We did our annual weekend trip to the Sault Ste. Marie area in the Upper Peninsula. Or the Soo as it’s known in the Michigan vernacular. Four of us, Lise, Barb, Ellen and I, came up from the Lansing area. Joanna came over from Marquette to meet up with us. We were after the usual UP winter targets; snowy owls, winter finches, shrikes, sharp-tailed grouse, maybe some gulls we don’t usually get down in Lansing. With an added bonus this year. Barb found out that we could actually drive inside that hallowed U.P. birding hotspot, the Dafter Dump. More on that little adventure later.
Food usually plays a key role in our little adventures. Our U.P. trip usually ends up dominated by restaurants decorated using animal parts. On the way up Friday we hit the Big Buck Brewery in Gaylord. Pity I didn’t take my camera in because their antler chandelier is something to behold. We also did our now traditional lunch among the dead animals and animal parts at Antlers in Sault Ste. Marie. Apparently Antlers was once called the Bloodbath Saloon and Ice Cream Parlor. Tough kids up there in the Soo.
Antlers restaurant.
The weather was interesting. Whenever we go places with Barb we’ve come to expect frostbite. Even in July. This was probably the warmest trip we have ever had up there. The temperatures were above freezing, making for some interesting driving on the back roads. Water on top of ice made the roads into a fine luge track. We get to thank the El Nino effect for our lack of frostbite. The snow level was way down. Joanna said Marquette is 48 inches below the normal snowfall for the year.
This birding trip is mostly driving. We spend a lot of time driving around, checking fields for snowy owls and hawks. Or driving through small towns checking bird feeders for winter finches. Then there’s the Dafter Dump.
The view from the back of the van. Note the optical gear and coffee cups. Both required for birding road trips.
The Dafter Dump is well known in U.P. birding circles. It’s even described in Michigan birding guides. Barb has taken us there every year for the past several years. Always on the weekend when the dump is closed. Or so we thought. We would walk a bit of the perimeter, looking longingly through the methane fumes at the distant birds we could just barely make out.
The beloved Dafter Dump.
Then a post on a birding listserve post revealed you can into into the dump for birding. All you need do is go to the office and show your ID. After clearing the ID check you can drive through the mountains of trash and bird your heart and olfactory system out. Why you have to show your ID I don’t know. Maybe to prove you’re not an Islamic terrorist trying to bring down our way of life by bombing landfills friendly to birders. Maybe so authorities can identify the body of those that died from olfactory overload.
So we showed up at 3:45 PM on Saturday and drove right through the slightly open gate. Open just wide enough to let in a car, but not a garbage truck. A clue we missed. We drove up to the office, which was closed. Another missed clue. Turns out the dump is only open and available to garbage trucks and birders Monday through Friday. But the gate was open and we were inside. Not wanting to pass up a birding opportunity, as Pooh says, we went on a little explore. We saw another human on the dump pile and drove past a beat up old van. And saw lots of crows, ravens, ring-billed gulls, probably ten bald eagles, and thanks to Barb’s sharp eyes, several glaucous gulls. A first for the year.
At 4:03 I thought we better head out. When we drove back down, the
van was gone and the gate was shut with a locked cable wrapped around
it. So the first thought was something like; oh golly, this can’t be
good. Followed quickly by thoughts like; we probably are not supposed to
be in here. Who would you even call to open the gate? Might be nobody
here until Monday. Do we have enough food in the car to last until
Monday? Can we find enough in the dump to eat? Who in our party gets
eaten first? If we didn’t show IDs, how will they identify the bodies?
Then
a rational thought slowly crept into my brain. Why don’t you go look at
it? As I walked up I saw the lock was a four digit inline bicycle cable
type of lock. Ok, this isn’t too bad. There are only 10,000 possible
combinations, from 0000 to 9999. It will take a couple hours but we
should be able to open it. Then I looked closer and saw that the cable
was just wrapped around the gate and not locked. It was faux locked.
Enough to keep out inquiring terrorists and birders, but not enough that
you actually have to use the combination on Monday morning. So we just
unwrapped the cable, slide the gate open, drove through, slid the gate
back, and wrapped the cable back around it. Never once showing our ID.
So the lesson learned is, always bring a bolt cutter when you go birding
with Barb. Might save you from having to ration food. Or worse.
Back side of the Dafter Dump. just to prove we were there and lived to tell.
All in all, we did OK for the trip. We missed some targets like shrikes and sharp-tailed grouse but got a good mix of other species. Lise and I got 14 new species for the year, including snowy owl, which I think may the most handsome bird there is. And we did not have to spend the weekend inside the Dafter dump.
Snowy owl. How can you not like these birds?
The Mighty Mac (Mackinaw Bridge) on our way home.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 