Sunset on the Black Trail

I find myself with very little time to write new blog posts, so I'll be sharing more essays from my e-portfolio that I kept while at Conserve School.  I'll share them in chronological order.  There are some occasional issues with formatting since I'm transporting them from one site to another!


Sunset on the Black Trail

 It was a beautiful sunset. No, it was much more than that--it was just past five o' clock on a clear winter evening, standing on the Black Trail looking West across a vast, wild landscape. The sinking sun cast its brilliant orange-gold rays across the snow.  The bog's stunted trees threw their shadows far to the East. There was not a sound to be heard--nature stood in silent reverence towards a Western horizon beset by a magical display of exquisite, fiery beauty.  Where we stood, the sun shone low through the needles of two young White Pines. We were entranced by the light, its soft quality reflecting that of the trees' delicate yet perseverant needles.

This evening on the Black Trail represented one of the countless times I had ventured outside during my first three weeks at Lowenwood.  From skiing down the "hill of death" to snowshoeing the bog to birding Little Donahue Lake at six-thirty in the morning, I had been having an immensely fun time.

  

    I had experienced the deep snow and biting cold of a North Woods winter and the satisfaction of seeing much of Lowenwood's boreal wildlife.  But nothing could transcend this experience; not even watching the Northern Lights atop the sledding hill four nights before.  For the first time, I felt as deeply a part of the landscape as the bog's stunted spruce and the forest's towering White Pines. For the first time I felt a deep connection and appreciation for this place, "this gift from James R. Lowenstine."

    The shadows thrown across the snow, the sun blazing through the white pines and cedars on one side of the trail, casting a golden light on the spruces and birches on the other.  The utterly calm, windless expanse of snow, the stunted trees, the bog.  The hare and coyote tracks in the otherwise untouched snow. These all made this experience stand out for me.  Most memorable of all, though, was the connection I had gained to the landscape and the environment here at Lowenwood, and then realizing that it would be here, at this magnificent place, that I will be spending another thirteen weeks.

    Eventually, reluctantly, we had to tear ourselves away from the magical scene.  I knew I would be back the next night.

Well, I'm back from Conserve School and back to the blog that I neglected for an entire semester. As my first entry in five months, I'll use a piece from the e-portfolio I kept while I was up there:

Magic on the Lake

After successfully completing a Conserve School semester, a student ...

Has come to know Lowenwood, has developed gratitude for this gift from James R. Lowenstine, and, through their deepening love of this place, has become inspired to be a caretaker of the natural world.

I've never really believed in magic.  Not since I was a little kid, anyways.  But if ever there has been a time that it has existed, tonight is surely it. 

The sun is beginning to set in the western sky.  The bottoms of the clouds are a perfectly flat ceiling overhanging the north, south and west.  The rest of the clouds reach upwards into an endless azure sky deepening to cobalt then midnight blue in the east.  The full moon has cleared the horizon and the surface of Big Donahue Lake elongates its form as the faint ripples from our drifting rowboat break its outline into hundreds of exquisite, fluctuating crests of pale yellow reflections and troughs of deep blue lake water. The sun grows lower as we watch, the cloud-ceiling catching its pink and orange light.  The trees in the bog stand silhouetted against the brilliant sunset.  The beauty is doubled by the mirror upon which we float, whose reflection perfectly recreates every last beautiful detail.  We sit there with one of our favorite books held between us, taking turns reading aloud David James Duncan’s superb writing from The River Why.

A loon surfaces a stone’s throw away from our boat. Now we see another loon, flying in from the northwest.  It makes several wide circles around us before straightening its flight into a line that passes not twenty feet away from us, then alights on the water with a noisy crash-landing that, somehow, still comes off as graceful.  We freeze.  We don’t want to scare them off.  Five minutes pass. Then, they dance.  They dip their heads, dive, turn in circles, raise their bills skyward, flap their wings all in perfect unison. 

Another five minutes pass.  Now the loons begin to swim straight towards our boat.  We are both thinking the same thing: Don’t move a muscle. Neither of us does as they approach closer, then dance again, then keep swimming towards us.  We hold our breath as they swim closer and closer.  Surely they are going notice us and turn back!  But they don’t. They swim right by us, less than ten feet from the boat.  With their red eyes, dagger bills, and checkered backs, this pair of huge birds a paddle-length away from us are a breathtaking reminder of the wildness of the Northwoods.

After the longest, most beautiful half-minute of my life they swim away, and we see that it's time to paddle back to shore.  The sun and moon are even more beautiful than before as we beach our boat for the night.

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Tonight I was truly able to appreciate this “gift from James R. Lowenstein.” As we rowed to shore I was thinking, We are so lucky to live here, in such a beautiful place.  I hoped that this place would remain here in all of its surreal beauty, forever.  And many more places like it.  Though, I think, no place can quite compare to the beauty of Lowenwood.  The place that we all have the fortune to live in for a semester of our lives; lives that will be, and indeed already have been, changed from our experiences here.

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A friend asked me a few weeks ago, “If you were to describe Conserve School in one word, what would it be?” and I didn’t know the answer to her question.  But now I do.

Magical.

Even More Waterfowl!

In my last post (on the 19th), I said I'd be exploring the Grand and Red Cedar Rivers a bit more in search of new waterfowl, and that I'd post again if I found anything cool.  The weather turned windy and bitter cold, so I did not get to explore as much as I would have liked to, but I did manage to visit a few spots.

On the 20th, I headed back over to Moores Park. I didn't find anything new, but I did find and photograph a beautiful, close-up Horned Grebe, a species I'd already seen but had not been able to photograph:

On the 21st, following a report of two Trumpeter Swans on the 20th, my mom and I headed out to Potter Park to see if we could find them.  After several minutes, we saw them sleeping on an ice sheet, standing out against the surrounding Canada Geese.  They had their heads tucked in, which made it impossible to make an ID.  At one point they briefly stretched and flapped their wings, and I thought I saw triangular, not rounded, bill bases— they were indeed Trumpeters!  A great bird for Ingham County!  But then I looked at one of my photos and began to have doubts.  The bill base looked rounded in the photo, which would make it a Tundra Swan.  Unsure of myself, I decided to go back out and have another look.  This time, luckily, they were out and about, and I could see that both of their bill bases were undeniably rounded—definitely Tundra Swans.  Oh well, they weren't Trumpeters, but it was still very exciting to see non Mute Swans on the river!

This photo seems to show a rounded bill base, a Tundra Swan feature.

On the 25th my dad and I drove—it was far too cold for walking or biking—to Moores Park.  By then, it was so cold that most of the river had frozen over. I thought that most of the area's waterfowl would be concentrated there since, from what I could see, it provided practically the only open water for miles around! As it turns out, it is definitely NOT the only open water in the area (as I found out today) and there was less of a concentration than I had expected. There were still some nice birds, though. Above the dam we found two male Common Goldeneyes, a male Red-breasted Merganser, and four ducks that turned out to all be adult male Redheads!  Below the dam was nothing of interest besides the female Bufflehead that's been hanging around there since the beginning of the month.

Two GORGEOUS male goldeneyes

All four male Redheads

They're beautiful!

Today, the 29th, my mom and I headed out to a place called Island Park in Grand Ledge. As I had discovered not long ago, the ducks and geese there are very tame and I figured it would be fun to bring a some bread and feed the Mallards and geese.  So it was that, despite the frigid weather, I found myself in the Island Park with a loaf of bread in my hand.  The waterfowl knew food when they saw it, and within less than a minute Mallards and geese were crowding all around me for a chance at a morsel of bread.  The Canada and Greylag Geese fearlessly ate bread straight out of my hand.  The Greylags were my favorite, with their array of funny calls, amusing antics, feisty personalities, and—best of all in my opinion—blue eyes.

Part of the crowd at Island Park

One of the Greylag Geese

Umm, excuse me, I want food. NOW, MISTER.

My favorite part was their blue eyes.

Though the Mallards were more reserved (if you can call it that) and refused to come within a couple of feet from me, they still allowed me a wonderful opportunity to photograph and admire them from a "distance".  This led me to the conclusion that Mallards are grossly under appreciated:

Among the normal Mallards there were several odd domestic breeds, such as

Cayugas,

Anconas,

Abacot Rangers,

Runner Ducks,

...and many more, including Call Ducks, Duclairs, Buff Orpingtons, and Magpie Ducks!

At the edge of the open water I found a great surprise: a dense flock of mostly diving ducks, including a few that I had not yet seen this year. Present in the flock were all three mergansers, Bufflehead, Common Goldeneye, a male scaup, and an American Wigeon.  The wigeon was a female, so nothing spectacular—except that she put my January list of waterfowl on the Red Cedar and Grand Rivers at 20!  I found it hard to believe that I'd managed to see 20 species of waterfowl on two shallow inland rivers in less than a month.

As I got a little closer, I could make out a tiny duck with a stiff, pointy tail and a white cheek patch.  It was a Ruddy Duck, a great bird on the Grand River and number 21!  When I got a little closer, the entire flock took off before I could take my already-freezing hands out of my gloves again to take pictures.  The only bird that stayed behind when the flock took off was a female Red-breasted Merganser:

Darn, I thought. But then, while they were flying away, I realized that the male scaup had a LOT of white on his wings. It came almost all the way out to the outer primaries—much more than a Lesser.  It was a Greater Scaup, number 22! Even better, I had now seen all of Michigan's Aythya species—Redhead, Canvasback, Ring-necked Duck, and both scaup—on the rivers this month.  I could not believe my luck!

The Greater Scaup was a great way to end—I will be heading up to Conserve School tomorrow! While I'm there, I promise to blog about the magic of the boreal forest.

Happy January everyone!

Local Waterfowl—2014 Style

Waterfowling on the Red Cedar and Grand Rivers has been fantastic this year so far.  Both high diversity and high numbers are present, and because of this I have been fortunate to see all kinds of waterfowl within easy walking distance of my house.  Just for fun, here is a list and some photos of the seventeen (!!) species of waterfowl that I have seen in the past month, as well as a review of three of the areas I like to visit.

Here's the list with high counts:

• Canada Goose: 1,174
• Mute Swan: 5
• Wood Duck: 1
• Gadwall: 1
• American Black Duck: 63 (!!)
• Mallard: 982
• Canvasback: 1
• Ring-necked Duck: 5
• Lesser Scaup: 1
• Bufflehead: 8
• Common Goldeneye: 10
• Hooded Merganser: 1
• Common Merganser: 6
• Red-breasted Merganser: 8
• Pied-billed Grebe: 1
• Horned Grebe: 1
• American Coot: 1

Not bad for a shallow inland river!

There are a few areas that I check for waterfowl.  The first is usually Kreuger's Landing.  There is often a goldeneye or two to be seen, and it is a great place for Pied-billed and Horned Grebes in the winter months.  Recently, a stunning drake Canvasback has been hanging out at the landing, allowing amazing point-blank looks.

The amazing drake Canvasback at Kreuger's Landing!

The second spot, Potter Park, is just a quarter-mile walk from Krueger's Landing.  The river here briefly narrows, widens, and narrows again, twice bottlenecking all of the river's water.  This creates currents swift enough that there is always a nice long stretch of open water, no matter how cold it gets. For this reason, this is the best stretch of river to find diving waterfowl.  Earlier this month, for example, I was thrilled when two consecutive visits to Potter Park rewarded me with amazing numbers and diversity of diving waterfowl.  These consisted of a Lesser Scaup, four Buffleheads, three Common Goldeneyes, five Ring-necked Ducks, an American Coot, and, best of all, all three mergansers: one Hooded, five Commons, and three Red-breasteds.  I couldn't believe that I was seeing all three of them on a shallow river two miles from my house!

Common Mergansers

Hooded Merganser

Red-breasted Mergansers and a Common Goldeneye. 

Potter Park is not only a great spot for diving ducks, it is also often host to the rivers' largest concentration of dabbling ducks.  This month, it has hosted particularly amazing concentrations: the last time I visited, I counted an incredible 643 Mallards.  These huge Mallard flocks always contain several more-uncommon dabblers. There are always a few American Black Ducks, of course, but that time I was amazed to count 33 of them on the short stretch of river!  Most of them were part of a large Mallard flock near the second wooden bridge.  Farther upstream, I found a female Gadwall standing on the ice with a flock of 150 Mallards.

THIS is why they are called Black Ducks.

The third place I stop is Moores Park, where turbulent waters downstream of a hydroelectric dam combined with the hot water outflow from the Otto E. Eckert Power Plant ensure that there is always an area of open water.  The birds that take advantage of the turbulent warm water below the dam are almost all Mallards, Canada Geese, and a few Black Ducks and Mute Swans.  There are always a dozen or so "Manky Mallards"—including a few awkward individuals that never fail to draw a snicker from the amused observer.

One of the cuter domestic Mallards at Moores 

Park—a tiny Dusky Call Duck

My family and I like to call this guy the "Punk Rock Mallard"!
(Cayuga Mallard)

Despite the almost complete dominance of Mallards and Canada Geese at the site, every visit turns up something different.  I have found singles or pairs of a surprising number of species: American Coot, Gadwall, American Wigeon, all three mergansers,  Common Goldeneye, Bufflehead, Blue-winged Teal, Ring-necked Duck and Pied-billed and Horned Grebes.  The feature that makes this place worthwhile is the narrowness of the river, which allows close looks at whatever waterfowl are there when you visit.  

A Bufflehead up close at Moores Park

Red-breasted Merganser

My favorite bird from Moores Park had always been the courting pair of Hooded Mergansers.  Until New Year's Day this year, that is.  That was the day that I had just finished scanning the usual flock of Mallards when I lowered my binoculars and saw something standing on the riverbank, not ten feet away from me.  It had a stunning color palette.  It was tiny and very cute.  I could not believe my eyes—it was a drake Wood Duck!  I feasted my eyes for at least ten minutes before finally coming back to reality.  An adult male Wood Duck is a sight to behold at any time of year.  But seeing one on a mid-winter day, when the rest of the world is colored by hues of gray and brown, was mesmerizing!

Wow.

In the next few days, I intend to thoroughly explore the rest of the Lansing River Trail by bicycle, and hope to discover some more exciting waterfowl.  I'm planning birding along the river in and near MSU campus, the confluence of the Red Cedar and Grand Rivers (where there should be plenty of open water), Lindberg Drive (which probably provides views of the river not accessible from Potter Park), and a few other places.  I will post again if I find anything cool.

Good ducking, everybody!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I found a couple of New Year's Day surprises while out birding the Grand River on Wednesday.  The first was a meganser which at first I assumed was a Common.  After about five minutes, I realized that its bill was long and thin like a Red-breasted's.  So, I finally wiped the frozen fog (that's right) off my binoculars and took a closer look.  Lo and behold, it was indeed a Red-breasted!  Quite a surprise on an inland shallow river.

Hatch-year male Red-breasted Merganser.  A big surprise to find on 
the Grand River, since the species prefers much deeper lakes and rivers.

The next bird was even better, hanging out with the enormous flock of Mallards at Moores Park.  He was the smallest and most adorable bird there, and wow, was he a treat to see on such a bone-chilling winter day!  He was a charming male Wood Duck, a completely unexpected sight in the dead of winter.

Male Wood Duck.  Adorable, wouldn't you agree?

Oh, I forgot to mention the point-blank views.

Happy New Year, everyone!  Have yourself a very birdy 2014!

The Winter Kinglet

Although it is over two weeks into the month of December, only now may one finally say that winter has truly arrived.  Today is December 15, 2013, and up until now it's either been really cold and not snowing, or just below freezing and snowing. The immense snow storm that rolled in from the Southwest a few days ago marked the first time this season that snow coincided with decidedly colder temperatures.  As I walk under a dense stand of pine trees at Fenner Nature Center, I am awed by the beauty of the untouched blanket of white powder that covers every available surface, from the ground I tread on to the tops of the trees.  I can't help but think how lucky I am to live in a place where I can be part of scenes such as this.  

Suddenly, a chorus of barely audible, high-pitched trills off to my right sets my thoughts on another, altogether more marvelous course.  How can these treble voices be part of this winter landscape, covered in seven inches of snow and nightly reaching subzero temperatures?  The Golden-crowned Kinglet, to whom these sounds belong, is nothing short of an avian miracle. These diminutive birds, whose average body size is barely bigger than the top half of your thumb, somehow manage to find enough food in temperatures as low as -40° to sustain their exceedingly hyperactive lifestyle, day after day after day.

© Janine Russell

 

They survive each day against a set of overwhelming odds that works constantly against them, for a body that small, unaided, in the middle of winter, would die in a matter of not minutes but seconds at such cold temperatures. Their metabolism is so high that they must eat more than their body weight in food every day.  And that's assuming that their diet is as rich in protein as it is during the rest of the year.  Surely that is impossible given the lack of insect life in the middle of winter.  And what of the nights?  How would such a tiny creature stay warm without constant sustenance through the long hours of a cold winter's night?

Their secret to survival lies in the tiny "inchworm" caterpillars of Noctuid moths—mostly those of the One-spotted Variant (Hypagyrtis unipunctata). They lay perfectly camouflaged against the twigs and branches of maple and birch trees all winter long, no matter how low the temperature drops.  The caterpillars themselves are truly phenomenal.  Just before their host trees shed their leaves, they stop feeding and, with a few strands of silk, loosely fasten themselves the outer tip of a branch. Now their bodies go through a chemical change that saturates their body fluids with high concentrations of glucose sugar, to be used as an antifreeze in the winter months.  After a number of weeks, the substance has permeated each caterpillar's every cell.  Packed with antifreeze, they are now equipped to survive even the coldest temperatures that the coming winter has to offer.  The very same glucose that allows a caterpillar to survive the winter simultaneously provides an energy-packed meal for a kinglet.  Thus, the kinglets' "hyperactive" behavior of hovering or hanging at the ends of branches, picking off seemingly invisible prey.
  

The Golden-crowned Kinglet's winter mainstay--

the caterpillar of the One-spotted Variant. © Canadian National Collection

 

Another common winter feeding behavior coincides with the range of the Sack-bearer Moths (Family Mimallonidae).  In August, the larvae of Sack-bearer moths construct open-ended sacks of silk and leaves where they will overwinter and pupate in the spring.  They also ensure that their shelters will not fall off of the tree with the rest of the leaves by enforcing the leaf stems with countless strands of silk.  In the winter, flocks of chickadees and kinglets take advantage of this by locating these surprisingly inconspicuous clumps of leaves and poking their heads inside to make a meal of the luckless caterpillars.

After a day of foraging, the members of each small flock find their way back to the dense conifer whose interior they have been roosting in at night since the first night that the temperature dipped below freezing.  Once there, they may settle down close to the trunk of their tree and cuddle close together to form a fluffy ball of feathers.  (One morning last winter, I was lucky enough to find one of these clusters roosting in the pine tree in my own backyard!)  More often, perhaps, the flock returns to settle into a carefully constructed, globular, down-lined nest.  Constructed by the flock during mid to late October, this structure is used solely as a roosting shelter on long winter nights.  This apparently gives the Golden-crowned Kinglet the distinction of being the only North American bird to deliberately construct a nest for purposes other than incubating and raising young.  

Bernd Heinrich's sketch of a kinglet cluster.

© Bernd Heinrich 2003

So, next time you see a Golden-crowned Kinglet on a cold winter's day, perhaps you can stop to ponder the miracle of the winter kinglet.  Think of the staggering odds that the bird has beaten each and every day that the temperature has dipped below zero.  Remember that you are witness to an incredibly unlikely scene: a tiny bird flitting about in lively manner in a frigid, hostile environment.

© Michael Murphy 

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For an excellent read and more information on nature's ingenious winter survival strategies, see Winter World by Bernd Heinrich.

Gulls!

Ugh.  Gulls.   Watching them is no fun--gull watching requires hours of standing miserably on a lakeshore or seashore, or visiting a landfill.  They're just not worth the effort, and you only ever get distant, unsatisfactory views of them.

...it surprises me how many birders resort to this point of view.  Yes, some gulls are difficult and  take a long time to learn (I readily admit that I am still very much in the process of learning the details of several gull IDs), but that's not the case with all gulls.  It's easy to start out: you just need to get to know the species that are the most common in your area.  Here in Michigan, I started out by learning Herring, Ring-billed, and Bonaparte's Gulls inside and out (obviously, the set of gulls that you must get to know will vary based on where you live).  This enabled me to recognize anything that wasn't one of those two species, which allowed me to focus on the odd birds out.

As with the practice of birding in general, a field guide is essential.  The very best, in my opinion, is the Field Guide to the Gulls of the Americas by Steve N. G. Howell and Jon Dunn.  Though I only first laid my hands on it just over a month ago, it has done me an infinite amount of help in furthering my gull identification skills.   Another important facet of gull identification is being okay with leaving a bird unidentified.  No one can always identify every single bird.

The more you learn, the more FUN gull watching becomes!  So finally, here are a few of my best gull experiences:

The first time I had a cool gull encounter was in April of 2011 at Pointe Mouillee SGA.  They were a couple of adult Great Black-backed Gulls loafing with hundreds of "normal" gulls in Cell 3.  I could not get over how huge they were--I kept on exclaiming that they "looked like eagles, they were so big!"  Seeing two adults black-backs at close range left a strong impression on me, such that my heart still skips a beat whenever I see one.

From then until almost the end of 2012, I focused on getting to know the common gulls.  In November that year, my dad took me up to the Upper Peninsula to see Gray Jays at Hulbert Bog and winter finches at Whitefish Point .  After watching over 50 Pine Grosbeaks and hundreds of Common Redpolls (a single Hoary among them) at the Whitefish Point feeders, I went down to the beach and BOOM!  An enormous, all-white gull was the first thing I saw.  It was struggling against the wind, going nowhere despite its powerful wingbeats.  It was a stunning second-winter Glaucous Gull, and I watched it hover close above me for half a minute before it gave in to the wind and rocketed way from me.  It didn't take long for its pale form to blend into the cloudy sky.

Later that day before driving home, we stopped at the Whitefish Harbor Breakwall.   Just as I started to look through the hundreds of gulls on the breakwall, a rather pale juvenile gull flew in and landed not far away.  This was the first time my familiarity with the common gulls kicked in:  it was similar to a Herring Gull but with several important differences. It had gray outer primaries and secondaries that contrasted slightly with paler inner primaries.  The lack of black on its flight feathers was something I thought was odd.

When it landed, I saw that overall it was a monotone gray, instead of brown or tan with a paler head.  Its primaries were only slightly darker than the rest of it, with pale edges. Its feathers were intricately patterned and gave the bird's back a very "scaly" appearance--this bird was clearly still in juvenile plumage.  It also had a smaller, rounder head and a smaller bill than any of the juvenile Herring Gulls nearby.  After observing the bird for a good long while, I finally got into the car and, looking at a field guide, easily saw that it had been a "classic" juvenile Thayer's Gull.  To top things off, my observation was confirmed when, an hour later, a couple of more experienced birders saw the same bird at the same location.

My next awesome gull experiences came much more recently: both within the last month, in fact.  The first of these was on November 10th, at the Fennville Sewage Ponds (restricted access) in Allegan County, Michigan.  As part of an Allegan County field trip that he was leading for the Capital Area Audubon Society, Rick Brigham took us to these restricted-access sewage ponds, where we watched the close-up flocks of waterfowl until my brother and I saw a small gull amongst the 130 or so Bonaparte's Gulls with an interesting wing pattern.  Elijah said, "is that a young Bonaparte's?"  I, reluctant to believe what I thought I was seeing, frantically called Rick over so that he could look at it through his scope.  It wasn't long before he confirmed my suspicion by exclaiming that it was a juvenile SABINE'S GULL!! Were able to watch the beauty for over an hour while it fed in the water at close range.  NOT your typical Sabine's Gull zooming past a lakewatch in high winds!

My last cool gull experience was just a few days ago on November 23rd.  After finishing the Lake Erie Pelagic out of Cleveland (which was also amazing!), many of those who had been on the boat ride drove to Edgewater Marina in order to see the Little Gull that had been present there for a while. It was practically the first thing that I saw upon getting out of the car!  It was seriously RIGHT THERE, approaching us within six feet as we stood poised with cameras and binoculars.  It was accompanied by 300 Bonaparte's Gulls, which were also approaching within arm's reach of us.  I had never seen anything like it; the flock of Bonaparte's alone would have made my day.

Part of the flock of Bonaparte's:

After five minutes or so, I saw this and yelled "Guys!! GUYS, there are TWO!!" as I snapped the photo.

It was absolutely unreal to be standing so close to not one, but two of these beautiful, rare birds!