows spread out around it. Round barns were not easy to expand for increasing herds and the mechanization of American agriculture was more suited to rectangular barn design so the round style was never as popular as the traditional style and few remain across the county and all stone construction are a rare find, which only one listed in Wisconsin.
Matthew Annala, a Finnish carpenter and stone mason, had a small dairy farm south of Hurley, Wisconsin, where he built a 24 inch thick stone round barn which took five years to complete with the help of some of his sons and neighbors. Only a little mortar was used since they relied on the mason’s skill of fitting the multi-colored stones together for a tight binding. The barn was completed in 1921 and continued to be a dairy barn and deliver milk to the region until 1973.
In 1979, Matthew Annala’s barn earned a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. A paragraph from the petition states, “The Annala Round Barn and Milkhouse…is significant for its design, its excellence in craftsmanship, and its associations with the area’s early Finnish settlement and with private dairy farming in Iron County.”
Annala Round Barn and Milkhouse
A river flows onward to another river, lake, sea or ocean, unless it dries up before reaching its destination and they can be many miles or just a few. The Montreal River is a river flowing to Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Much of the river’s course defines a portion of the Wisconsin–Michigan border. The Ojibwe name for the river is Gaa-waasijiwaang, meaning “where there is whitewater”. And there is some ‘whitewater’ on this river as it drops more than a thousand feet in less than 50 miles as it travels downstream over four named waterfalls (Peterson Falls, Interstate Falls, Saxon Falls and Superior Falls) before empties calmly into Oronto Bay on Lake Superior.
The Montreal River looks rather peaceful at its mouth even though it just went over a 90 foot drop a short walk in the opposite direction.
Montreal River Reaching Lake Superior
In the northeastern states, you can often spot bluish purple color along wetlands, ditches or marshy areas when the native iris called Blue Flag is blooming. Iris veriscolor, commonly called Northern Blue Flag, Larger Blue Flag, Harlequin Blueflag, and Wild Iris. The name flag is from the middle English word “flagge,” meaning rush or reed. Iris flowers are said to symbolize power, with the three parts representing wisdom, faith and courage.
Northern Blue Flag
When I was traveling on some remote roads in the Chequamegon National Forest, I came across some large moving tennis balls. Or at first glance that is what they appeared to be until the three “balls” piled on top of each other. When my vehicle got closer, one went up the ditch bank into the woods and the other two re-piled to hide and stayed as still as possible so I wouldn’t notice them on the edge of the road.
I didn’t see mommy duck or any water nearby, so hopefully the family of ducks got back together after I drove pass them.
Baby Ducks Trying Not To Be Seen
