This is a bird jawbone I found on the ground at the meadow house.

I doubt I would have noticed it if it had been smaller, but this jawbone measures almost three inches long. It was not even partially buried. Rather, it lay on the ground, on the mat of needles underneath spruce trees.

When I picked up the jawbone, I figured it had to belong to a crow or raven. We have both in the meadow. After doing some reading, though, I believe it's the bottom jawbone or mandible of an American crow.

To aid me in the identification, I looked up information on skull length of ravens and crows. The website www.skullsite.com was really helpful. As its name implies, it contains photos of bird skulls, and it helped me envision how bird mandibles attach to the skull, and how far the skull projects past the back of the jaw. From the back of the skull to the tip of the bill, raven skulls measure about 4.5 inches long, while crow skulls measure about 3.15 to 3.40 inches long.

The lower jawbone I found is broken at the ends where it would have been attached to the upper jawbone, but it still measures about 2.75 inches long. Since the skull of a bird extends a little beyond the back hinge of the jaw, it’s my guess this jawbone came from a bird with a skull length a little over three inches, but not more than four inches.

That says crow to me. But it's still a guess.

The jawbone is very lightweight, and the charcoal portion of the bill is made up of layers. Up close, they look like the layers in a highly magnified human hair.

Of course, there’s a reason I made that connection. Human hair is made of keratin, and so are bird bills. Hair is made up of a soft kind of keratin, while bird bills (as well as turtle shells) are made up of a harder kind of keratin.

According to the website www.earthlife.net, birds' bills keep growing throughout their lives, just as our hair does. That’s why the tip of a bird bill doesn’t just wear away.

When I came back from an evening walk one night this summer, I noticed a small face peering out from the flowers and grasses along my driveway, and I halted. For a second, I thought it was my tortie cat.

Instead it was a small skunk, and it was about 15 feet away from me. That's an important number because skunks can spray from about ten feet away.

The skunk stared at me as I stood, motionless, and then it ambled out into the driveway. It immediately began walking down the driveway toward the house and away from me, but it paused several times to look back at me. Just to be on the safe side, I began slowly backing up the driveway, in the opposite direction of the skunk.

When the skunk was a good 70 feet away, it turned one last time to look at me, and then it stomped with its front paws, just the way a black bear does when it wants to scare you. It'was a kind of bluff charge, and a warning. But after that display, the skunk turned and headed into the woods behind the house.

I waited a couple moments and then came down the drive – and didn’t smell a thing.

I've had a few up-close experiences with skunks, including one on my first day at the meadow house.

I'd just come from the closing at the bank and was looking out the windows of my new home to the wind break line of trees. That's when I saw two skunks crossing the raw dirt of the yard. They were walking slowly and paused a few times to wrestle and gently roll over each other. 

The behavior seemed playful and I figured they might be siblings, but when I looked ahead, I didn’t see a mother skunk anywhere.  Maybe the two wrestlers had dallied so much they’d gotten left behind, or maybe this was a trial run at independence. 

I liked how the white and black looked as the two skunks twirled around each other, but I also wondered if this was a common path for them, crossing from south of the house to the west.  I wondered if, of all the houses I’d looked at in northern Minnesota, I somehow managed to buy the place with a resident skunk family. 

That morning I didn’t know the skunks were noting my presence just as I was noting theirs, and that they would adjust their walks accordingly.  I also didn't know the skunks were taking a well-worn path through the woods that many animals travel, including deer, black bears, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, and once – or just once that I saw – a bobcat.

When I went out on my evening walk July 24, I noticed a little hopping movement along the driveway. Whoever I saw was very tiny, however, and immediately disappeared into the grass and duff.

After I got back from my walk, I scoured the wildflowers and grasses along the driveway until I spotted another bit of movement, and when I did, I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. The hopper was the tiniest American toadlet I had ever seen.

It took me several tries, but I finally nabbed the miniscule toad, which was about one-quarter of an inch wide and about one-half an inch long, or about the size of my pinkie fingernail. Or, to put it another way, two of the toadlets would have fit comfortably on a dime.

I've seen toadlets the size of my thumbnail. This toadlet was even smaller than that. In fact, when I later examined my photos, I was able to see a bit of the tadpole tail that hadn’t yet been reabsorbed into the toadlet’s body.

The toadlet was the offspring of the American toads I heard calling in mid-May. I heard the first American toad singing the night of May 18, but by May 21, large numbers of toads were calling in the middle of the day, which usually means a high point in the breeding cycle.

If you've never heard the call of an American toad, you're missing out. To me, they have the most beautiful song of any of the frogs I can hear in the meadow, including wood, chorus, and tree frogs as well as spring peepers. To hear the sound of an American toad, click here.