You know, you've been watching birds for 40, 50 years or so?

Yeah, longer than that, even.

Yeah, and I was outside today in my bare feet, so I just keep doing that as long as I can until, you know, I'm a guy, so I almost have to get frostbite before I'll give in and say, yeah, okay, maybe it's cold, I should wear at least socks.

There's a similar study that I'm recalling that was done by the National Audubon Society, and it was based on Minnesota bird species.

And it said that over half of Minnesota's bird species face serious risks from rising temperatures.

And then they went on to say that our state bird, the common loon, one day could lose its summer breeding territory in Minnesota and shift completely into Canada if warming continues.

And they went on to say there are other vulnerable species.

can't change climate change overnight? Are there things to help the current birds that might be lagging behind and going south or need maybe extra in the spring or something? What sorts of things can we do maybe to help a little bit?

I love it.

I want to thank everybody that was at the 2026.

Oh, I hope I'm going to get the, I believe it was SCSC.

And if I get that wrong, I apologize.

It's a science and nature conference that was held at Gustavus.

And kids, man.

I had four cram classes full, no chairs.

which is

So just hold the texts and we'll maybe get to them next week.

Yeah, please let us know.

And if you have ever texted or emailed or something and you haven't heard from me, For one reason or another, I haven't got it.

Otherwise, I respond to everything.

We always say I respond to everything, but then somebody will say, I emailed you seven years ago and I never heard back.

You know, I don't know where those things go.

They're like that lost sock.

humans,

Good morning, Al.

Good morning, Duane.

Good morning, everyone.

It's, uh, it's nice out.

I, I don't know.

It was just a pleasant time to go for a walk this morning.

There was a little bit of chill, but I, I think of this so often.

Do they survive the winter here, or do they migrate? And I know you've mentioned that before, but, you know, we have people coming and going all the time, so.

[laughs]

But I don't, I don't know.

I ... uh, Duane and I were talking before we went on the air here that, uh, Heartland, uh, you know, was destroyed by downtown, destroyed by a tornado in 2021, December 15th.

And we have, uh ...

The, the one thing people really missed was this mural that a fella had painted, and it was of, uh, old-timey stuff on a wall of a building that sadly went down in the tornado.

He has come and put it back up again, so everybody is, um, I think upbeat is the word we could throw in there 'cause they just, they like seeing that.

And, uh, it's amazing how many comments.

There you go.

So what a wonderful story.

Kent Unkey said, hey Al, I enjoy listening to you on KMSU.

Attached is a photo of a large mushroom.

in Cedar Creek Park in Fairmont, Minnesota.

Still growing larger, bigger than a basketball.

It's a puffball.

Yeah, thank you, Kent.

And

Good morning, Al.

Hey, good morning, Duane.

Our rain gauge drowned.

So that was our biggest damage here.

Man, it really came down.

You know, we forget sometimes some of the rains we've had in the past.

And then you sit down, we had a steak and sweet corn extravaganza, a big feed in town.

I don't know.

[laughs] That's right.

Hey, I wanna thank everybody at the St. John's Community Farming of Yesteryear in beautiful Keaster, and the folks on the Pelican Breeze boat for allowing me to, to babble to all of them.

And, uh, I wanna mention something about Farming of Yesteryear.

I wandered around after I gave my talk, and I enjoyed visiting with people, but I had to take a break waiting for a phone call from someone with an injured bird 'cause I hate saying I need to take this call when I'm talking to somebody.

You know, you're listening to somebody and then the f- your phone goes and, "I, I have to take this call." So what I do when that happens, I try to avoid everybody.

I go off in a corner and kind of hide till I get that call 'cause I just don't wanna say that.

So if I, I know I missed some folks I wanted to talk to, and that, that's probably the reason.

[laughs]

One of those days with the holiday yesterday, it's kind of a Tuesday that feels like a Monday, right?

It is, yeah.

It's always strange.

I don't know, Monday holidays are supposed to have been with me all my life, but they always seem weird for some reason.

It just...

Of course, when I was in school, then you got the day off, which was a wonderful thing, but Dad thought that was a good day for you to do some project on the farm.

Of course.

And

is that? Because it's

different.

But birds learn quickly.

They notice that that owl never hunts.

It never changes its position.

So birds have been seen and photographed perching and nesting on top of plastic owl decoys.

I went by a dock that had three fake owls, and there were mallards all around it just crowding against it.

there.

against

it, although they taste terrible.

But that doesn't impact everyone.

And there is some belief that maybe even Birds around here, when they go south of Mexico, there are several birds, the Orioles and Grosbeaks, that will eat them, eat the adult butterflies.

But there's some belief here that there are some birds that will eat the really small monarch caterpillars under the belief that maybe they don't have that nasty taste as yet.

It hasn't quite developed enough.

So monarch caterpillars have to get organized and taste icky quicker.

deer,

But maybe a little to the south there.

We got a, we got a few drops.

I can see it in, uh, my bird water park.

You can see the drops hitting that.

So there are a few coming down, but not near enough.

But, uh, I think if we all really concentrate, we can get off that drought map.

It just looks better if we're a different color on that map when it shows up in the newspaper.

[laughs] clue us in a little more on that?

It's just,

you know, I just find great pleasure.

With all the goofiness in the world, it's one of those things that kind of helps keep a fella sane.

So I hope everybody gets out to vote today.

It's, uh, I've either, uh, I've been election judge, I can't remember how many years, and it's always good to see people come in.

I want to thank everybody that was on the Pelican Breeze.

We had a full boat, and it was just wonderful, wonderful people, and way more questions than I could answer.

And

it.

At home, there was a cacophony of crows.

You know, it'd be caw and disorder, I guess, after they discovered the daytime roost of an owl.

It was probably a screech owl.

And the crows performed, it was like a Corvette opera with equal amounts of outrage and glee.

Maybe they were hoping a KEYC news team in search of a scoop worthy of an Emmy would magically appear and feature them on the news.

The collective noun for crows, and I bet everybody knows that, is a murder.

It's just, you know...

It's

just birds of a feather flock together.

The ones I saw seemed to be primarily young ones.

So while American robins are fiercely territorial during the spring breeding season, which is April through July primarily, they transition into looser social groups as early broods fledge and adults finish their nesting cycles.

So juveniles, they leave their nests, what, two weeks after hatching, too early.

They can't fly yet.

But soon they're able to, and they join local adults and other young ones in open yards.

of being stung by gigantic

Tuesday mornings around this time, we bring in Al Batt, and it's great to talk about a temperature reading that is in the 70-something instead of 90-something.

Boy, amen to that.

I went for a little walk this morning, and it was 67 degrees, I want to say.

It was in the 60s, and I just, wow, it was amazingly nice just being out there and And, of course, we're lucky.

I talk to people dealing with all this smoke, and I'm dealing with mosquitoes, and I guess I'd take the mosquitoes now over all that smoke.

That's dreadful in places.

I want to thank everybody who came on the Pelican Breeze.

Jan

They got a lot to say.

[laughs] They do.

Gunner Berg of Albert Lea said, "This week, the barred owls... " Or, "This year," sorry, "the barred owls had three owlets in their yard.

They fledged two.

I understand the young stay with the parents until fall, but I haven't seen them in two weeks, so I am relegated to photographing chipping sparrows and house finches, which are apparently not territorial and may break the bird seed bank.

And they're beautiful birds to photograph." Diane Porter, who lives, uh, south of the border, she lives in Iowa, said, "What leaves small cherry seeds in the birdbath? I suspect the bluebirds because last year I found a pile of them inside the bottom of the birdhouse after the babies fledged, but I never knew bluebirds fed cherries to nestlings." Uh, Diane, the birds I see doing that are robins.

They'll fly in, they got, uh, some kind of fruit in their mouth, and they see the water, and they go, "Oh, I gotta go get a drink of water." And then, uh, they'll eat the fruit, and then they kinda spit out the pit while they're having a bath.

[laughs]

My mom would say it's stuffy.

It's like an attic.

If anybody grew up with an attic, it can be kind of like an attic outside.

I watched a kingbird chase a turkey vulture away.

We have watched kingbirds at the end of our driveway.

They're nesting there.

They chase everything away.

thing to see.

Good morning, sir.

Good morning.

Good morning, everyone.

I carried in a rock.

I'm not really sure why.

It's a tiny little rock.

I'm looking for a wish, wish stone, so it has to have a white line all the way around the rock.

[laughs]

and

geese, goslings, those things, they're just so cute.

I watched a great blue heron fishing, and its patience was inspiring.

I watched as long as I could, and then I had to get on with things.

And the big bird had caught no fish, but it had way more patience than I had.

A friend told me if a white butterfly comes, summer follows.

So I see many cabbage white butterflies in my yard.

This

chickadees, and the blue jays.

And last night, the whippoorwill called once around 7 p.m. and never said another word.

We sat out on our deck for an hour waiting for it to repeat, but it did not.

Merlin told us there was also a yellow-throated virile singing in our woods.

I think there's more than one.

I've yet to see one.

Well, thank you, Kate.

that, and that's wrong, and I toss it out of the

[laughs]

I walked in the rain.

We only got like two-tenths of an inch, so I, I walked in the rain, and it's just so comfortable walking in the rain.

It's just, it's a perfect time, and I know not very far from us, they got way too much rain all in a short period of time.

But here it was just, it was just beautiful, like the old, uh, songs about walking in the rain.

It was just a beautiful walk out there.

And I was talking to Duane before we went on the air that there's, uh, an insect called stable flies, and they're the ones that bite you in the ankle, and they bite livestock in the ankles very often, and they just love biting me, and they drive me crazy.

And, uh, wondering if we have any in Minnesota, and if it's a natural occurrence, or due to humans messing with the Earth, or where, uh, what's the, what's the deal with quicksand?

You've been there a few times

...

I've seen, I've been real lucky to see a lot of, have seen a lot of whales.

None, again, in Hartland.

So, but I'm still...

You know, that's on my list.

I wanna see one here.

[laughs]

Good morning, Al.

Good morning, Duane.

I know there was a band by this name, but it is a green day out there.

Everything is t-- It's green everywhere you look, and you notice now if you live on a street or something, you have a bunch of trees maybe in front of the house, you-- the muffled sounds from the street or from the neighbors.

All that greenery has just kinda put a bit of a cloak over stuff and, and, and just muffled it.

You can still tell there's stuff going on, but it's, it's different, and it's so cool seeing all the green.

I love using words like verdant and things, and it's just, it's like the whole world just popped all of a sudden.

They'll be very thankful for that.

[laughs]

But I, uh, I enjoy walking behind it, and it's, uh...

I wanna thank everybody, 'cause I know there's a couple of them listening today.

I, I spoke at the 100th anniversary celebration of the Aitkin Lions over the weekend, and it was fun being in their company.

What an enthusiastic bunch of folks, uh, other than they keep stealing everybody else's gavel.

It's kind of a thing with the Lions, but they do so much good.

I was just, uh, honored to be there.

It happens.