Been a long dry spell for birding, odonating, and writing. The only new bird to report is an American golden plover we saw at the MSU sod farms. I spent one afternoon at Barb and Ellen’s now dried up wetland for some odonating. Nobody cooperated too much except some white-faced meadowhawks and a female spread-winged damselfly. It could be one of three species but you need to look at it under a microscope to differentiate it to the species level. Since I didn’t have a scope with me nor did I feel like killing it to put it under the scope it goes down as a Lestes species.
White-faced meadowhawk
Female spread-wing species
Part of the reason we haven’t been getting out much, or writing much, is a set of crazy schedules. Molly’s swim team practices have started up, several weeks before school starts. In fact she has had two tournaments before school even started. One was the Waverly relays held this past Wednesday. Eight very vocal teams with their equally boisterous supporters packed into a small, hot, stuffy, reverberating natatorium. It really felt like one of the inner circles of hell.
The tournament has been going on for 35 years and Okemos has now won it the past 10 years. Molly swam the 100 meter freestyle in two relays. She got a 1:02 in both of them. If I tried really, really hard, and completely wasted myself, I could do a 50 meter in 1:02. Two in the same night is out of the question. Then she had another tournament Thursday night in Battle Creek. I was teaching so couldn’t make the Battle Creek tourney.
The team with the Waverly trophy, just outside the gates of hell. (S. Wozena photo)
I’m now teaching two classes as adjunct at Lansing Community College (LCC), or as it’s also known, Last Chance College. Both classes had a low enrollment so I didn’t think they would go. Then at the last minute the Dean let one of them go because it is required for a couple students to graduate. Then some students asked if the second class could be offered independent study so I agreed to do that too. Throw in that LCC has switched to a different course management system, and I have been scrambling the past two weeks.
In the middle of getting courses ready I got hit with an unexpected one-day trip up to Rogers City. Monday afternoon my boss and I were on a conference call with a client and Tuesday morning I was heading north for a 10:00 AM meeting. Five hundred mile one day trip and I had to come back through some torrential rains too. On the up side I got to hit Plath’s Meats, a great Rogers City butcher shop and smoke house. Loaded up on smoked pork chops and bacon. Almost as good as Weaver’s back in Lebanon. We tried a blind side by side taste test between Plath’s bacon and Weaver’s bacon. In a unanimous decision, Weaver’s won out. Life can’t be all bad when you get to do bacon taste testing. Pity Plath’s doesn’t do scrapple too.
The golden plover brought me up to 237 and Lise up to 231. Getting 250 will be challenging. The shorebird migration is tapering down already. We may pick up another shorebird or two but it’s not something I’m counting on. So we need to hit the passerine migration to pick up the summer residents and the migrant species we missed. Fall migration birding is a lot tougher than the spring migration though. The foliage is up, the birds aren’t really calling, and their plumage is changing to the confusing winter colors. Which reminds me of a story from the time of the first Iraq war under Bush I.
The most popular bird field guide at the time was Roger Tory Peterson’s. Peterson devoted several pages to “confusing fall warblers.” A group of us birders were walking under the canopy of the Deam Wilderness when a flight of military planes flew low over us. Someone said, “Must be Warthogs,” referring to the A-10 Warthog tank killer popularized in the Gulf War. Without looking up I said, “No, those are F-4 Phantoms.” Lise quickly quipped, “Ed knows his confusing fall war-birds.” Anyway, it was hilarious at the time. (He was right too about the F-4s – recognized them by their call. – Lise)
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 