Here are a few “in-house” images of a “Bittern with frog,” circa, 1902. In addition to capturing birds in the field, Thomas Sadler Roberts pursued his early ornithological avocation by staging backgrounds – and props – in order to better…
When the Exploring project began back in mid-April, the inaugural collection of materials scanned were 2,200 botanical photographs from the collection of the Department of Botany (precursor to the Department of Plant Sciences). The final scan of this collection was…
The moose, an often symbolized animal in the lore of Minnesota, has a heightened status within our state. Minnesota resorts, restaurants, coffee shops, and of course, hockey teams align their identity with this popular animal. Despite Minnesotan’s wide-spread commercial identification…
In 1902, ornithological enthusiast and photographer extraordinaire Thomas Sadler Roberts traveled to Lake Itasca, the head waters of the Mississippi River, to document and study avian life. Here he photographed Arctic Woodpeckers, Least Flycatchers, Red-eyed Vireos, Pine Warblers, Juncos, Eagles,…
Happy Monday morning! Enjoy this Minnesota scene from July 1903… – Loon’s nest and eggs, July 1903, King Lake, Meeker County…
I thought the name of this plant was implicit, but apparently not… Touch-Me-Nots, circa 1900 (Image taken by Thomas Sadler Roberts, part of the glass plate negative collection from the Bell Museum of Natural History records.)…
In a letter to James Ford Bell dated September 19, 1917, in which he discussed preparations for mounted habitat groups to be installed at the Zoological Museum at the University, Dr. Thomas Sadler Roberts, Associate Curator, included a post script,…
Here are a few images of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (no, I’m not being mean, that is really the name!) According to The Cornell Lab of Ornithology Bird Guide, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, “perch upright on trees, leaning on their tails like other…
Hardly a day goes by where I don’t take a lunch break to enjoy a sandwich complete with an essential ingredient: mushrooms. But on Wednesday, just two days ago, my hand-packed sandwich was sans mushrooms on a rare occurrence (for…
Last Friday, I traveled out to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, MN. The Arboretum, part of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences at the University of Minnesota, is home to over one-thousand acres of gardens and…