Just a quick update. We are up in the UP, staying in the cabin on Sand River. I haven’t stayed here for over a year. This is still one of my happy places, but it’s different without Jean here. Something’s missing. Like a song without the words.
Sand River
Sand River.
We got in some birding but it came at a cost. The mosquitoes up here are on some kind of a Jihad. They’ve gotten more blood out of me than a Red Cross blood drive.
Kind of says it all, doesn’t it.
Lise and Joanna, showing the latest in protective head gear.
Lise and I wearing our long black veils. Note the handy can of bug spray in my pocket. I think DEET just makes them mad. (Joanna Mitchell picture)
It’s still spring up here. Temperatures are in the 50s and 60s. I’ve gotten some river time in but not much in the way of odenates. At least ones that will cooperate with me.
We are sliding into summer, with warmer temperatures and longer days. And a few thunderstorms to liven things up. I can’t get enough of this. We try to take advantage of the warmer weather and be outside as much as we can. We eat on the patio and I try to do outside activities for my cardio workouts instead of in the gym. I think most people in Michigan have a pretty severe vitamin D deficiency so we’re doing our part to restock.
Lise and I went to a Southeast Land Conservancy property down past Ann Arbor on Sunday. We got bobolinks and savanna sparrows, with great views of each. Followed with an excellent stout at the Arbor Brewing Company in Ann Arbor made for a lovely day. I’m now at 251 for the year and Lise is at 212. Respectable considering we aren’t making the effort we did for the Biggish year.
One of my real summer pleasures is the return of the dragonflies and damselflies. I’ve seen a number of species but haven’t gotten out for any photography. Saturday I had a couple uncommitted hours so I did a quick little trip to Harris Nature Center. Didn’t have time to get geared up for an aquatic foray so just wandered the fields a bit.
Ashy clubtail with some other little bug I didn’t see when taking the picture.
I’ve been in catch up mode since the Arizona trip. Finally seeing the light of day, both at home and at work. We popped out to a local protected area a couple days ago and got Henslow’s sparrow. That brings me to 244 species for the year and Lise to 206. The Arizona trip really threw me up there but Lise will be going to California in August. That should put her right back up with me.
I’ve had an interesting online experience recently. Online I’ve been hit with a series of ads related to dating and relationships. There has been an interesting progression in the ads over time, probably due to the fact that I never click on them. Somebody out there in the cloud figures they know just the thing I need and they’re just trying to help me out. The ads started with something like “meet hot babes in your area.” Interesting, but I wasn’t interested. Then they progressed to something like, “looking for women over 30?” followed eventually by “looking for a serious relationship with a woman over 45?” Not biting on these led to, “join Christian Singles and find the mate God intended for you.” Being happily married I figured neither God nor Lise wanted me pursuing that one. So now I think they’re getting desperate for a response from me. The most recent ad was “Are you looking for a gay relationship? No games, just serious men looking for a serious relationship.” I guess the logic is something like; well we gave him all the heterosexual options without a response so he must be homosexual. My real concern is that all the options to date have involved human beings. Who knows what’s next on the list if I don’t hit the gay ad. Wonder if it’s too late to hit the hot babes option to stall them a while.
Following are some black and whites I did from recent excursions or around the house.
I’m back home from beautiful downtown Portal, Arizona. Portal is a lot like East Lansing but has a better club scene. Specifically we were in Cave Creek Canyon and I plan a more relaxed revisit to the place. I could easily spend a week or so exploring the area.
Downtown Portal, AZ
Part of Cave Creek Canyon.
Even though I got 42 bird species for the year, I was there to learn methods to detect bats. We used mist nets, thermal imaging and acoustic monitoring. I’ve been doing the acoustic monitoring for about a year now and it was really refreshing to see that I was doing it all wrong.
Mist netted bat. Photo by workshop participant.
Mist netted bat. Photo by workshop participant.
Mist netted bat. Photo by workshop participant.
Mist netted bat. Photo by workshop participant.
Mist netted bat. Photo by workshop participant.
Mist netted bat. Photo by workshop participant.
Nectar feeding bat. Photo by workshop participant.
Nectar feeding bat. Photo by workshop participant.
Light tagged bat.
The workshop was in the Chiricahua Mountains, near the New Mexico border. No cell reception and no Starbucks. I kind of missed the Starbucks. A tough place. Home of the Chiricahua Apache. Not a group you want mad at you.
Chiricahua Mountains.
Milky Way over the Chiricahua Mountains.
Milky Way over the Chiricahua Mountains.
The general daily routine was some version of egg casserole with a boiled grain for breakfast at 6:30, classroom instruction or data analysis starting about 8:00 AM, some version of food for lunch at noon, classroom instruction or data analysis from 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM, driving somewhere and deploying mist nets, a different version of food for dinner at 6:30, manning the nets from about 8:00 PM – 11:00 PM, followed by some data processing and alcohol consumption. Usually to about one or two o’clock AM. Repeated for six days. I usually woke up a bit after 5:00 and did some birding. Sometimes stayed up a bit later for star photography. Not having a handful of amphetamines handy, caffeine figured pretty heavily into the diet. Scrapple was not on the menu but at least they had a good selection of hot sauces to make everything palatable. First time I ever put hot sauce on oatmeal.
In the small world category, I saw a female Costa’s hummingbird on the research station. Somebody questioned if Costa’s were usually present in the canyon so I checked eBird. They are present, and one of the observers was a birder I know from Lansing.
We had a little evening time in Tucson before flying back to Michigan. A co-worker and I went out to the Tucson Mountain Park. Take home message, the Midwest doesn’t have vistas. Sorry, but cornfields to the horizon do not count as vistas and I just don’t see a future in the Midwest. I’m a big water person but I’m coming to the realization there may be some Arizona desert time in my future. My preference still leans heavily aquatic but there is something of a pull to the openness and the ruggedness of the desert I can’t quite shake. There’s a line in T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom that sticks with me. “The essence of the desert was the lonely moving individual, the son of the road, apart from the world as in a grave.” Maybe it’s the sense of infinity that comes with the open sky of the ocean or the desert, away from the bright lights of civilization. Except that the ocean has an overwhelming abundance of a couple hydrogen atoms bonded to an oxygen atom, maybe there isn’t so much difference between the two. I just need to find out for sure.
Greetings from Portal Arizona. Somewhere near the New Mexico border. Portal is a very small convenience store and a bed and breakfast for birders. I’m not here for birding though. I and 19 other sleep deprived people are here for a six day bat detection and identification workshop. Class during the day and bat trapping or acoustic sampling at night. Typically about five hours of sleep a night, plus a three hour time change.
Western pipistrelle call
We are in the Southwest Research Station, a research station for the American Museum of Natural History. In a place called Cave Creek Canyon. Supremely beautiful and zero cell phone reception. Got 30 new bird species just here around the station. Gotta run because I’m on net kit duty. More on this little adventure later.
Well we made it back from Delaware, just in time for me to pack for a nine day trip to Arizona.
The trip was fun, but kind of grueling. Modern road travel is really pretty good on Ike’s Autobahn, AKA the interstate highway system, except for some critical failure points. For instance, a choke point like the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Only way to cross the Chesapeake Bay unless you have a boat. And when there is a little mishap like an overturned semi on the bridge, things come to a screeching halt. For hours.
Heading down the highway, making good time.
Not making good time at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
The culprit.
Despite the holdup coming in, we had a pretty good time. We only had a week so we pretty much did the regular things. Hung around Lewes, the oldest city in the oldest state. Lewes was originally founded by the Dutch in 1631. The first settlement was wiped out by the local Indians, but the area later resettled. Delaware was the first state to ratify the union, thus the tag line of the first city in the first state.
Dusk at the Lewes pier.
Not a business you are going to see in Okemos, Michigan.
Did some kayaking, both at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge and at Trap Pond State Park. Trap Pond has the Northern most cypress swamp in North America. You expect a dinosaur to pop out on you while drifting through it.
Lise at Trap Pond State Park.
Kayaking among the cypress trees.
We got some birding in too. Lise hit 200 species for the year on the trip and I got to 197.
Green heron at Trap Pond.
Black-necked stilt aerobics class. And one and two……
Vulture lunch. Who would have guesses that vultures are immune to botulism.
Didn’t have much time for serious photography but I got to play a little.
Moccasin flower at Cape Henlopen State Park.
Blueberry flowers at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge.
Sunrise at Indian River Inlet.
The bridge at Indian River Inlet.
And we got to do some good eating. Twice we went up to Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge. The birding is always great there, but there is an additional treat in the nearby town of Leipsic. Leipsic is really just a collection of homes that was originally settled in 1720. A few years ago they all pooled their money to buy a radar gun, which they pretty much use to fund the town. But they have Sambo’s there. Not much for décor but good seafood. After a hot day of birding there isn’t much better than cold Yuengling beer and fried oysters.
Inside Sambos.
Views out the window at Sambos.
The Sambos clientele while we were there. A Rolls Royce with a Mercedes behind it on one side of the door. A Harley with our van on the other side of the door.
And of course there was the Putt-Putt championship of the world tournament. Well, really it was one game and Lise won it. But Anita and I had fun too.
At the Putt-Putt championship of the world.
So in general, we had a good time. Exhausting, but good. Tomorrow I head out for nine days near Portal, Arizona, learning how to do acoustic monitoring and netting of bats. Not quite sure where Portal is but we were told to forget about cell phone reception.
Greetings from Lower Slower Delaware, or LSD for short. Since my laptop is too old to successfully ready the files from my new camera, there will be a dearth of pictures and details until we get back.
Last Saturday we dropped Molly off at the Detroit airport for her second trip to the Galapagos Islands. Yes, her second trip, both funded by Lise and me. Once for a high school Spanish Club trip, and now a study abroad for MSU. I got to go to Hershey Park in high school. But I’m not bitter. Nooooo.
So after we dropped Molly off for yet another life changing experience, we kept driving to Delaware. Not quite as exotic, but you got to make do with what you have. The ocean, good birding, and great eating. The trifecta.
Lise’s keeping score for the trip so I’m not sure of exact species numbers. I think we have picked up over 40 new species for the year. Some we could get in Michigan, but we’re not going to get a black skimmer, brown-headed nuthatch, or red knot in Michigan. Or get to see dolphins. Last night we went out and heard three of the goatsuckers; whip-poor-will, Chuck’s-will-widow, and common nighthawk, all within ten minutes of each other. While hearing the ocean in the background the whole time. Not the same as snorkeling with penguins in the Galapagos like someone I know, but I can live with it. And they serve scrapple here too. Life is good.
People approach vacations differently. There’s the “Leave me alone. I’m kicking back and relaxing” approach and there’s the “I want to do it all, I’ll sleep when I’m dead” approach. Can you guess which is which from these pictures?
Checking the ol’ eyelids for light leaks. Can’t count that Baltimore Oriole.
Taking black-necked stilt pictures. (picture by Anita)
Been
a busy and very hectic week or so. Lise and I went down to St. Louis to see
Stefan with an overnight stop in West Lafayette. We drove straight back from
St. Louis and I immediately continued for another three hours up to Traverse
City to attend a four day conference.
St.
Louis was fun. Stefan took us down closer to the Ozarks where we hit Council
Bluff Lake and Hughes Mountain Natural Area. Spring was well under way down
there. Between us we got about 51 bird
species for the year. Plus I saw my first dragonfly of the year, I believe a
dusky clubtail. Lise now has 145 species for the year and I have 141.
Getting close to the Ozarks. Not just signs and wonders my friend, but miracles too.
Stefan and Lise at Hughes Mountain Natural Area.
Stefan and Lise at Hughes Mountain Natural Area.
Lava flows at Hughes Mountain.
Hughes Mountain in black and white.
Spring
has finally started to hit this area. Wildflowers have popped out and yesterday
I saw my first dragonfly in Michigan, a common green darner. Migrant bird
species are starting to drop in. Today we did the field component a birding
workshop Lise is teaching for church. Always dicey when you plan something weather
dependent far in advance but we had fantastic weather. I pointed out a garter
snake to my group. One young man remarked that he had never seen a snake in the
wild. That one kind of floored me.
Dutchman’s breeches at Harris Nature Center.
After
birding we did lunch with Molly at a Lansing Old Town restaurant called “Meat”.
The name pretty much sums up the menu. They bill themselves as “Southern BBQ
and Carnivore Cuisine”. With 18 beers on tap and dishes like Trailer Park Bruschetta
and Meat Mountain, how can you go wrong? No scrapple though. Under Vegetarian
Options they list; coke, diet coke, cherry coke, sprite, mellow yellow, root
beer, mr. pibb, ginger ale, lemonade, and Iced Tea. The Lansing area had an earthquake
while we were eating but I didn’t feel anything. Apparently tremors from a 4.6
earthquake aren’t as strong as the tremors caused by a Meat Mountain moving
through your system.
Well we have just been busy, busy, busy. This past weekend the MSU woman’s club water polo team participated in the Big 10 championship tournament. So we went traipsing on down to Columbus, Ohio, for the tournament. Little did we know that it was the spring kick off game for next fall’s football season. It was Ohio State first string playing Ohio State second string. They had a record number of fans to watch this fratricide. Like a sellout crowd to watch Ohio State beat Ohio State. Yeeeeaaaah, we won. Wait, didn’t we lose too? A few too many concussions out there in football land I think.
The girls did good. They came in second, losing the championship game to the Satan’s Seven, the University of Michigan team. The Michigan team is really good, but except for one really bad quarter, our girls held their own. They lost by three but two of those Michigan goals were flukes.
Ohio State aquatic center. Notice the lack of football fans.
Great offense.
Tenacious defense.
Happy girls.
Despite coming in second, we had a pretty good time. The Ohio State campus is more fun than MSU by an order of magnitude. Lots of brew pubs, coffee shops, restaurants, and funky stores. The award for best store name goes to the gay thrift shop called “Out of the Closet.” That my friend, is hilarious.
Out of the closet.
Skyler, a friend of Molly’s since kindergarten, is going to Ohio State. He gave us a tour and introduced us to Jeni’s Ice Cream. Just to show how unfair life is, Columbus has both Graeter’s Ice Cream and Jeni’s. This is the one-two punch of the ice cream world. How’d that Tennessee Ernie Ford song go, “One fist of iron, the other of steel. If the right one don’t get you, the left one will.” The right flavor from either one of these will take you down and you won’t know what hit you. But for some reason you’ll be begging for more. Just like a good plate of scrapple.
Lise and I are headed to St. Louis for the weekend to see Stefan. It’s been a few years since we’ve been there. I thought I would drag out a couple pictures of the St. Louis Arch from our last visit to get into the mood.
Well it has been a busy week or so here in the wilds of Okemos. I had my computer crash in just about the worst way. Then to make things interesting the dishwasher conked out. Just to make sure everything is as difficult as it could be, my back has gone south, a result of too much time in the Subaru and water polo bleachers. Somebody up there hit the “lets dump it all on Ed” switch. My computer disk drive containing the operating system decided to go to sleep, kind of permanently. An end of retirement thing. As in, kaput machen. New computers do not come with the operating system recovery disc anymore. So I had to call Dell support and talk to my new best friend Puneet K Sharma over in Mumbai and plead for a new operating system CD. But Dell doesn’t want to just ship out Windows operating system disks to any yahoo that calls them up. First I had to prove I really had a Dell computer. Puneet: Ah, my friend, thank you for calling Dell support. How may I help you? Ed: My computer hard drive crashed and I need an operating system restore disk. Puneet: My friend, that is very painful indeed. Did you not have a restore disk made? Ed: No that was on my list of things to do. Puneet: My friend, you should always make a restore disk. Ed: Thanks, I’ll try to remember that. Puneet: We need to prove you have a Dell computer. Can you give me your name and the service tag number? Ed: My name is Ed Schools and the service tag number is @#$&^$&*!@)7*# – 666 Puneet: Is that Schools like the places you go to learn things? Ed: That’s it. Puneet: Ah, that is very interesting. Well Mr. Schools, we do not have that computer registered in your name. Ed: I probably never registered it with Dell. Puneet: Well we must prove it is your computer. Can you tell me where you bought it? Ed: Uhhhh, probably at Best Buy. Puneet: I am sorry my friend but you did not buy this computer at Best Buy. Ed: Well if I didn’t get it at Best Buy where did I get it? Puneet: Please sir, you must tell me that. Ed: It was two years ago. How am I supposed to remember where I bought this thing? Maybe it was Staples. Puneet: I am very sorry my friend, but you did not buy it at Staples. Ed: Did I buy it online directly from Dell? Puneet: No my friend, you did not buy it directly from Dell. I have never had this happen before. I will need to call my supervisor. Ed: (getting desperate and mumbling to myself) Think, where could I have bought this damn computer. What places are left? Did I buy it at Walmart or Sam’s Club? Puneet: Did I hear you say Sam’s Club my friend? Ed: (sensing an opportunity) Yes, yes, I said Sam’s Club. Puneet: Very good Mr. Schools, you answered correctly. It was Sam’s Club my friend. Now I do not have to call my supervisor. I can send you the operating system recovery disk. It will be the original version that was installed on your computer two years ago. And we will call you in four days to make sure it arrived.
So Puneet sent me a DVD of the original version of Windows 8.0, the worst operating system ever foisted on the free world. I installed a new disk drive and then loaded that joke of an operating system. Then came the updates. There were 125 updates to the original version 8.0 operating system. That took overnight to download and install. Once that was done , next came the update to version 8.1, another night of downloading and installing. Next was the 41 updates to version 8.1. Then loading all the software packages. All told, about 10 days to get back in business and I’m still fixing things. So the moral is, as my friend Puneet says, “My friend, you should always make a restore disk.”
The dishwasher was another grand adventure. It decided to not clean dishes anymore. After some troubleshooting we figured it was likely a filter down in the bowels of the dishwasher. So we field stripped the dishwasher down to the filter. Not a pretty sight. The filter was coated with something resembling the primordial soup. We’ve had this thing for 13 years now, way long enough for evolution to start happening. Lots of simple life forms, like slime molds and the Indiana Republican party. Lord knows what life forms we washed away. Unfortunately not the Indiana Republican Party.
While I was buried up to my waist in the dishwasher, Puneet called to see if I got the Windows 8.0 disk. Lise said I got the disk but was now in the middle of fixing the dishwasher if he needed to talk to me. He just said, “No, no, god bless you and your family.” He probably heard me cursing in the background. I know he’s thinking, why not just call someone to fix your computer and dishwasher.
In an amusing turn of recent events, Fido has started defending our yard against mammals. She doesn’t bother with birds, probably some ancestral kinship link. But she has decided that Fat Boy the ground hog and squirrels do not belong in our yard. She has treed two squirrels and chased Fat Boy out of the yard. Fat boy is bigger than her by a couple orders of magnitude but she went right for him. He must have thought Fido was a snake with legs or something else crazy but he took off when she came for him. There was some fire in her eyes. She wanted a piece of that groundhog.
Despite my home repair gig, we have gotten out a bit for birding. Waterfowl have mostly moved through already but passerines are drifting in. Got some new sparrow and blackbird species. Saturday we did a morning walk about Maple River State Game Area. Cormorants suddenly appeared in force and we also got our first of the year great egret, neither of which have been reported for this area yet. So I’m up to 109 species for the year and Lise is up to 116.
Cormorants, new on the scene.
First great egret of the season.
I love the Unit names, A, B, C, D, E, then jump to X, and Y. Where did X and Y come from? Aren’t we missing a few letters? Maybe X and Y are the chromosomes that build all the other units.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 