Monday, February 3

Not much going on here except for crummy weather and the gala event of the year. That would be the annual Grundsautaag celebration. That would be Ground Hog’s Day celebration for the uninitiated.

The whole idea of the groundhog predicting the weather came out of a Pennsylvania-German custom brought to south-central Pennsylvania with German immigrants. It probably had some deeper meaning at one time, but pretty much became just a reason to sit around eating and drinking. Which is what we did. Lise started her Groundhog’s Day party about seven years ago as a way to beat the winter doldrums. Some folks have come to expect it. As people left they were saying, “See you next year” to each other.

We tried a little birding this past week. On Thursday Lise had to go to Berrien County to scope out a potential project. I went with to help out with the driving. We tried for a Townsend’s solitaire that has been hanging out at Warren Dunes State Park. No luck for us but someone did see the solitaire after we were there. We did finally get ring-billed gulls, something we should be able to get here at the mall parking lot if the weather wasn’t so nasty.

Snow at Warren Dunes. And no Townsend’s solitaire.

On the way back we hit some wicked winds that were blowing in yet more bad weather. The winds drifted snow across the Interstate. Everything would be fine and you could go highway speeds when suddenly there would be a slick spot. Not fun.

Flipped car on I-94.

Great ad and quite true.

The weather has been taking a toll on wildlife too, even those species that are adapted to nasty weather. Some waterfowl species, like mergansers, grebes, and some ducks, can easily survive the winter if they have open water. Every year large rafts of waterfowl overwinter on the open waters of the Great Lakes. The winter roads and parking lots have been snow and ice covered enough that these species are mistaking frozen parking lots for lakes. Landing isn’t too hard on the birds but they need open water to take off. So they land in parking lots and start starving to death. Rehabilitators are capturing much larger numbers than normal. Usually the birds are pretty thin so the rehabilitators feed them back up to strength before they can take the birds to whatever open water is available.

I did get in some Photoshop time. Here’s a few pictures from the UP. Mostly Sand River at Lake Superior. Sand River is one of my favorite places. Just a good place to be.