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Natural North Dakota
New episode every Saturday

Chuck Lura has a broad knowledge of "Natural North Dakota"and loves sharing that knowledge with others. Since 2005, Chuck has written a weekly column, “Naturalist at Large,” for the Lake Metigoshe Mirror, and his “The Naturalist” columns appear in several other weekly North Dakota newspapers.

Lura was a long-time biology professor at Dakota College at Bottineau, publishing research on ecological aspects of grasslands in the northern Great Plains. In retirement, he continues to share his Natural North Dakota essays for the Prairie Public audience.

Natural North Dakota is supported by NDSU Central Grasslands Research Extension Center and Dakota College at Bottineau, and by the members of Prairie Public. Thanks to Sunny 101.9 in Bottineau for their recording services.

Hear Natural North Dakota on Prairie Public on Saturdays and Sundays at 8:35am CT.

  • The short days of winter are starting to fade away as the days continue to lengthen. And next Wednesday, March 20, is the spring equinox.
  • If you have never been to the petrified forest in Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s South Unit, you might want to consider doing so this year. And even if you have been there before, another visit to see these remnants of another time is a worthwhile experience.
  • I recently happened upon the above map of the Red River Watershed. I suspect that the watershed is much larger than most of us would think.
  • One of Prairie Public’s more popular television shows is Nature. Some of you may have seen the episode a few weeks ago on shorebird migrations. The show addressed how shorebirds navigate the trip, the risks of migration, and how human activity is creating problems for the birds. One of the shorebirds featured was the marbled godwit on its migration from Panama to the Dakotas.
  • January is in the rearview mirror, as is a good portion of February. And whether Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow or not, no self-respecting North Dakota groundhog would stick their head out of the burrow in early February. Any thoughts of spring are premature. Or are they?
  • The Great Backyard Bird Count is coming up next week, February 16-19. This annual citizen science effort is a collaboration between the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, National Audubon Society, and Birds Canada to help scientists better understand the bird population dynamics and movements.
  • I recently saw a news article about a 240-pound lake sturgeon caught in the Detroit River in 2021. That’s a big fish! Perhaps someday North Dakota will produce a lake sturgeon of that size.
  • Most North Dakotans are familiar with the great horned owl. But I suspect few are familiar with the short-eared owl — even though, of the half-dozen or so owls native to the state, the short-eared owl is most closely associated with the wide open spaces of North Dakota prairie.
  • In the 1890s, a group of Shakespeare enthusiasts released 100 European starlings in New York City’s Central Park so that all the birds in Shakespeare’s works could be observed there. The rest, as they say, is history. By the 1920s they had spread west to Michigan and Wisconsin. The first documented starling in North Dakota came on March 30, 1938 near Upham, ND.
  • I recently came across a page about clams, or freshwater mussels, from the North Dakota Game and Fish Department. It reminded me of a time, a few years ago, a cabin owner at Lake Metigoshe found a clam in the sediment near his cabin and asked me to identify it. This clam, “Sam the Clam,” was becoming a local celebrity. I could not identify it, but with the help of Dr. Andre DeLorme at Valley City State University it was tentatively identified as a giant floater (Pygandon grandis).