My father and I went “city birding” to see the surprising ways wildlife dovetails with the urban environment. In May and then in October, we wandered the grounds of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, then migrated to Loring Park, and concluded our observations perched atop the Walker’s green slope. Here is a bird’s-eye-view of the territory we covered.

1: Minneapolis Sculpture Garden; 2: Walker’s greenspace; 3: Loring Park; 4: Walker Art Center, Gallery Tower; 5: Walker Art Center, Theater Tower

First, to introduce the birders:

Abbie

• Novice at bird identification
• Walker Art Center staff
• Fledgling artist

Renner

• Enjoys applying the principles of evidence-based medicine to his birding
• Admires thorough, rigorous experimental design
• Empty nester

What we saw may surprise you! Take a look at our list, then go look for yourself. I welcome your comments to this post — I’m curious to see if you see the same species or others!

FIELD NOTES:HIGHLIGHTS

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

• In the Garden we enjoyed observing a fairly diverse bird population. In both May and October, lots of birds find their way to the Garden grounds.
• In May, the Green Heron was our most unexpected sighting. We saw it flying low overhead at 8:41 am. Later we spotted it in a pine tree along the western edge of the Garden. Maybe it nests in the wetlands located about 1/3 mile west of the Garden?
  
• As we walked along the park’s eastern and western edges in October, we saw Ruby-crowned Kinglets in the pines, often at very close distances (as close as 4′). They would flit from one pine bow to the next, and would frequently hover (almost like a hummingbird), positioning themselves just under the pine needles’ tips. Could they have been drinking water droplets?
• Another great bird to watch was the Brown Creeper. It lands at the base of a tree trunk then slowly hops and spirals up, foraging for insects. Once it gets as high as the branches, it takes flight and alights at the base of the next tree. We watched it scale 5 tree trunks, very methodically and consistently repeating its search for food.
  

Walker Art Center’s Greenspace

• In May, virtually all the observed individuals were flying over.
• Contrasting the greenspace observations with those recorded in the Garden or in Loring Park, one can hypothesize that features such as physical structure, diverse flora, and a water source make a quantifiable difference in the abundance and diversity of birds, even on a micro-local level.
  

Loring Park

• In both May and October, this location had the most diverse populations of our three sites.
• Mourning Doves: We saw them all through the Sculpture Garden, even atop George Segal’s Walking Man, but we didn’t see any in Loring Park!
  
• 70% increase: In October, we saw 70% more species than we saw in May! This was striking because the species counts at the other sites were consistent for our two survey dates.

We submitted our observations on e-bird, an free online checklist tool. E-bird  offers organized record storage and customizable reports to users. Its greater purpose is to serve researchers in the fields of conservation and ecology.

Every two facts in the hand is worth a third in the thicket.

Had my dad and I only surveyed the Garden, our experiences would have been less dimensional. The accumulation of information is not a strictly additive process, but can compound our knowledge multiplicatively. With every observable datum, relationships exist between that singular bit and all the pieces that came before. In this context we cobble together patterns, discriminate and identify categories,  speculate as to meaning and postulate as to the future. How many bits and pieces must we put together to present a satisfactorily convincing semblance of a whole?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a discussion between artist Fritz Haeg and some Walker staff. Reflecting on his works and practice influenced me to conduct this bird census. I appreciate the power of Haeg’s work to remind us that wilderness is always at hand, and closer at hand than we might casually believe.  Thank you to Education and Community Programs for making this encounter, this exploration, and this learning possible.

]]> http://blogs.walkerart.org/offcenter/2009/10/21/flitting-species-put-together-to-present-a-semblance-of-a-whole/feed/ 1 http://blogs.walkerart.org/offcenter/2009/08/21/back-to-the-garden-tour-de-farm-rock-the-garden-more/ http://blogs.walkerart.org/offcenter/2009/08/21/back-to-the-garden-tour-de-farm-rock-the-garden-more/#comments Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:03:10 +0000 Julie Caniglia http://blogs.walkerart.org/offcenter/?p=2705 Woodstock nostalgia is so last week: Cool Hunting, the website whose name pretty much says it all, just posted a video report on June’s Rock the Garden music festival at the Walker. DJ Mary Lucia from The Current and the Walker’s performing arts curator Philip Bither weigh in on why 2009’s bands are so very “now” (no past tense, they do still matter, two months later!), and there’s also some chatting with the music-makers themselves — at least Solid Gold, Yeasayer, and Calexico. Decemberists fans will have to look elsewhere for a new fix of brilliance from Colin Meloy and co. (By the way, Solid Gold returns next week, for a whole different and not-your-Garden-variety show on the Walker’s greenspace.)

photo by Cameron Wittig

Young urban kitchen gardeners and other local food growers were the toast of Tour de Farm at the Walker on July 30 — the sole city stop on its sold-out summer ‘09 tour celebrating Minnesota farmers and food artisans. Masterminded by The Corner Table’s Scott Pampuch (with inspiration from Jim Denevan and Outstanding in the Field), the communal dinner had 115 foodies swooning over creations made with local and regional ingredients by seven Twin Cities chefs Michelle Gayer (Salty Tart), Asher Miller (from the Walker’s own 20.21), Alex Roberts (Restaurant Alma, Brasa), Phillip Becht & Jim Grell (Modern Cafe), Mike Phillips (Craftsman Restaurant) and Zoe Francois (Artisanal Bread in 5 Minutes a Day).

At left is a shot from the dinner by Walker staff photographer Cameron Wittig; but you can read all the details in an exhaustive, three-part account replete with gorgeous photos from Kris Hase, examples of which are below. If images of homemade potato chips with creme fraiche or Star Prairie trout with duck-egg pasta don’t get you drooling, they’ll have you running to the farmer’s market. Pics not enough? There’s also an eight-minute video. Just make sure you get out from behind that monitor at some point and enjoy what’s left of a summer for which we’re already growing nostalgic.

photos above and at right by Kris Hase

Sound Check, Rock the Garden 2009, photo by The Current

There have been a plethora of reviews and blog posts about Rock the Garden coming through my google alerts lately, and they’ve been overwhelmingly positive. My summation of the reviews and tweets I’ve seen so far boils down to two major points:

• The new layout with the stage facing south up the hill was a big improvement.
• The Decemberists finished the show off pretty well.

Here’s a list of the reviews that I’ve run across:

• East-lake.net posts a lengthy play-by-play review, including a good deal of pictures and short reviews of each band.
• The Twin Cities Daily Planet reviews the show with a several photos.
• The Star Tribune has crowd reactions and gives the show a mixed review. There are a few more tidbits in the Pop Life blog.
• About.com’s review goes into some of the logistics of the stage placement.
• MFR has another review and came away pretty impressed by this year’s lineup of bands.
• Pop Culture Junkie reviews the show with YouTube inlines of the band’s different music videos.

And here are photos I’ve seen go by:

• The best group is probably from our partner The Current’s flickr stream, with 82 photos and 5 videos, many by twin cities video personality extraordinaire, Chuck Olsen.
• City Pages has a slideshow of 40 shots from the show.
• The Star Tribune posted 9 photos, including some great action shots of the band and crowd.
• emoeby posted a collection of  18 shots to flickr, perhaps giving the best sense of the size of the crowd.
• Plesserchick has 18 photos, including some close-ups of Solid Gold (I think) and Colin Meloy.
• WontonBrutallity has a small collection of 6 photos, including a couple night shots and a guy drinking beer.
• danlwhelan posts a large collection of iPhone images on MobileMe.
• Jacob Walter Photography posted a collection of 38 images, including a couple panoramas.

If I’m missing any reviews or photos, let me know in the comments.

We also captured a time-lapse video of the stage being set up and people filtering in to watch the show. Unfortunteately, the software we were using to connect to the camera wasn’t the most reliable and crashed a few times, resulting in some gaps in time. That said, it is still neat to see the stage go up and the size of the crowd grow:

On a side note: I was not able to attend the show, but was able to follow the happenings from my phone in the middle of Wisconsin. It wasn’t quite as good as being there, but following a twitter search for “rock the garden” gave me a good play-by-play and heightened my sense of missing out. Thanks to all the tweeters who kept those of us not there posted.

The outsized objects, which date back to the late 70s, range from a baseball bat in Chicago to binoculars in Venice, California, to a broom and dustpan in Denver; Spoonbridge and Cherry (1985-88), a highlight of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, is special in that it was the duo’s first fountain sculpture. Van Bruggen, who succumbed to breast cancer at her home in Los Angeles over the weekend, is being memorialized by dozens of obituaries online, including Time and the L.A. Times, which has a fine slideshow as well, featuring the work that has become a Minneapolis landmark.

Former Walker director (and now director emeritus) Martin Friedman and his wife, Mickey, were at a reception in their honor Friday afternoon at the Gallery 8 Cafe. Just before the mass of staff poured in for free wine and crackers, Martin Friedman discussed his interactions 20 years ago with artists placing their works in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Friedman also talks here with Deborah Butterfield, who was also at the reception, about her work in the garden, Woodrow (1988).

MinnPost has an interesting piece today from Ron Way, who mixes an assessment of Walker on the Green with a short history lesson on miniature golf. Among other “hmm … you don’t say?” nuggets, Way drops this factoid:

(The) first miniature golf course was the Ladies’ Putting Club in St. Andrews, Scotland, formed in 1867. Back then, it was taboo for women to swing a golf club more than shoulder high.

Some taboos are more meritorious than others. At least the Walker doesn’t discriminate with its taboos — anyone playing Walker on the Green will get a finger-wagging for swinging a club more than shoulder high.

Swing into the opening party for Walker on the Green: Artist-Designed Mini Golf. The course is open through Labor Day.

By the way, in house, we don’t call the first cover a cover (not if you want to preserve your kneecaps). It’s a wrap — the first in the short history of the magazine in its current format. It’s printed on rough paper stock and, if one were so inclined, easily pulled away from the glossy magazine proper. Hypothetically, one could carefully pull the wrap away and present the May/June issue with a Prince cover. Nobody would be the wiser (indeed, the issue date and magazine logo are reserved for the inner cover).

Who would do such a thing? And why? You could pin the entire summer slate of Garden-related events (they appear on the back of the wrap) on your refrigerator or on your bedroom wall, alongside your black-light posters. Perhaps you’d like a Prince keepsake on the cheap. The Walker doesn’t recommend engineering this cover separation at home — or at your own museum — nor is the Walker responsible for any ensuing injury.

The second distinction is the illustration adorning the wrap. Again, this is new to the magazine, which traditionally devotes the cover to artwork drawn from a current/upcoming exhibition or publicity still from a performance group or film. This tableau is drenched in PMS 802 — the official color of the summer-long Garden anniversary celebration. Dare to imagine your summer day in the sculpture garden bathed in day-glo green.

To commemorate National Dance Week, Walker Art Center performing arts program manager Michele Steinwald sent out a call to 300 people in the Twin Cities dance community to gravitate to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden Tuesday afternoon for a group photo in front of Spoonbridge and Cherry. Only two dozen showed up, not counting two dogs in tow, but Steinwald sees it as the launching pad to an annual photo shoot to mark this otherwise under-the-radar week.

IMAGES: (left) James Turrell’s Sky Pesher and (right) Mongo Thomson’s Skyspace Bouncehouse.

The contemporary arts quarterly X-Tra calls Mungo Thomson’s Skyspace Bouncehouse “a nod” to James Turrell’s Skyspace pavilions. Other words come to mind — “knockoff,” “ripoff” or the more charitable “tribute.” Turrell’s Sky Pesher, commissioned by the Walker and unveiled in 2005 to mark the Walker’s reopening, could have served as Thomson’s blueprint. But if Richard Prince can reframe others’ creations and cast them as his own art, Turrell might as well save on the attorneys’ fees — he doesn’t have a case. And as a colleague here was quick to point out, Thomson’s version seems “more fun.”

X-Tra points out that Turrell’s work draws on his experiences as a Quaker, adding that, “by adding the opportunity to bounce and jump in the Skyspace, Thomson provides a way to exorcise the demons within us–and if you bring your iPod with a downloaded Black Flag track, you can rock your world, in deep contrast to the pious quiet and pacifist underpinnings of the Turrell Quaker pavilions.”