Sunday, February 5 – Ed

Busy, busy weekend. We did get a couple new species though. White-winged crossbills and a brown creeper.

I’ve been chasing white-winged crossbills at a couple places with no luck. There were a lot of reports of them here this year but we just were not seeing them. During our scouting trip to Rose Lake Wildlife Research Area a week ago we spotted some pines loaded with cones. I kept thinking, “If white-winged crossbills are going to be anywhere around here, this is the place.” We went out there yesterday morning and finally found some, just where they should be.

This area of Rose Lake reminds me of the places we would hunt small game when I was a kid back in Pennsylvania. It’s a mosaic of farm fields, fallow grasslands, and stands of trees.

The farmers would keep a couple rows of standing corn as wildlife plantings. Hunting was a family affair with uncles and cousins. To hunt rabbits and pheasants we would walk abreast, some of us through the standing corn, some in the harvested area, and some in the grassy border.

Often we were successful in our attempts to scare up a pheasant. Usually we scared up more than we actually bagged. Even with shotguns most fourteen-year-old boys are not what I would call marksmen. Hoping to scare out a pheasant I tried the technique with Molly and Lise, but with no success. Took me back about four decades though. (Thanks to Molly for the pictures)

Yesterday afternoon I was planning on going for the usual weekend workout. An hours or so of cardio, maybe swim a mile. It was just too nice to be indoors so Lise and I went for a hike instead. Thanks to her acute aural abilities we got a brown creeper at Legg park.

Today was Lise’s fifth annual ground hog’s day party, one of the gala events of the year here in Okemos. A number of our guests showed up without coats on, something a bit unusual for February in Michigan. A good time was had by all but no birding today. Apparently there was something else happening today too, the Super Bowl or something like that. Tough to keep track of when you don’t watch TV.