It is Monday again, and as we introduced last week, a December Monday means it is time to open the mailbag to share some of the season’s greetings that Dr. Thomas Sadler Roberts received during his tenure as the curator…
As a reward for surviving temperatures that reached 20 below zero just a few days ago, for the Friday Flora we will travel to the spring of 1937 to sit alongside a University of Minnesota botany class atop Gwinn’s Bluff…
Minnesota winter scenes from Koma Lake in the Superior National Forest, 1938: – Snow on Koma Lake, Cook County, March 1938 – Beaver cutting on Koma Lake, Cook County, March 1938…
Okay, so these jackrabbits don’t appear to be very wild. Maybe these tame hares should be called laprabbits instead? – Jackrabbit, young, June 21, 1924, Herman – White-tailed Jackrabbit in lap, June 1933, Rosemount – White-tailed Jackrabbit drinking, June 1933,…
In October of 1923, Iva Clare Downey sent Thomas Sadler Roberts a poem that she authored inspired by the experience of riding in an automobile and looking at birds. “Ornithology via Auto” (click on the image for a larger version)…
The Bell Museum of Natural History records contain more than just the administrative paperwork of a developing natural history museum. The collection also contains the personal papers of Thomas Sadler Roberts – the man who oversaw the museum in infancy…
The old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words” can certainly be applied to the images in the Bell Museum of Natural History collection. And, as it has been my experience, a single picture can also send you in…
We did it! We made it through our first major snowstorm of the season. Traffic made us late to work, we were chilled by the cold wind breezing past our cheeks, and we were forced to round up all of…
The second full year of work on the Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey was a busy one for State Geologist Newton Horace Winchell. First, he was directed by the governor and the state legislature to settle once and for…
In Box 8 of the Bell Museum of Natural History collection resides a field notebook titled, “Trip to Western part of State, 1924.” In this notebook, Thomas Sadler Roberts recorded bird notes on his two-week trip to Grant, Big Stone,…