Tuesday, March 17

Happy St. Pat’s day (Lá Fhéile Pádraig or Feast of Patrick).

Saint Patrick is that nice fellow that just couldn’t leave a bunch of happy heathens alone. Some think Ireland may have been better off un-Christianized. Stories go that we celebrate St. Pat on his death but nobody can actually say when he died. Record keeping in 500 AD Ireland wasn’t all that good. In fact there is one theory that St. Patrick actually represents two different men. Which may be the reasoning behind the traditional Chicago voting slogan of; once isn’t enough, so vote early and vote often. Apparently record keeping in Chicago hasn’t changed much since 500 AD.

But, for whatever reason, we celebrate on March 17. St. Pat’s day is celebrated around the world. Considering the Irish diaspora I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Something like 25% of the U.S. population claims Irish ancestry. St. Pat’s Day is a public holiday on the Island of Montserrat. At MSU it appears that everyone celebrates their heritage with green beer followed by green vomit. My favorite St. Pat’s Day parade is only a hundred yards long and goes between the two pubs in Dripsey, Cork.

Back in the birding world, we finally got a screech owl. I think it’s been two years since I’ve seen or heard one. The owl was located at Lincoln Brick Park over in Grand Ledge. The park is the site of an old brick mill located on the Grand River.

Brick works at Lincoln Brick Park.

Brick works at Lincoln Brick Park.

Brick works at Lincoln Brick Park.

We had some rough directions to a tree with a hole the owl roosts in; “When you come to an elevated log (one end is about sitting height) perhaps a distance of 75-100 yards from where you first hit the ravine. From there go a bit farther and look mostly NNE across the ravine. I would guess that the distance from the bluff where you have the best view to the hole is about 75 yards. There are many holes in trees in the area. So good luck.”

There were many holes, easy to see as dark spots in the gray beech tree trunks. Our first time through Lise staked out a hole saying, “That’s a perfect screech owl hole.” We didn’t see the owl so we visited the brick works. When we went back we couldn’t even find the hole. Then Lise figured out, the owl must be sitting in it, that’s why we couldn’t find the hole. Sure enough, we changed our search engines to look for a red spot in the tree trunks and Lise found it right away.

The screech owl tree with an owl in the hole.

A highly magnified screech owl.