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♪(gentle music)♪ [captioning sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education] ♪(gentle music)♪ Hello, and welcome to Nature Scene.

I'm Jim Welch with naturalist Rudy Mancke and we're in the northeast corner of Iowa not far from the town of Marquette.

On this hike, we'll be learning about early Indian Mounds in the area as well as looking at the plants and animals of this upper Mississippi River Valley.

And, Rudy, when I think of Iowa I think of cornfields but this is so different from Iowa.

Most of Iowa was affected by continental glaciers that moved down from the north and things were flattened but the glaciers missed this little section of Iowa and also the adjacent part of Wisconsin.

And so you've got an area here that has not really been modified heavily by glaciers and it is very unique.

Interesting soils here very diverse hardwood forest.

We're going to see very few, if any, conifers today.

But a great variety of hardwoods and when you have hardwood forest you have an interesting under story too.

And then, of course, the native American story.

the Indian story here is interesting, too.

And I'm sure the hardwoods brought them to the area because of food, game and shelter.

That's right, that's right, that's right.

And we're close to, as you said the Mississippi River and there was a lot of food available there.

Just looking at the diversity here one of the things that caught my eye a minute ago hazelnut right there.

There's a plant that is used...

The fruit is used by animals, including humans.

Squirrels and other things also feed on it.

Very common tree here in the monument.

Nice plant.

Look at the leaves very typical, easy to identify.

I also see, right over here, compound leaves.

Look at this now.

Just getting started on one of the trees that'll dominate here.

That's probably white ash.

Opposite leaves that are compound.

Just getting started.

Does well in the shade.

There's larger oaks, hickories, maples all around us.

Oh, yeah.

What's this tree here?

All right, the little one here is one of the hack berries and, again, that'll get up high.

And that'll be a dominant plant here.

But this is basically an oak-hickory climax forest and I think we'll be able to prove that as we walk along today.

But, again, things on the ground herbaceous plants.

May apple all over the place.

fruity, that one.

And it is the right time of year to see that fruit and the fruit, when it's ripe now, is edible.

Everything else about that plant is toxic but the fruit is edible.

The national Park Service has miles of great trails through here, Rudy.

Let's move on.

Okay.

♪(soft music playing)♪ Close to 1,500 acres at the monument, Rudy and 191 Mounds that are protected.

These were from one of the cultures of Mound-Building cultures in shapes of cones as well as linear shapes Hopewellian Indian, perhaps.

A lot of trinkets and treasures traded around the country are found here.

Yeah, there are open areas in the woods and, again the Indians came up on this raised area close to the Mississippi River and I guess these were burial grounds.

Most of them, anyway, were burial grounds.

A lot of mystery, though.

A lot of mystery but most likely burial, almost all of them.

Yeah, look right here in front of us on the back side of the Mound White Clover with Tiger Swallowtail sitting there.

Little patch of sun.

Oh, yeah, getting nectar and that's a group of flowers so, you know, it goes from flower to flower taking its time.

Freshly out, too.

That is a beautiful, beautiful butterfly.

Another butterfly over here, Rudy.

Perhaps one of the smaller butterflies.

Little Pearl Crescent sitting up there, yeah.

Wings spread in the little bit of sunlight.

Sun's in and out today but that is a beautiful little animal.

And, again, both of those are adults.

You know, and once you see an insect with wings almost always you're looking at an adult.

So it's not going to grow any larger than that.

Yeah, these Mounds are intriguing.

I wonder what the early settlers thought when they came in and saw these Mounds here.

I'm sure many people dug in and found material that gave them some clue as to the function.

Thousands of these Mounds have been leveled, destroyed as farms were created in the entire area but at the same time, these are protected and I think even some of the other Indian Cultures didn't know about the Cultures before.

It spanned 2,500 years.

Well, and very little was written down.

I see a few trees that are coming up here that kind of dominate.

There's that ash that we looked at a moment ago except it's a bigger one.

I think that's white ash and you can see the fruit hanging down on it those little winged seed and they get blown a little bit helicopter down once they fall.

But that's a tree that looks like it's going to dominate here.

I think we're going to be impressed with the variety of trees, as we said once we slow down and look at them.

Why don't we just keep walking.

We mentioned Woodland Indians, Rudy and here in this open spot is the little bear Mound the Effigy culture, in fact.

29 of the Mounds within the monument are in the shapes of bears or birds, in fact and a lot of mystery about it.

So the name Effigy Mounds makes sense.

We're walking kind of on the back, I guess, of the bear with the head sticking out in the front there.

These Effigy Mounds were done up until about 1350 when the Effigy Mound culture disappeared and prior to that, several... About 2,500 years Mounds were built by the various woodland cultures.

Yes, an interesting shape here.

This is the head end, as we had said earlier and you can imagine large numbers of people being involved in bringing earth up now to pile it up to form these Mounds.

They just didn't cut the forest well, they cleared it, I guess but then they brought in material and piled it up a little bit at a time.

High on these ridges over the Missiippi River Valley.

And funeral ceremonies, of course they're somewhat ceremonial but a lot of mystery still surrounds it.

This outlines, I guess, the...

The front legs.

Yeah, the mystery is part of the fun of a place like this, though because we don't know everything.

There weren't written records.

We don't have a lot of information left behind.

But that is obviously a little front leg and, again, it's a pretty reasonable shape.

You can appreciate it a lot better from the air than you do right down here but still, it's real.

Right here and then the underbelly.

Of the little bear.

Of the little bear.

They did bears and birds mostly, as we said and about a hundred years ago archaeologists started looking at it but it wasn't protected, really, till 1949.

Back leg see, right here and then curls on around to where we started up on the back.

There's another open area close to here that's quite different from this.

Let's take a look at that next.

This open field now is a part of the prairie restoration project here creating a new habitat or really trying to bring an old habitat back, Jim.

Man's doing a lot of work around us.

Well, humans even today are changing the environment.

And when you open places up like this there are a few plants that absolutely love it.

Blackberries are one of them and you can see them all in this open field.

A lot of fruit on them.

A lot of fruit, yeah.

There are a few flowers.

There's one flower left, kind of tattered; five petals and then all of those reproductive parts in the center.

Of course, the most showy thing here, Rudy is the state flower, that Wild Rose.

Oh, yeah, isn't that beautiful?

Absolutely beautiful.

And, again, five petals.

Both of those are in the rose family.

And that would be very fragrant to the smell.

I can even see some unopened flower buds there.

See that?

And then those compound leaves.

Those shrubby roses are pretty common in this part of the United States and on further north.

And I see a little halictid bee, it looks like coming to the flower to get some pollen and maybe a little bit of nectar.

Again, flowers like that attract lots and lots of insects.

All around, of course, the sumac is coming up.

Well, yeah, and it's interesting because we've got two species of sumac here.

This one over on the side is Smooth Sumac.

If you look carefully at the branches there is no fuzz on the branches at all.

It's nice and smooth.

And look all over the leaves or what's left of leaves there's a little leaf beetle larva that's tearing up that smooth sumac and changing smooth sumac into beetle larva.

see all those little things?

More connections, that's for sure.

Oh, yeah, and leaving the veins, it looks like leaving those mid veins.

Not as tasty, I guess.

And the larger sumac has the red fruit or flowering on it.

Oh, you see the fruit on that, yeah last year's fruit on it.

And that is Stag Horn, it's called, sumac.

Stag Horn because if you look carefully at the branches instead of being smooth, they're fuzzy almost like a deer in velvet.

So stag horn sumac's a pretty good common name for it.

That species is much common as you go north.

The smooth sumac continues further south.

To keep this a field or a prairie you got to make sure that you don't get too many sumacs.

And also look at the trees that are dominating there coming in very quickly.

The aspen.

Quaking Aspen.

And, again, those are connected to the same root system.

That's a clone of plants coming up.

And you see the leaves there in a little bit of a breeze there but even the tiniest breeze causes them to flicker a little.

One of the poplars.

But quaking aspen is a real good common name.

And, boy, it loves these open places.

Right in the top up there...

Right in the top.

Get your binoculars up.

Indigo bunting, his back to us actually calling.

Oh, that is a beautiful call.

And, again, they love edges of the woods on an open field like this.

Those ecotones are very, very important and there are a lot of them here.

Beautiful indigo color.

Oh, wow!

Again, a beautiful sound, too as it's calling.

That is a nice bird.

Other animals flying around the dragonflies.

One lit right here.

Yeah, right here, right here.

One of the club tails right in front of us on the blackberry leaf.

One of the common names for that thing is the Cobra club tail.

Cobra club tail because it's so widespread on the back that it looks like, I guess the spread hood of a cobra.

But that is a beautiful animal.

Rear end a lot larger than the rest of the body so club tail is a good common name.

And then those big eyes and the four wings.

So many things to see.

Well, there's lots and lots and lots of stuff here.

Look right here on the side of the path ahead of us.

Eastern garter snake right there.

Stripes, very, very obvious.

Looking right at us.

Tongue will be in and out, you know.

I mean, picking up odor particles out of the air.

Probably he felt us walking up, really, and he froze.

It is a little hard to see.

One thing I remember about garter snakes is they do have a defense mechanism with that musky smell.

Musk, and they will... That's one of those snakes that'll turn and bite if you grab them.

But, again, he's fairly quiet there.

Striping is common.

Gives birth to live young.

Finds food frogs, toads and things in this open field.

Look at him slide away right into the open field, and disappear.

That's a beautiful animal.

Let's head on up the trail.

See what else we can find right along these edges.

Look right here on the smooth sumac.

He's landed in position.

A skipper.

Yeah, one of the skippers and that's a big one.

Silver-spotted skipper is the common name for it.

Markings on the underside of the hind wing are clear.

And look at those antennae the way the little club is bent there, Jim, on the ends.

That's a neat animal.

Pretty widespread, too.

And an easy animal to spot.

These edges, though bring out a lot of animals that want a little bit of sunlight.

That's probably what that garter snake was doing out in the road just warming up a little bit.

Bird going over into that Elm Tree over there.

You got your binoculars on it?

It's a Sapsucker.

Is that a Sapsucker?

Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker?

Going to holes he's already drilled.

That's a male, too, with the red.

I can see the red from here.

Oh, yeah, that's a neat animal.

Again, beating holes in and coming back to get sap and insects and carrying them away.

Gosh, that's a neat woodpecker.

The tree there now is American Elm.

And that's one that probably was planted out in this open field.

I see two or three of them in a line.

Is that a paper wasp nest up in the top?

Oh, way up there.

It... Maybe last year's?

A big one, yeah oh, yeah, yeah.

It's too early for it to be that big this season so that's probably last year's paper wasp.

Getting bark off trees and mixing it with their saliva and making paper.

Stinging animal?

Uh, yeah, yeah.

There's the female.

just came in.

Looks like it's just collecting insects and other things from there.

She's not as brilliantly marked.

Doesn't have that bright red on the head.

They do have a little yellow on the belly so the name makes sense.

Both sexes will drill the holes?

Yeah, they can work on that.

And then she's gone.

But that is an interesting thing to look at.

The shape of the tree and the leaves on that tree are very distinctive and, of course, threatened because of Dutch Elm Disease.

Now, I see a little hummingbird coming in there!

Real quick, Ruby-Throated, it'd have to be.

The same holes!

Moving in and out and a lot of insects are going to be active there, too.

So those holes attract lots of things other than just the woodpeckers.

Of course, the hummer couldn't make those kinds of sap holes.

No, no, but that again is an extra opportunity to come and get something to feed on.

A lot of interesting things in an open field like this.

I think the male is back drilling, digging a hole, right there.

Look at the way He's pounding on it.

That won't hurt the tree, right?

Well, it's...

Opens it up to invasion.

Usually it doesn't kill the tree but sometimes it puts it in jeopardy.

But you see the way he's digging that hole.

And that's going to be the same shape hole as the other holes, almost in a line.

That is an interesting woodpecker.

And really, usually you figure they'd only be here in the winter but they're obviously nesting.

Males and females coming this time of year would mean that they're nesting.

It's like tapping a Sugar Maple, Rudy.

Getting a little bit out and taking advantage of it.

Changing it into bird.

And look up here, Rudy.

Turkey Vulture, soaring above us in this Mid-June sky we've got.

Hardly even moving the wings on the warm, rising air from this open area.

And that's an animal that's a pretty good scavenger.

Found pretty commonly in the eastern united states.

Just soaring with ease and that sort of turkey-red head on it gives it the name "Turkey Vulture."

great place to soar on these bluffs over the valley.

Oh, yeah, that's nice.

I see one other thing down here, before we go.

One of the interesting dogwoods that often you find in the woods here in clumps white flowers on it.

Take a look at it.

Not at all like the flowering dogwood that most people know.

But this is the same genus, just a different species.

Four parts to that flower and the insects are all over the place over there.

Coming to get nectar and pollen.

And I see a couple of Longhorn Borer Beetles that are not only feeding but mating on those flowers.

And again, when you've got a lot of flowers like that that brings in lots of insects especially when they're right on the edge like this.

Life goes on, right before our eyes.

Look at that mayfly on the Quaking Aspen leaf right by the dogwood.

That'll live 24 hours as an adult.

That's an amazing little animal.

Legs sticking up in the front and then projections off the rear end.

But one day 24 hours as an adult.

So what's a mayfly doing in June?

Well, a May-fly is mating in June.

That's what they do as adults.

That's all their adult life is for to mate, pass on genetic information and die.

Let's head on into the woods.

Feels a little cooler in the shade of the woods again, isn't it?

You know, some folks call this area of Iowa "Little Switzerland."

Little hills and dales, here and there.

Yeah, it's nice.

And again, we're in that great forest with a lot of diversity, really, right by the path.

you don't even have to leave the path to see it.

Here's a relative of the May Apple that we saw earlier.

Blue Cohosh is the common name for that.

You can see fruit on it that will be a bluish color.

Kind of green now.

But blue Cohosh, one of the common names for that plant.

What are some of the others?

Well, look at the fern here.

You know, we've been...

If we'd looked closely we could probably have seen a great variety of ferns here but that one is called Rattlesnake Fern.

Finely dissected leaf and then, coming up from the middle is that fruiting stalk with all of the spores in there little sori that would be spread.

But that plant does best in moist, sloping hillside situations and it's perfectly positioned here.

Cool, green and shady.

Yeah.

I see another one here now that seems to be a dominant under story plant.

Northern prickly ash is one of the names for it.

It has a compound leaf like an ash but it does have little prickles on it.

The leaves here aren't opposite, like ash leaves, though.

They're alternate.

If you crushed it, you'd get a lemon like smell and Indians would have used it to treat toothache with the bark and the roots.

So that's another interesting plant.

And then one more down here.

Gooseberry is the common name for it.

Again, under story plants.

Gosh, there's a lot of variety here!

And really, it's on all sides of us as we walk along.

Walking along the Conical Mounds... And some big trees.

Oh, huge trees in here!

Golly, that's a big... Looks like a Sugar Maple there.

And really just look in front of us.

Now, talking about big trees there's one that is a dominant tree in situations like this.

Basswood is one of the names for it.

Linden is another name.

Bee tree, a lot of people call it because when it's flowering boy, the bees love the flowers.

Kind of a heart-shaped leaf.

Yeah, you see the large leaves on that thing and they do get to be extremely large trees and often you see four or five of them growing together.

There are two coming up together because they'll sprout up from a stump that's been cut and just take over and do very nicely.

Now, here's another one that makes sense.

Look right over here.

What's that?

Hickory.

Hickories are basically mainly North American trees and that one with the shaggy bark what are you going to call it?

Shagbark hickory sure.

( chuckling ): yeah.

So shagbark hickory is common here.

A lot of these common names make really good sense when you think about them.

Sugar maples all around.

Yeah, there are some of the small... See, those lower sugar maples will give you a chance to actually see the leaves on that.

And that would be the leaf that you'd see, I guess on the flag of Canada.

And very common here and further north from here.

Iowa used to be forested by almost seven million acres of trees.

Today, far less less than two million.

This tree, this maple, in fact is facing a lot of stress, Rudy.

Big hole in it, too.

Oh, yeah, it is.

Leaning over like that.

Looks like it's hollow up and down.

Let's just see if we can see anything inside here.

nothing up.

There's something right there!

What have you got, Rudy?

I got a snake in here, Jim if I could work him out.

I don't believe it!

look at this thing.

One of the rat snakes and the species that you would expect to find here is the Black Rat snake.

You can see the round pupils.

That means he's not poisonous.

Oh, yeah, this is one of the nonpoisonous snakes.

It would be fairly common here and they would love hollow trees.

The head's kind of dark and again, that obvious round pupil.

Eyes bug out a little bit.

And then, instead of being solid black as you work your way down that snake I get a reddish look, don't you?

Very much a reddish pattern some yellow in there.

Yeah, and you can see blotches just faint outlines of blotches.

When this snake was hatched from an egg it had dark blotches up and down the body.

As it gets older they usually run together.

But in this individual I can still see those blotches fairly clearly.

Much bigger and very different from that garter snake we looked at.

Yeah, this one is a powerful constrictor.

The garter snake would not constrict.

This one lays eggs.

The garter snake would give birth to live young.

But this is a powerful animal.

I mean, I'm holding him here.

He's not moving too much but I can feel his muscles and his strength.

And these feed on birds and mammals and again, they can get them on the ground or they can get them right up in the tip-top of a tree.

Black Rat snake.

I'm sure he'd like to get back on the tree.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

We'll just let him go right here.

Interesting animal.

See if I can just put him right here and see if he'll go right up the side of the tree.

He's not.

Let's see him grip if@ though, pretty well.

Look at him.

He even is interested in me more than anything else.

There he is gripping.

Grabbing a hold.

Oh, yeah neat.

Let's keep going.

Great animal.

♪(gentle music while walking)♪ Mound here on our right, Rudy was from one of the woodland cultures.

Again, a burial this a Burial Mound.

And what a beautiful point here on the edge of the bluff!

Oh, yeah, isn't this gorgeous?

Really, it gives us an opportunity to take a look, finally at the Mississippi River which was very special to the early Indians.

They were arriving, I guess, the Paleo-Indians about the time the glaciers were retreating north of here.

12,000 years ago.

Oh, yeah.

And as we said glaciers did not directly affect this area but the water the meltwater coming down this gorge did affect it.

It scooped out this Mississippi River Gorge.

And in the distance there you can see the ridge on the other side and we're standing on the ridge here.

Because we're in Iowa, that's in Wisconsin.

That's right.

The River was bigger then.

And then, as the ice melted away instead of carrying sediment further down it began to drop it creating these little sandbars and islands.

That's really glacial debris, a lot of it that was left behind, and that's a wonderful wildlife refuge area down there.

Interesting the way the glacial story works in and, of course, the human story works in man being a part of nature, not separate from it.

Interesting tree right here, too.

State tree is the oak.

Well, this is one of the oaks.

Bur oak is the common name for it.

This is a species that really does well west and east of here and a dominant plant right here on the bluff.

Interesting leaves.

And again, this is an oak-hickory climax forest so you would expect to see that oak and probably some others if we keep our eyes open as we walk.

So, again... And I've said this before but so unlike Iowa.

Well, again, this is a different area because the glaciers never had a direct effect on it.

And when you stand at this point now looking at that Mississippi River going off in the distance with a couple of channels you can really see the ridge on one side the ridge on the other, scooping it out.

And again, a haven for early humans in North America.

And look at the trees right below us there.

There is the first conifer we've seen today the Eastern Red cedar that loves these ledges all over the united states.

And there it is, living and doing just fine.

And now looking at a river that will take us all the way if we followed it to the Gulf Of Mexico draining the major portion of the united states.

Isn't that interesting?

And, of course,barge traffic up and down the river and look at the train coming along following, again, the River valley as you would expect.

Bridge down there goes across the Yellow River and that's where the Indians were camping who created this Mound up here.

We're at Fire Point.

And they brought much of the clay or earth from that area up here for the ceremony.

All the way to the top it's amazing.

This is a wonderful place.

I think we came at a good time of the year, too.

A lot of variety here.

The history and the natural history the two go together so beautifully here and that's fine.

Very diverse forest, though and then those open areas that we were looking at are so nice.

And again, that combination makes it very, very special.

Beautiful time to be out in the woods.

And it's an extra bonus when you can provide early history of man with the natural history of today.

Yeah, well, it's a good combination.

The Effigy Mounds National Monument just a few miles north of Marquette, Iowa.

Thanks for being with us.

Come and see it for yourself and join us again on the next Nature Scene.

Let's take another look out.

Even on a hazy day, that's beautiful.

♪(gentle music playing)♪ Captioning sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education captioned by: The Caption Center WGBH Educational Foundation ♪ Nature Scene is made possible in part by grants from: helping sustain Nature Scene for the past four years.

Santee Cooper where protection and improvement of our environment are equal in importance to providing electric energy.

And by viewers like you members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.