Show Notes
In July, 2025 we had a special Wandering Naturalist rafting trip on the Mississippi River with Brandon. Several participants wore microphones and we recorded the whole experience. Raft with us as we talk to Paula Suchy from Mississippi Gateway Regional Park about how the rafting programs work and why they are so important to her as we listen to audio from our rafting trip.
More from The Wandering Naturalist
In this episode, artist Missy Dunaway discusses her work on The Birds of Shakespeare, a series of paintings and essays that will cover every bird mentioned in Shakespeare's works! This episode looks at how birds are used symbolically by Shakespeare, and the reputation corvids had back in the Bard's day.
We are thrilled to have Dr. John Marzluff, author and professor of wildlife biology at the University of Washington join us on the podcast. Dr. Marzluff shares stories of grudge holding crows, people's strange stories of interacting with corvids, and, best of all, how you can befriend your backyard corvids!
Everyone has been wondering: "What's the best corvid in Minnesota?" Well, we are going to try and answer that question in this episode! Ellen has assigned teams and we are going to bring out the best facts we have about blue jays, Canada (gray) jays, crows, and ravens. Which bird will win? Natural sounds provided by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library.
For the final episode on the Mississippi Flyway, it's time to zoom in with John Lindstrom from Ducks Unlimited. The flyway is thousands of miles of habitat, but here in the park district, Ducks Unlimited has partnered with Three Rivers to improve Lake 2 in Carver Park Reserve. We cover the many steps a restoration project like this takes, and how it's helping our local migrants.
Dr. Wayne Thogmartin from the US Geological Survey joins us in this episode to discuss the economic impacts of birds along the flyway. We cover the prairie pothole region and what threatens it, as well as the many different ways migrating birds impact people.