AUDUBON

Christmas Bird Count celebrates 125 years, showcasing importance of local birders

TJ Rhodes — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 19:39:15 GMT

BEMIDJI — Local birders had a chance to showcase their bird watching skills in Bemidji on Saturday when the 125th annual Christmas Bird Count — a National Audubon Society event that takes place between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5 each winter — kicked off.

The Christmas Bird Count is the nation's longest-running community science bird project. It provides ample data which is useful for both the scientific community and everyone as a whole.

“The data collected is useful for the cities, counties, states, businesses and non-profits to make land management decisions,” explained local bird enthusiast and Bagley resident Kelly Larson, who participated in the Bemidji bird count.

“They have a database of what birds are in an area, how they have been using a particular habitat, where they’re located, what times of year they are dependent upon (an area as) a winter resource — or summer resource,” Larson said, adding that the information provided is crucial for bird preservation.

Many factors lead to why the Christmas Bird Count is successful, including its consistency, but the dedicated birders who attend each year could be seen as the count's driving force.

Counting birds

Experienced and fledgling birders alike from Beltrami County and afar gathered at Country Kitchen early Saturday morning as the Mississippi Headwaters Audubon Society prepared for Bemidji's Christmas Bird Count.

The birders were divided into groups, prepared to tackle different portions of a 15-mile radius encompassing the Bemidji area.

Experienced birders David Harrington of Turtle Lake and Larson claimed the southwest corner of the circle which included Lake Plantagenet to begin surveying for birds.

Their process was simple yet effective. The duo traveled by car in search of bird feeders, open water and bird-friendly habitats. They never stayed in one location for too long and kept a watchful eye on the sky and nearby trees and power lines.

When they did spot a bird, they quickly identified it and wrote it down to keep track.

As their day concluded, they identified a wide array of birds with some surprises like the red-winged blackbird and the American goshawk. But their most common finds were the wild turkey, snow bunting, blue jay, crow, house sparrow and the black-capped chickadee.

All of the birders met back up afterward to combine their numbers and conclude the Bemidji Christmas Bird Count. But with low volunteer numbers, it can be difficult to provide a fully comprehensive bird census.

That is why birders hope more people enter the hobby of bird watching in the future.

Join the cause

On a bird count, spotting birds is only half the battle. Identifying them can be the largest challenge, especially for beginners who might scramble through an app or book to make a proper identification.

This could scare potential bird enthusiasts from joining the hobby or a bird count.

But each bird count provides a simple solution: pairing newbies with bird watching experts who can guide the experience. This way, a beginner could keep their eyes peeled, alerting an expert as they make a quick identification.

Birders like Larson and Harrington are up for the task of teaching beginners and hope more people find the hobby of bird watching to participate in future Christmas Bird Counts, which would help solidify the results. Larson did remark though that more people, including younger folk, attended this year's Bemidji Christmas Bird Count, a potential tell of the future.

Larson keeps coming back to the counts for many of the same reasons as other birders: a passion for birds and a shared camaraderie.

“Birds are charismatic, they’re colorful, they have beautiful songs, have interesting behaviors and get you into different types of habitats and environments,” Larson said. “(The bird count) is a way to stay active and outdoors during the winter time. (It) gives me hope and takes my mind off the depression of winter.

“Having other people that can get as excited about seeing different birds as I can … you don’t run into a lot of people that are like ‘Whoa, you saw an American pipit today? That’s so cool.’”

Harrington feels similarly.

“I like bird watching because it's a good excuse to get out,” Harrington said, adding that a count may not be environmentally friendly but that it "serves a purpose in the long-term."

The next local bird count will take place on Thursday, Dec. 19, at Rydell and Glacial Ridge and all other counts can be found on the National Audubon Society website.

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How do you like them (Minnesota) apples? Gottenborg Orchard opens Labor Day weekend

Tammy Swift — Sat, 31 Aug 2024 11:58:00 GMT

AUDUBON, Minn. — It’s a humid-soaked 80-something in the shade, yet 65-year-old David Gottenborg clips through the Gottenborg Apple Orchard like a turbo-charged Johnny Appleseed.

His visitors are already dripping with sweat, but Gottenborg seems completely unscathed by the heat. After all, he routinely plants, tends and harvests hundreds of apple trees while also maintaining his full-time chiropractic practice.

“Right now, between the clinic and this, I will work an insane amount of hours,” he said. “But it’s no different than a farmer who is harvesting.”

He stops to pluck an apple — so red and perfect that it looks like a prop — from a slender tree. He hands it to me, although my hands are already full with a notebook and cellphone for recording.

“Now this is the one we’ve been waiting for. Look at this apple. Taste that.” He says it with a conviction that makes it impossible to do anything else.

I obediently bite into the First Kiss fruit, a new University of Minnesota variety which is crunchy, sweet-tart and so juicy that it drips on my clothes.

“You see that?” he said, triumphantly. “(David) Bedford at the University of Minnesota, that’s what made it. It took him 16 years to where you just had to do that — you wiped your shirt.”

But there's no time to lollygag. Gottenborg is already on the march. “Let’s walk,” he announced. “I haven’t awed you yet.”

We spend the next hour touring the place, with the enthusiastic orchardist periodically plucking apples from trees and pressing them into my already-overflowing hands.

Then again, one doesn’t spend 20-some years developing an 8,000-tree apple orchard without cultivating bushels of knowledge and energy.

Gottenborg believes his orchard is the largest in the area, although there’s an older orchard located in Cormorant, about 11 miles southwest of Audubon. He offers 10 different varieties of apples and has no trouble selling them.

Last year, the orchard produced 11,000 pounds of SweeTangos — his bestseller — and 6,000 pounds of Zestars.

“Last year, we couldn’t make it until October,” he said. “In nine weeks, they were gone.”

Now Gottenborg is ramping up for his busiest season on the orchard, which is on his family’s farmland, located at the west end of Audubon Lake Road, just a few miles south of Audubon.

Gottenborg Orchard will be open Labor Day weekend and every weekend through October from 9-5 daily.

Visitors can buy already-picked apples or pick their own.

'That was an apple moment'

Gottenborg is a self-described man of action — someone who sets his sights on something and pursues that goal without a shred of doubt or indecision.

It was that laser focus that planted the seed to launch an apple orchard.

An elderly client walked into Gottenborg’s Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, clinic in 2001 and gave the chiropractor Zestar and Honeycrisp apples grown on the older man’s small orchard near Detroit Lakes.

“I grew up with Red Delicious like we all did,” Gottenborg recalls. “ My dad gave us a box, my grandma gave us a box, and after a while, it was punky. And when I ate that apple, it was like, ‘Could you get me 25 of these?’ I’m the kind of person that when I experience something like that, I have to do that. That was an apple moment.”

He started out planting 50 trees on his father’s land and continued expanding and learning each year. He traveled, read and learned much by trial and error.

Today, his knowledge of apples borders on Googlian. Visitors learn everything from the easiest way to test apples for starch-to-sugar ratio to how the Chestnut Crabapple tree produced sweet fruit called “lunchbox crabapples” because they were small enough for northern Minnesota miners to stuff into their pockets.

Gottenborg plants crab apple trees in alternate rows among the trees, as their long blooming period covers any possible pollination gaps.

Over the years, he learned to prune strategically in early spring to guarantee apples grew early, plentifully and yearly. A cut in the right spot basically telegraphs to a tree where to grow a branch. “It releases hormones that will tell the tree what to do a year from now,” he said.

He planted young trees like SweeTango or Honeycrisp that are grafted with cold-hardy Russian rootstock so they can survive the bitter Minnesota winters. “If you just used a Honeycrisp root system, it would never live,” he said.

All of his trees produce eating apples, which command a higher price (about $3/pound, or $120/bushel, vs. cider apples, which cost just $8 a box).

Any fruit that drops early is sold to Renae Mitchell of Juice Box Fargo for juicing. “This year, I don’t know if I’ll have apples for her, just because I don’t have many seconds,” he said.

The apples of his eye

Gottenborg marvels at the condition of this year’s crop, as many of the apples have remained blemish-free. Some of that is due to Gottenborg’s farming methods, which includes applying organic copper instead of common pesticides. And some of it is due to fortuitous weather. (Last year, a hail storm peppered the fruit while it was still small and left dents and dings.)

He anticipates top sellers this year will be the perennially popular SweeTango, a cross between the sweet, crunchy Honeycrisp and the tart Zestar. “It’s the king of Minnesota apples,” he said.

U of M researchers also married the Honeycrisp and Zestar to create a completely different variety, which is also available here. The Kudos apple is a rich-red fruit with tropical overtones, “like a mango,” Gottenborg said.

Another variety, the SnowSweet, is so highly anticipated that it sells out within a week. The SnowSweet is a cross between the Sharon and the Connell Red. It bears a plummy skin and flesh that is “whiter than paper,” Gottenborg said.

“When you pick it right, it tastes like a caramel apple,” he said. “It’s got this buttery taste.”

By mid-September, Gottenborg also will debut his first crop of First Kiss apples, the Minnesota variety he showed off at the start of our tour. The First Kiss is so new that its trees aren’t available yet to the public. He anticipates the apple that manages to be all things to all people — sweet but tart, crisp but juicy — will be popular.

“This is a pure eating apple,” he said. “If you like Honeycrisp crunch and take a bite of this, it has the juice, but it has tartness that a Honeycrisp doesn’t have.”

Weekend visitors to the orchard this season will have plenty of activities to choose from. Gottenborg has recruited Louis Stetz, past owner of the Tastee Freeze in Pelican Rapids, to make and sell his apple pies.

Another main attraction is the massive apple press. Gottenborg first spotted it while visiting a California winery, and offered to buy it when he learned the vintners planned to retire. It took a lot of logistical finagling to persuade a trucker to bring it back to Minnesota, but now it is here and fully operational — in all its steampunk glory of chutes and ladders and conveyers and bins. Visitors can take home a free bottle of cider after watching it work its magic. “It’s almost like Willy Wonka,” Gottenborg said, grinning.

He will host the orchard’s third annual Applefest Saturday, Oct. 5, which includes live music.

F-M folks also can buy his apples at LadyBug Acres Veggie Barn, 2110 S University Drive, Fargo; Hildebrandt Farms, 349 Main Ave. E., West Fargo, and Saturdays through October at the Red River Market in downtown Fargo.

They also can order online at Red River Harvest Cooperative at https://www.redriverharvest.com/

When the season is done, Gottenborg will close down the orchard — and get ready for next year.

"When I come here, I'm farming in a sense," he said. "Is it quiet out here? I like that, because I have a busy life. There will be a day when I stop chiropractic, but I'll be out here my whole life, the rest of my life."

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Avian Arts Adventure program premieres at Neilson Spearhead Center

Daltyn Lofstrom — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 12:00:00 GMT

BEMIDJI — Nestled in the woods by Spearhead Lake, an eager group of nine students from the Boys and Girls Club kept busy marrying nature with art at the Neilson Spearhead Center last week.

Made possible by Minnesota voters through a $6,000 grant from the Region 2 Arts Council and legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, youth — ranging from grades three to eight — participated in the Avian Arts Adventure program Aug. 22-26 that will culminate with a new “House of Birds” mural and potential for future programming.

“This week is meant to see if we can host this kind of programming. Obviously, that’s a ‘yes,’” club staff member and project director Eleva Potter said in reference to the Neilson Spearhead Center, located about 20 minutes southwest of Bemidji. “There’s over 2,000 acres of wilderness, all acreage around Spearhead Lake and a five- to six-mile path going around it. There’s so much beauty here. We just have to get the people out here to see it.”

Deemed the “brainchild” of the project, Potter noted her previous experiences as a camper at the center, operated by the Mississippi Headwaters Audubon Society, and wanting to offer broader access to art and nature activities for members of the Boys and Girls Club.

“(The Neilson Spearhead Center) hasn’t seen art in years, so it needed a little jazzing up,” Potter added lightheartedly.

Part of bringing her idea to life was recruiting the help of local artist Mary Therese who collaborated with the Boys and Girls Club for art projects in the past.

On the cusp of completing her “Umbrellas of Unity” group show," which will be on display at the Watermark Art Center until Saturday, Oct. 22, Therese jumped at the opportunity when Potter presented her with the idea.

“I come (to the center) often and I felt like they really needed something inside this space to brighten it up and the kids have some ownership in the place since it’s a public park,” Therese mentioned.

Complementing their respective skill sets, Potter took charge of the environmental programming which included leading the students on nature hikes and seeking specific birds that would serve as inspiration for their paintings.

“Therese would then do all the art stuff. I do not know how to teach that,” Potter said with a laugh.

The creative process

Learning to identify different bird species and developing basic sketches took up the first couple days of camp.

“I had them start with this wonderful book where just seeing the basic shapes could help them learn to build a bird using those shapes while working on their sketchpads,” Therese detailed.

By Wednesday, the students were refining their drawings and transferring them onto wooden panels using carbon paper, after which they could start painting.

In the midst of their painting on Thursday, Therese called the students’ attention to test their knowledge of common bird calls.

With a sound book in hand, Therese pushed a button after asking, “What’s this bird?”

An eruption of “chickadee” answers flooded the modest confines of the center.

Therese continued, “We all know this one, right?”

A wailing noise from the book led to several “loon” answers almost immediately after.

“Do you remember this one?”

Staccato pecking preceded some exclamations from the students who knew it was a woodpecker.

A less familiar noise played for the final part of the test, though one student eventually answered with “nuthatch.”

Upon completion, all paintings will be secured onto a mural painted by Therese and will take the shape of a birdhouse, which Therese determined by taking into account the shape of a wall meeting the ceiling of the building.

The individual paintings will be on display temporarily at the Headwaters Science Center this week, then make their way back to the Neilson Spearhead Center where Therese will complete the mural installation in time for an open house event on Sunday, Sept. 18.

The end result is more than the final project for Therese and Potter.

“If we can get more kids out here to embrace nature and take some ownership and stewardship with the land would be awesome,” Therese said. “The connection with getting them out in the woods, out of town, a lot of them don’t do that. Now, they have that opportunity.”

Potter highlighted the potential of offering this experience in the future and growing participation for years to come.

“We’re trying to do some new stuff, some new programming and get more kids out here,” Potter said. “As many people who want to come, we’d love to have them. It seems like a really great start to something new.”

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Detroit Lakes man who threw popcorn, accosted ref at high school basketball game avoids jail

April Baumgarten — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 21:42:21 GMT

DETROIT LAKES, Minn. — A Detroit Lakes man will avoid jail time after throwing popcorn at a high school basketball referee and confronting the official on the court.

Phillip Shawn Lokken, 46, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, April 26, in Becker County District Court to disorderly conduct. After signing a plea agreement, a fifth-degree charge of assault was dismissed.

The charges came in early March, about two months after Lokken was involved in a confrontation with two referees on Jan. 13 at Audubon Elementary ��, according to a criminal complaint.

Lokken threw a bag of popcorn at a referee during a high school basketball game between Lake Park-Audubon and Win-E-Mac, the complaint said. The referee called a foul on a Win-E-Mac player toward the end of the game before Lokken threw the bag at the official.

When the referee ejected Lokken, the defendant yelled a profanity at the official, approached the him on the court, grabbed the ref’s shirt and ripped the official’s whistle off his lanyard, the complaint said.

Part of the confrontation, including a bag of popcorn flying over the ref's head, was caught on video. When police contacted Lokken about the incident, he said the referee was making “bull ... calls all night” and “he had enough of it,” the complaint said.

Judge Barbara Hanson sentenced Lokken to 90 days in jail, but he won’t have to serve any of that time behind bars if he completes a year of unsupervised probation. Lokken was ordered to pay $450 in fees and fines.

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