We are in the UP staying at Jean’s cabin on Sand River. Can’t think of a better place to be. We got up at 2:30 AM Thursday morning to take Molly to the airport for her high school Costa Rica trip. Note that I got to go to Hershey Park in High School. We then drove back to Lansing, grabbed a couple hours sleep, then had breakfast at the Brunch House. The Brunch House has some Middle Eastern roots and serves something called Housa and eggs. Housa consists of some form of ground meat, not beef, with pine nuts and I believe cardamon mixed in. A Middle Eastern version of scrapple I guess. They mix it in with scrambled eggs and it kind of turns the eggs a shade of gray. But, it tastes great and I highly recommend it.
After that we headed north across Mighty Mac, the Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula. We kind of played our way north. Stopped at the bridge for lunch, cruised along Lake Michigan, headed up M77 to Seney National Wildlife Refuge, then went up to Lake Superior at Grand Marais. Lise got her ovenbird at Seney.
Crossing the bridge, heading to heaven.
The Mighty Mac.
As opposed to Michigan’s Downer Peninsula, where we live.
Grand Marais is one of the places where the Federally Endangered piping plover nests. In Delaware they close off the whole Cape Henlopen Point for the piping plover. Here they just put up some enclosures with little fenced in areas where the nest is. We got piping plover, semi-palmated sandpiper, and sanderling at Grand Marais.
Plover management.
Piping plover wearing many leg bands.
Sanderling.
Sanderlings.
Semi-palmated sandpiper.
Grand Marais has about 30 buildings, one of which is the Great Lakes Brewing Company. We had a quick dinner and local brews, then headed to the cabin. It was about a hour and a half drive, but the last half hour seemed to take a long time. We finally rolled into the cabin, unpacked, checked out the river, and then crashed for about 11 hours.
This morning we got Philadelphia vireo at the cabin and a merlin while driving in to Marquette. Then this afternoon we were completely fooled by a first year American redstart. A real rookie blunder. We tried to turn it into everything except a first year American redstart. But we got some time on the river and that makes everything good. Plus fresh fish at Thill’s.
It don’t get fresher than this.
Got some odonates too. And something I’ve never seen in the wild. From a bridge over Sand River we saw lampreys building a nesting area in the river. These are some real primitive fish. I’m not familiar enough with them to know if they were native brook lampreys or the invasive sea lamprey.
Familiar bluet.
Female northern bluet.
Female dot-tailed whiteface.
Lamprey.
More lampreys.
Even more lampreys.
I believe the counts now stand at 197 for me and 192 for Lise. I need to get the spreadsheet fixed but who can do something like that when there’s so much fun stuff to do here.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 