July 1, 2023

July: The Heart of summer

Frontenac State Park Association newsletter

Vol. 1, No. 4, July 2023

July: The heart of summer

☀️And just like that, July has arrived. We’re in the green heart of summer, though it remains to be seen how green it will remain if drought conditions linger. Still, July in Minnesota is ever a treasure, rain or no. And what better place to enjoy that deep-summer loveliness than on a sweet wooden bench in Frontenac State Park? Even if it’s a crazy-hot day, the park’s benches are primo – you can sit on one and complain about the heat until you’re refreshed and ready to hit the trail again.

👉Read on for news about July events in the park, including an invitation to explore its glorious night skies; a lovely essay on Barred Owls (and a haunting poem about owls); a chat with our affable park manager Jake Gaster, and some snappy info on mayflies, chanterelles and blackcap raspberries. We’ll also hit you up for your stories and impressions of our favorite park.

👏And we’d like to welcome Lake City Graphic readers to our newsletter, which now will be published monthly in abbreviated form in that lively little weekly newspaper. Greetings, Lake City friends! See you in the park!

Join us for some cool (heat or no) July events

July will feature a number of activities focused on the particular joys of midsummer. (No registration is required for any of these events.)

🚶Every July Saturday, interpretive naturalist Bruce Ause will lead an hour-long nature walk atop the bluff area. No matter how much you know about the park, Bruce will surprise and captivate you with his revelations and observations, all delivered with his characteristic gentle good humor. Terrific for adults and kids. Meet at 10 a.m. sharp in front of the new shower building in the park campground.

🐦 Saturday, July 8, morning bird walk: We’ll stroll through the prairie and forested areas near the park campground, hoping to see resident summer birds such as Dickcissels, Meadowlarks, Indigo Buntings and Orchard Orioles. Meet at 8 a.m. sharp in front of the new shower facility. Bring your binoculars or borrow some from the park office.

🌳Saturday, July 15: Park manager Jake Gaster will talk about the trails at the Hay Creek Management Unit, which Frontenac State Park oversees. He’ll also talk about trail sustainability and how trails can have minimal impact on their environment by leading a walk on trails that are decidedly not sustainable. 9 a.m., Hay Creek day use area, 30850 Hay Creek Trail, Red Wing.

🌌 Saturday, July 29, Astronomy Day in the park, courtesy of the Rochester Astronomy Club: 8:30-11:30 p.m. Drive to the top of the park and friendly FSPA volunteers will direct you to a parking spot and the event, which will start at the main picnic shelter. From 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., Astronomy Club president Dr. Randy Hemann will give a presentation on the night sky. From 9:30 to 11:30 p.m., we’ll quietly gaze up into the glorious vault of heaven as seen from our beloved park, using telescopes and guidance provided by club members. This particular night sky will unravel 11.7 days after a new moon, and feature planets, bright stars and double stars. What in tarnation is a double star, you ask? Come find out! More information on this event can be found here.

Where can you swim on these hot July days?

🏊 Attention, campers and others: Frontenac State Park, despite its stunning views of the Mississippi River/Lake Pepin, does not itself have a swimming beach. But many excellent swimming areas are nearby:

• The Florence Township beach in Old Frontenac: Turn left out of the park on Goodhue County Road 2 and drive or walk less than a mile through Old Frontenac, then turn north down the Lake Avenue hill, where you’ll find a sandy beach and a boat-launching area on Lake Pepin/the Mississippi River.

• Hok-Si-La municipal park, campground and beach on Lake Pepin/the Mississippi River off Hwy. 61 between Frontenac and Lake City.

• Ohuta Park beach on Lake Pepin/the Mississippi River in the heart of Lake City.

• Lake City and Red Wing also have swimming pools.

Bird notes: Who cooks for you? The Barred Owl

By Janet Malotky, FSPA member, Master Naturalist volunteer and park bird walk leader

🦉 In the deepest woodsy places, I often find myself feeling keenly observed, and the observers I imagine are: owls. They see me, but I rarely see them, no matter how earnestly I’m looking.

Owls are mostly nocturnal (active at night) or crepuscular (active in twilight), so one might hear them then. But since most owls are cavity nesters and they’re remarkably well camouflaged, spotting them at rest during the day is a rare treat. You might just enjoy that treat in Frontenac State Park.

Of the 12 owl species found in Minnesota, three can be seen or heard in Frontenac State Park – Great Horned, Barred, and Eastern Screech Owls. According to “All About Birds,” owls are not migratory and they don’t appear to travel more than a few miles during their lives, so they could be breeding here. Of these owl species, you are most likely to see Barred Owls in the park. They are pretty large birds (about 21 inches tall) and will sometimes roost during the day on branches in plain sight.

While Great-horned Owls and Eastern Screech Owls can appear cranky, angry, or terrified, the huge brown eyes and lighter “facial disks” of Barred Owls give them an aspect of calm. Like other owls, their eye position is fixed, so they have to rotate their heads to see the small animals they hunt, mainly voles and mice, but also frogs and the like, which they swallow whole. When they do take larger prey, their sharp bills tear the animal into more manageable bites.

In addition to using their excellent vision to hunt, Barred Owls also listen for their prey. Like most owls, Barred Owls have one ear located at the height of their jawline and the other higher on the opposite side of their heads. The small difference in the time it takes for sound to reach the two ears in the vertical dimension increases the owl’s ability to zero in on its prey, especially when hunting in the dark.

Another advantage Barred Owls have when hunting is their silent flight. If you’ve ever been sitting quietly in a boat when a loon flies overhead for a landing, you know that the sound of air over wings can be loud, even jet-like. Not true for owls. They have softly fringed edges to their flight feathers that muffle sound, making them stealthy nighttime hunters.

It can be tough to spot an owl in the wild; they are more often heard. In any forested location of the park, it’s possible a Barred Owl is nearby. Listen for their barky song, typically characterized as “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” with the “you-all” cascading downward in pitch.

The owl is letting another owl or animal – maybe you – know that this is their territory.

And they have their eyes on you.

A bug we salute: Mayflies

😵‍💫They swarm after sudden, massive hatches – delicate insects that thicken the air and trees near Lake Pepin, black out the lights at Kwik Trips and on your garage or car (as in the National Weather Service photo above), slick up the bridges over the Mississippi, and get tangled in your window screens and your fancy hairdo.

Eek! Or, perhaps … hooray!

Mayflies, whose lyrical scientific name, Ephemeroptera or Ephemerida, reflects the fact that they don’t live long, are vital to the aquatic food web and a welcome indication of relatively clean water. (We’re not sure why they’re called mayflies, though, since we see them mostly in July and August.)

Here are some things to know about mayflies, thanks to the Minnesota DNR’s impressive species profile:

• Reproduction: It’s sex, then death. Mating takes place in flight, as females fly through a swarm of males. They then lay eggs in the water and die.

• What mayflies eat: Algae, fungi and decaying material (more reason to appreciate them).

• What eats mayflies: Apparently, mayflies are delicious, though we’ll resist the mischievous urge to include mayfly recipes here. Amphibians, reptiles, fish, birds and mammals eat the nymphs. Birds and bats nab the fluttering adults. And when the mayflies die in huge swarms atop lakes and rivers, they present a bird and fish buffet.

• Habitat: Mayflies need fresh water with healthy oxygen levels. This is why we’re happy to see them – they reflect the fact that the water is clean. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when your newsletter editor was growing up in Old Frontenac, there weren’t many mayflies.

🤔Here’s why, the DNR tells us:

"The mayfly is sensitive to chemical pollutants, increases in suspended solids (erosion) and decreased dissolved oxygen levels. The primary cause of the collapse of mayfly populations during the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s was sewage. Little or no treatment of sewage was occurring during this time. We were literally flushing our toilets into the river. There were reports from this period of 'cakes of fecal matter' floating on rivers.

"While this sounds bad enough, the problem for the mayflies wasn’t the poop itself, but what happened next. As bacteria began to break down this mass of organic sludge, they used up tremendous amounts of dissolved oxygen. They used up so much that mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies and even fish disappeared from the Mississippi River from the Twin Cities all the way down to Lake Pepin.

"Today, because of modern sewage treatment facilities and regulations on the disposal of toxic chemicals, mayflies have returned to most of our waterways. New challenges revolve around chemicals that come from our homes and yards. Medications and other pharmaceuticals that leave our bodies go right through the sewage plants untreated and are affecting aquatic life that eat and breathe these compounds."

👏So, when you see mayflies, salute rather than swat them! And don’t worry – they don’t bite!

Mushroom of the month: Chanterelles☁️As of late June, drought has made it hard to find fungi of any kind in our area. We remain hopeful that rain will increase (though please, sky gods, not on our Astronomy Night!). If it does rain, by mid-July you may be treated to the sight of golden chains of chanterelle mushrooms (Cantharellus cibarius) along some park trails, a sight that would make fancy French chefs sigh with envy. Fresh chants smell a bit like apricots, and sauteed in butter with garlic and a dash of white wine, have a delicious, meaty flavor and texture. A caution: Not every bright yellow ’shroom you see will be a chanterelle. Look for continuous “false gills” that run partly down the stem of the funnel-shaped chanterelle. Here’s a good site to help you positively ID them.

Berry soon, the blackcaps will ripen

By July 4, we usually start to see sweet little blackcap raspberries ripening in the park. They’re tiny, so you have to pick a lot of them to fill a bucket, which is tricky, because you’ll eat most of them as you pick them. It’s hard to say whether our drought will affect the timing and quantity of blackcaps, which precede red raspberries and true blackberries.

Here’s a recipe for Blackcap Cobbler that you can also use when the red raspberries and true blackberries ripen later this summer. (Note: It’s perfectly legal to harvest edible berries and mushrooms in Minnesota state parks as long as they’re just for personal consumption. But don’t pick flowers and plants in our state parks.)

Recipe: Blackcap raspberry cobbler

1. Round up several small children and give each a bucket. Turn them loose in an area of blackcaps in Frontenac State Park and tell them that whoever picks the most blackcaps in an hour gets a prize. (What prize? We leave that up to you, savvy grownups!)

2. Rinse the blackcaps, taking special care to remove any bugs (not that we have any objection to the added protein from a few bugs, but the aforementioned children may) and spread the berries out on paper towels to dry a bit. You’ll need about 2 ½ cups of berries.

3. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

4. Pour ½ C. melted butter into an 11 x 7-inch baking pan.

5. Mix 1 C. sugar, 1 C. flour, 1 ½ tsp baking powder and ¾ C. milk in a bowl. Pour the mixture over the top of the melted butter, but listen – do NOT stir into the butter!

6. Put the blackcaps on top of the mixture, still NOT stirring things!

7. Top all of that with ¼ C. sugar. Continue to NOT STIR!

8. Bake until the crust is light brown, 30 to 40 minutes.

9. Let it cool on your windowsill, keeping one eye out for thieving blackbirds and raccoons. Then call us and we’ll trot right over to test it. Or, serve it to the aforementioned children. And to yourself!

Q&A: Summer updates from park manager Jake Gaster

Note: Our plan to interview a state herpetologist about frogs and toads got delayed by said herpetologist’s busy June fieldwork schedule, so we’ll hope to have that next month. Meantime, ranger Jake, who is ever kind and receptive when we (or you!) pepper him with questions, provided some updates.

🔥 How did the park’s spring burn season go? Our spring burn season on the park’s prairie areas was shorter than usual, but we were still able to burn about 200 acres. The late snowmelt combined with an early greening-up of vegetation made our window for burning short, but we hope to hit some of the areas we weren’t able to get to in the spring this fall.

☀️ How is the current drought affecting the park? As of late June, the drought hasn’t had any meaningful impact on our work, but the park is certainly feeling (and showing) the results of drought conditions. Some of the big losers are the seedlings we’ve planted around the campground and picnic area to replace ash trees lost due to emerald ash borer. We’ve been doing our best to keep them watered, but there have been casualties. Two big winners amid drought conditions are sumac shrubs and grapevines, both of which thrive in hot, dry conditions.

🥾Tell us about the other two areas FSP manages. The Frontenac State Park management unit covers the park and several other units as well, including the campgrounds at the Zumbro Bottoms and Kruger management areas within the Richard J. Dorer Memorial State Forest, as well as the trail system and day use area at Hay Creek, which is also in the Dorer forest area, and three public water accesses around Red Wing. These additional units present a unique challenge to maintain, as they are geographically distant from the park – up to 45 minutes away – and lie within lands managed by a separate division of the Minnesota DNR (mostly Forestry), which means a separate manager and their own sets of rules and expectations. I will be giving a presentation on the trails at Hay Creek at 9 a.m. on July 15 at the Hay Creek day use area, 30850 Hay Creek Trail, Red Wing. I’ll talk about what makes a trail system sustainable (or not), and would be happy to answer any questions about these units at that time as well.

What are YOUR favorite park sites and sights?

🌿For a few months now, we’ve been telling you about our favorite things in Frontenac State Park. What are yours? We’d love to hear from you about your most treasured park sites, sights and experiences. Send your stories and photos to us at pamelamarianmiller@gmail.com and we’ll include some in future newsletters!

Poem of the month

🦉Owls By Robert Hedin (a wonderful poet who lives near Frontenac State Park)

Owls glide off the thin
wrists of the night,
and using snow for their feathers
drift down on either side
of the wind.

I spot them
as I camp along the ridge,
glistening over the streambeds,
their eyes small rooms
lit by stone lamps.

📸Photo information and credits

• A bench near trail intersection C in Frontenac State Park. Photo by Pamela Miller

• Here’s what the moon will look like at the July 29 Astronomy Event, according to NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio. Come see it with us! Image courtesy of the Rochester Astronomy Club

• Barred Owl, Pine Loop, Frontenac State Park, September 4, 2021. Photo by Steve Dietz

• Mayflies swarm a car after a hatch near the river. Photo: National Weather Service

• A chanterelle mushroom. Photo by Pamela Miller

• Blackcap raspberries. The red ones are hard and not ripe yet. The black ones are ripe and sweet. Photo by Bruce Ause

• A Sandhill Crane browsing in the prairie loop less than 2 months after a controlled burn with Wild White Indigo blooming in the foreground. Photo: Steve Dietz

• A bench overlooking Lake Pepin on one side and high prairie from the other atop the Santelmann Fire Break Trail (off Hill Avenue). Photo by Pamela Miller

Interested in joining the Frontenac State Park Association?

We’d love to have your support (dues are $25 per year for an individual, $30 for a couple). Here is a link.

And coming occasionally to help out with volunteer efforts is awesome too, even if you’re not a member.

The FSPA’s goal is simply to share our love of Frontenac State Park with as many people as possible.

To sign up to regularly receive this monthly newsletter, click on “Subscribe” below, and if you have questions or comments about it, email your newsletter editor at pamelamarianmiller@gmail.com. Questions about the FSPA? You can reach FSPA chair Steve Dietz at stevedietz@duck.com.

This newsletter newsletter is edited and largely written by FSPA member Pamela Miller. This month, other contributing writers, editors and photographers included Janet Malotky, Steve Dietz and Bruce Ause.

Handy links for more information and education

Frontenac State Park website

Frontenac State Park Association website

If you take pictures in the Park, tag us on Instagram

Frontenac State Park bird checklist

Frontenac State Park on iNaturalist

Parks & Trails Council

Website for our township, Florence Township

Minnesota Master Naturalist program

Red Wing Environmental Learning Center

Lake City Environmental Learning Program on FB

Frontenac State Park staff

Jake Gaster, park manager; Amy Jay, assistant park manager; Amy Poss, lead field worker

Thank you, readers and park visitors!

This is issue #4 of the Frontenac State Park Association newsletter.