This morning Lise and I took a little time for some peace and quiet to bird the Lansing River Trail. OK, so this isn’t exactly finding a quiet relaxing place to take a breather. But it is interesting. 
The River Trail – Gateway to Lansing.
The trail parallels the Red Cedar River, possibly one of the most polluted rivers in Michigan. The river flows through campus. I had to dispose of an old fish collection in our lab on campus. I was inclined to just dump the jars of fish in formaldehyde into the river one night. Who would notice a few more dead fish floating downstream. My boss called campus safety instead.
The trail isn’t as bad as it may seem. Once you get away from the entrance there are some nice river flood plain areas. I use it to commute home on bicycle from downtown Lansing. There was a red-tailed hawk hanging around. We had a flock of at least 50 yellow-rumped warblers flitting around us. Probably more. Yellow-rumps are rather gregarious and I’ve seen small flocks before, but nothing like this. We also got two new species for the year; warbling vireo and palm warbler. (also chimney swift and catbird – Lise)
Urban raptors.
Yellow -rumped warbler – A.K.A. butter butt.
One of the interesting aspects of birding the River Trail is that it borders Potter Park Zoo. So while we are listening to warbling vireos and blue winged warblers we suddenly hear the pterodactyls from the Johnny Quest cartoon. Now I know they’re peacocks, but as a kid I was sure that’s what pterodactyls sounded like. The producers of Johnny Quest wouldn’t have lied to me would they? Must be that the pterodactyls evolved into peacocks.
You can see some strange sights too. Like following a flying bird in the binos and suddenly a Bactrian camel comes into view. Too weird.
Strange sights on the River Trail.
We saw another strange sight too. Some odd mutation of goose. It looked something like a Canada goose but had different coloration and orange legs. Sometimes it was by itself, but other times it paired up with a Canada goose to fight with other Canadian geese.
Goose mulatto?
So is this a goose mulatto, the outcome of some strange pairing between a Canada goose and a zoo resident? Maybe it came from too much time in Red Cedar water. Another intriguing possibility is the mallard preening nearby. Those orange legs had to come from somewhere. Mom seemed to be tending the kids but Dad had nothing else to do but look good. Did we have some kind of a fowl foul that produced a foul fowl?
The culprit? Looks suspicious to me.
Someone is minding the household.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 