Author: turndoozie

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.

Sand River at Lake Superior.

 

Sand River at Lake Superior.

Sand River at Lake Superior.

Sand River at Lake Superior.

Laughing Whitefish River.

OK, jokes over, make it warm again. I am really tired of single degree temperatures and wind that takes the wind chill to minus 25 Fahrenheit.  It would be different if I was trying for the South Pole or doing Everest but I’m just trying to get to work. I’ve taken to sitting in the sauna with a drink and listening to Jimmy Buffet, trying to pretend I’m down in the Islands. Desperate man.

We got in a little birding on Saturday. Lise and I hit a couple places along the Red Cedar and the Grand Rivers where there is still some open water. One of the spots is across the Grand River from a power plant. I’m pretty sure we disturbed a drug deal in process. These guys had to figure nobody was going to be at the park with 3 degree temperatures and a wind chill around -15.  Anyway, we picked up a few hardy aquatic birds like common mergansers, canvasback, lesser scaup, black duck, and a belted kingfisher. Lise is up to 43 species and I’m at 36.

Sunday was the first water polo skirmish of the year. They call it a scrimmage but considering the scratches and bruises they come out with I think skirmish is more appropriate. A couple club teams got together down in Saline, a bit south of Ann Arbor. Most of Molly’s club team are the same girls that will be on the high school team. They looked pretty good since they haven’t played together for about a year. Molly got three goals including one where her head was being held under water.

On the offense.

Are we talking Esther Williams? Million Dollar Mermaid?

So when things are slow, what’s to do except mess with the lizard. Molly keeps saying she wants a rabbit so Lise made the lizard into a rabbit for her. I’m pretty sure Fido is patiently waiting for us to croak so she can eat us at her leisure.

Here comes Fido Cottontail, Hopping down the lizard trail.

Got in a little Photoshop time too. Haven’t taken any serious photos since the ice age set in so I played with some from time gone by. Digital darkroom is a lot cleaner than a traditional wet darkroom, but no easier. I can do some basic things but got a long way to go. So much to learn and so little time.

Great blue heron.

Snowy egret.

Star of India.

Been too nasty to do much birding. Next year our big year may consist of birds you can see from a warm car. The lizard at least has found a way to beat the cold. She’s got it right. Just relax where it’s warm without a care in the world. She just needs a Margarita in her hand.

Beating the cold.

We’ve just been hunkered down, doing the usual work/school grind without a whole lot going on. Chris Christie aside, even the Republicans aren’t doing anything stupid enough to laugh at right now. So the options are, do something to bother the lizard or do something to bother the daughter. The daughter lost. So to learn Photoshop I may as well turn my daughter into the Devil. Lord of Darkness seems a bit presumptuous for now so we’ll stay with the term devil. This was a quick and dirty that I can improve on over time.

Not a whole lot to report for the past week except dreary weather. Cold, gray, and snow covered. Lise is down in West Lafayette so Molly and I are sharing a car, limiting my ability to get out much. Not that there is a whole birding or photography with our weather. I did a drive around some local fields today, hoping for some hardy winter species like horned larks, Lapland longspurs, or snow buntings. There was a potential shrike reported around the MSU pavilion too. The wind was pretty nasty so everything was hunkered down except for one small flock of horned larks. The fields are pretty much snow covered and have been for several weeks so I don’t know what these guys are eating. Might be a Donner Pass thing.

Cold cows hanging out in a bunch with snow blowing around them. Kind of like musk-oxen on the tundra.

Snow blowing across the road. Kind of like the tundra. Notice the lack of birds. And sunshine.

Between the weather, time constraints, and limited transportation, I haven’t had much time for serious photography.  I’ve managed to get in a little time to play with Photoshop. Powerful program if we can harness it for good instead of evil. It’s pretty easy to get carried away with it. Just google “Photoshop mistakes” to see some really awful Photoshop manipulation that got past some really awful magazine editors. So trying to harness it for good, I’ve been playing around with a picture of Molly from last summer. The background is a local graffiti wall on campus.

Molly before Photoshop.

Molly after Photoshop.

Molly in black and white.

Well we seem to have survived the polar vortex. Even the lizard, although she was looking mighty tasty there for a bit. Temperatures have warmed up a bit and even touched above freezing. So now we have these wicked potholes. I think they are portals to hell. If you hit them in something small like a mini cooper you’re not coming out. You’re heading down to Satan’s doorstep. Those of us with larger cars will just blow out our tires or kill the alignment so we end up at the car repair shop. Hell by another name, especially if the mechanic has a boat payment due.

Molly volunteered at the Pokagon State Park Nature Center today so we made the trip down to Indiana with her. While she was working Lise and I tried hiking. Tough going. The trails were snow covered, but it had thawed and refroze, making the footing treacherous. We did a couple miles but it wasn’t easy. Still nice to be outside, even with the nasty footing. We passed one of Lise’s signs and could see by the tracks that someone walked out of their way in the snow to read it. Pleased Lise to see that the signs are being read. At Pokagon we got pileated woodpeckers, red-headed woodpeckers, and flickers. Lise saw house finches which I did not see.

Tracks proving someone looked at Lise’s sign.

Thanks to hard times in the far north we had some good local birding too. This has been a major irruption year for snowy owls. Every couple years the food source in the high north isn’t able to support the population.  Mostly starving young birds are forced further south looking for food. This year one was even recorded in Florida. They have been seen in every county around here except Ingham County. Then this past week several were found. Two were only a couple miles from us. They were spotted Friday but we couldn’t get out during the daylight hours. Saturday we tried in the afternoon for a couple hours with no luck. Saw turkeys but no snowy owl. We went back out a bit before dark. While we drifted around looking a car was behind us obviously doing the same thing. When we pulled over to scan some fields he pulled up and said he had been around the area ten times with no luck. He pulled ahead and went on down the road. A couple hundred yards past us he got out and started jumping up and down and waving to us. Sure enough, a snowy owl only a couple miles from our house. Good thing we found them Saturday. Several people scoured the area without finding them today.

Not a very classy picture of a very classy looking bird. White, black and piercing yellow eyes. Very cool.

So right now our species count stands at 26 each. Between us we have different birds but except for the snowy owl they are all fairly common. Of the current set, during the coming year we should both get the species that the other has.

 

Donner Pass, day 2. Anyone know where the lizard is?

Everything is pretty much shut down around here. Temperature dropped during the day from about 20 degrees at sunrise to -7 right now (8:30 PM), with one really wicked cold wind.

weather.com, 8:30 PM.

After shoveling the driveway yet again, we did the mile loop around our neighborhood when it was about 10 degrees. Not too much activity except the drone of snowblowers. Since our street probably will not get plowed until tomorrow or the day after, snowblowers are just another noisy attempt to assert dominance of man over nature. I can’t go anywhere but at least me and my snowblower can keep my driveway clear.

Lise and Molly in the middle of the street during our walk around the block.

Neighborhood deer.

These are optimists. Do they really expect a hummingbird?

Personally, I’m quite happy sitting in a corner reading or watching the wind make cool snow sculptures. Besides the lizard, we have a good week’s worth of food available, including a block of scrapple. So as long as we have electricity and an internet connection I don’t feel like I just have to drive somewhere. I can just sit back and let it all be.

January 5, Donner Pass. That lizard is looking mighty tasty. Molly has a lot more meat on her but she can outrun me.

Third time today we shoveled and we are expecting another four inches tonight. Driveway isn’t up to Kinnear standards but I could get out if I had too. Of course the street hasn’t been plowed so there is a foot of snow to deal with there. I’m going to pretend I’m in the tropics by drinking some rum and listening to Jimmy Buffet music.

Needless to say the weather has been the pits. And it’s supposed to get wicked cold tomorrow. MSU has closed so it’s time to hunker down

Big news in birding circles last week. Looks like Sandy Komito’s 748 species big year record from 1998 has been broken. This is the record year featured in the movie, “The Big Year”. The record was broken by Neil Hayward with 750 species. Hayward’s records are considered provisional until they are verified but it looks like there is a new record to be shooting for.

I’ve got 15 bird species so far this year and Lise has 12. Long way from 750. Besides the usual feeder birds I got a bald eagle and a kingfisher yesterday. No dragonflies yet.

We did the past year good. I hit the 250 goal dead on, and Lise got pretty close with 244 species (97.6%). Combined we had a total of 252 species. Lise got a Thayer’s gull which I did not. I got Lesser Black-backed Gull, Short-eared Owl, Veery, Bohemian Waxwing, Blue Grosbeak, and Palm Warbler that Lise did not. Not for lack of trying on either of our parts. Lise scrambled a number of times when Bohemians were reported locally but always just missed them.

We both got some lifers like parasitic jaeger, least bittern, white-faced ibis, Iceland gull, northern hawk owl, and Thayer’s gull. We have some glaring misses too, like Lincoln’s sparrow, clay colored sparrow, prothonotary warbler and screech owl. We should have gotten all of those.

This year I’m going to track the species we see, both avian and odonata, but not set a numeric goal. Couple of reasons why. For starters, I’m doing two out-of-the-country trips this year. In April Lise and I are doing the Panama Canal cruise and in September Stefan and I are doing the Machu Picchu trip. Our life lists better increase but the trips will cut out Michigan birding time.

I would also like to focus a bit more on photography this year. Any type of photography, not just wildlife photography. Getting good “publishable quality” photos requires different strategies than racking up species counts. You can be doing serious birding, or doing serious bird photography, but you can’t do a good job of both simultaneously. Hard to get high species counts when you are sitting for hours in a blind.

I still need some goals, something to focus on. A reason to plan trips and get outside so I’m not just looking out windows all day. So for goals I’m thinking in terms of numbers of photographs and number of new places visited rather than number of species tallied. I’ll still chase things to get as high a count I can. Like the Townsend’s solitaire report at Ludington State Park that just hit my email. I’m just not setting a target number of species.

Coming up with good goals isn’t easy. You want them to be something like Stalin’s five year plans. Challenging, but achievable with effort. Maybe without the possibility of getting shot if you don’t make the goal. At a personal level, I need some kind of stimulating challenge to work on. Otherwise I tend to get bored and into trouble.

I remember reading once that Ansel Adams considered getting 10 printable photos in a year a successful year. When you’re lugging around a camera that weighs the same as a small car, ten is a pretty good number. So maybe I’ll shoot for 50 good, high quality photos. That’s about one a week. Not just quick grab shots but planned, well executed photos. Messing with the lizard photos don’t count.

Messing with the lizard photo. Doesn’t count.

Neither does this one.

I also want to shoot for visiting six new places in Michigan this year. State parks or rec areas, game areas, non-profit nature preserves … There are a lot of opportunities. More than we have time for in our current employment and child rearing status. Michigan has about 20% of its land base in some kind of protected status. Mostly up north, there’s frightfully little around here. Compare Michigan’s 20% figure to Indiana’s 4% figure. Gotta love that corn and soybeans. Anyway, given our crazy schedules, saving time for travel excursions, and knowing we will still be hitting old favorite spots, six new places will be a challenge.

We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Thank you Robert Burns.

Hope all had a good year and another to come.

Serendipity is such a nice thing.

Saturday I spent the day chasing leads. First I tried for a golden eagle in Jackson County, and then drove down to Crosswinds Marsh in southeast Michigan to chase a reported slaty-backed gull and Thayer’s gull. No luck on either, try though I may. Then I headed east of Ann Arbor to try for short-eared owls. There’s a spot where they are seen on a fairly regular basis. I say fairly regular because they haven’t been there the past three times I looked for them. Saturday was different. Dusk, almost dark, and three of them flew up to put on a show. Species 249 for the year.

Options for number 250 were pretty slim. Sunday we had a postponed Christmas dinner with the Hall family. The day was spent doing fun things, making a turkey dinner and getting other chores like bottling beer done. None of which contribute to the species count. I kept checking eBird, hoping that someone would report a purple sandpiper or something else along the coastline. No luck there, only cold trails. After dinner Lise and I tried for screech owls around here. All we got was cold. At Rose Lake we heard a pack of coyotes which was pretty cool but didn’t add to the species list.

Today was another typical cold, gray, dismal mid-Michigan winter day. Feeling a bit bummed about the prospects for hitting 250, I came up with a plan to chase some Jackson County leads. Jackson County is the birthplace of the Republican Party. Maybe a good idea in Lincoln’s time but even good ideas go bad sometimes. Mr. and Mrs. Hitler never expected little Adolf to go bad.  

If you can get by the Republican Party mistake, Jackson County does have some redeeming qualities. Much better terrain than around here and many more birding opportunities. I thought we could chase some older golden eagle leads, then after sundown hit a preserve for screech owls. These were about the only possible species I thought we had a chance of getting. We were at Watkins Lake, seeing a bunch of raptors, but no golden eagle. As we were losing light, Lise caught a glimpse of a raptor flying parallel to the road we were on. We were driving to a vantage point when we realized that point wouldn’t work. Lise pulled into a farmhouse driveway to turn around and said, “I think I just saw a mockingbird in those bushes.”  Mockingbirds are uncommon in Michigan and not here in winter. About the time I said, “are you sure it isn’t a shrike,” a northern mockingbird flew out right in front of us. Number 250, a result of serendipity and Lise’s sharp eyes. Time for an Irish whiskey and to think about the wrap up for the year.