Tuesday, March 20 – Ed – Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years

Busy, busy, busy. Beautiful weekend makes it hard to do the more mundane things – like work, or grading papers. It’s a lot more fun to be sitting in a wetland taking frog pictures, or birding, or just sitting on the patio with your feet propped up and a gin and tonic in hand. Contains quinine you know. Helps keep the chance of malaria down. Unfortunately all the things you blow off catch up to you. Like work, grading papers and blog posting.

Saturday was St Patrick’s day. St Pat’s day on a Friday or Saturday is not a good time to be out and about. Kind of like a Friday payday at a Marine Corps base. Too many amateurs out there.

I opted to spend Saturday night in Barb’s wetland. It was nice, wearing waders, sitting in a wetland at night, warm enough I didn’t need a jacket on. Listening to all the cool sounds in the night. A chorus of frogs so loud it almost made your ears hurt. Bunches of them all at once jumping around in the water right by you. Hard to believe it is the middle of March. I had some mosquitoes hitting me up for a blood feast already. God knows what kind of mutant eggs they will lay using my blood. Wonder if the kids will have red hair or beards. Or crave scrapple.

Sunday we went birding at a place we have often driven by, but never checked out. A State Wildlife Area called Maple River. It is mostly a bunch of impounded wetlands with some associated upland habitat. The place is primarily designed for shooting animals but it turns out to be a good birding place too. We picked up ten new species: Eastern phoebe, tundra swan, blue-wing teal, swamp sparrow, chipping sparrow, rusty blackbird, cowbird, tree swallow, and wood duck.

It was a great place for the herps too. We saw three garter snakes, a painted turtle, hordes of frogs, and a yellow-bellied slider turtle. The yellow-bellied slider is a turtle of the Southeast, not native to Michigan. In some areas it is a common pet turtle so this one is likely a released pet. Born free, as free as the wind blows, as free as the grass grows….. Doubtful this is a global warming thing. Being from the Southeast this guy probably doesn’t know about hibernation. Or scrapple.