Author: turndoozie

Amazing how time flies. Molly turned 18 today. Who da thunk it possible?

Baby Moo.

 Cheering on the boy’s water polo team on Wednesday. She’s the “I”.

These girls are scary.

But they do clean up. (Prom 2013)

Thanks for 18 fun years Moo.

Lately we’ve been really busy between work, teaching, and attending to other affairs. Very little time for birding and when we have gotten out we haven’t found many new species. The only new one since last time I wrote is gray-cheeked thrush. We missed the little devils during the spring migration so I was rather happy to see them this week.

At least Congressional Republicans have supplied some cheap and easy entertainment. Kind of fun watching them dabble in an assisted suicide. I guess their idea of economic development consists of providing comedians and pundits with enough material to stay employed for the next couple years.  

Speaking of dead meat, we had a pleasant surprise courtesy of Mertz meats. Mertz is a local little meat shop. Great meats and all kinds of fun stuff like alligator sausage, bison, elk, etc….. Some other non-meat goodies too, mostly local or Michigan based stuff. But best of all, imported directly from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, they carry scrapple. So life just got a little better here. The only down side is that it is packaged, not in the big blocks you get at a butcher. Which means they have to put the ingredients on the package. The mystery of some things are just better left to the imagination. Like why the sky is blue or what’s in scrapple. Some things you just don’t want to know.

 

When you run the script it prints in blue letters no less:
    Who is on first.
    What is on second.                             
    I don’t know is on third.
    Today is the catcher.

Now that’s gotta be worth the tuition dollars. It’s the ability to create such cutting edge code that separates me from the lab rats and the House Republicans.

We did get out a bit this morning for a little birding. Still some warblers passing through but all we saw were Tennessee and Nashville warblers. We did see a white crowned sparrow which was a new one for Lise this year. My count is still at 240 for the year and Lise’s is now at 235.

 

Serendipity rules. Molly had a 10:00 AM swim tournament over in Holland, MI. Over an hour and a half away plus she had to be on deck at 8:00 AM. Luckily she decided to spend the night with another girl and have them take her to the tournament. Another hour and a half of sleep for us. As Molly is heading out word came across the listserve of a jaeger in, hey, Holland State Park. About 15 minutes from where Molly was swimming. No extra hour and a half of sleep for us. We got up early, hightailed it to Holland State Park, found all the heavy duty optical equipment, and “Boom Baby!”, sitting 50 feet away on the beach was a new lifer.

Jaeger watchers.

Jaeger.

Jaegers are oceanic birds. They nest in the arctic tundra and spend most of the winter over the open ocean. Rarely seen from land according to the Sibley guide, but they occasionally show up in the Great Lakes.

This was a tough bird to key out. There are three species of jaegers, long-tailed, Pomeranian, and parasitic. Breeding adults are fairly different the few times they are seen close up. This bird, however, was a dark phase immature. Not so easy to differentiate between the three species. There were some really good birders, with guides specific to skuas and jaegers, examining this bird close by with big optics. We hung to the side, listening to the seasoned veterans that have seen jeagers on the breeding grounds. There was much discussion about the amount of white trim on various primary feather edges and the gonydeal angle of the bill. (Gonydeal is a real word, look it up.). Pictures were being posted on line for comments from those that couldn’t be present. Everything got down to the bird needing to fly so the underside tail edges could be seen. But this bird, believed to be sick or injured, wasn’t going to take off.

The gonydeal angle.

Now the birding ethics come in. Apparently it is unethical to flush a bird to ID it, but it’s OK if someone does the foul deed for you. The bird wasn’t going to move. The general feeling is that the bird is sick or injured. Some people had been there for a couple hours hoping to see it move. But nobody was willing to scare it up. Then along comes some do-gooder school group picking up beach trash. The optical crowd started murmuring about the school group scaring the bird up. But nary a one would warn the school group away. As the group approached the bird everyone popped to their scopes or held cameras at the ready, hoping for the coveted view. The bird flew up giving enough of a view to ID it as a parasitic jaeger, and then drifted in the wind down the beach and across the river. Satisfied, the optical crowd dispersed for breakfast. As Lise and I drifted back to the cars a number of birder laden cars came zipping into the parking lot at high speed, obviously looking for the jaeger. Given the fire in their eyes I thought it safer not to tell them we let a school group scare it up so it could be identified. Some things are best not mentioned.

So now the count stands at 240 (96.0%) for me and 234 (93.6%) for Lise. As of today, 72.3% of the year is over. We need to be getting more than one new species a week.

We’re still beating time but it’s closing in.

Molly did well in the tournament. She knocked 23 seconds off her 500 meter time. That’s 20 laps. One tough cookie.

Fall migration is well under way. Last Saturday Molly had a swimming tournament down in Novi. We had a five girl swim team sleep over Friday night and then had to get them to the tournament hours before it started. Lise and I dropped them off and then hit  a local park.  We finally hit one of the legendary “warbler waves” with “warblers dripping off the trees.” We had about fifty warblers in close proximity, often at eye level. It was great. There were a number of species but only one, blackpoll warbler, was new for the year. Still a great experience. Then came the moral dilemma. Keep birding or go back to the tournament? We went back.

The tournament was called Best In Class. Each relay team had to have a freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. Each individual event had four heats, one for each class. Molly swam a couple relays and the 100 meter freestyle. She had hit a wall at 1:02 for the100 freestyle. If I tried the 100 in 1:02 the contents of my stomach would be trailing behind me. What they call chum in the fishing world. She came in second but broke the 1:02 mark. Apparently all the other parents knew she was trying to do this and she got a pretty rousing cheer when she finished. Molly said she looked up and saw one, not me, standing up with both fists up in the air. That’s support. Not something that would have happened with volleyball. Different athletes, different coaches, and different parents. I like this bunch a lot better.

The migration is shifting. Shorebirds started in early to mid August and have pretty much finished up. Warblers have probably peaked but they are still being seen in some numbers. Sandhill cranes are starting to congregate in staging areas but in hundreds, not thousands yet. The big numbers right now are the broad-winged hawks. The hawk watch down at Pte. Mouillee is getting tens of thousands of broad-wings coming through daily. Numbers to match Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, things have conspired against me getting out on a beautiful day like today to enjoy the migration. It could be worse. I could have been inducted into Hufflepuff House. At least I still have some pride.

 

Life is a jumble right now, between teaching, the regular work mayhem, and Molly’s schedule. Every time I blink a couple days whiz by.

We got in a little birding this past weekend but only got one new species, an orchard oriole. The southward warbler is in full swing but we aren’t hitting it. People report flocks of the little blighters but we only see a couple at a time. Some people seem to attract birds. Wherever they go, things pop up. It helps that they are great birders and can quickly ID flitty little birds in bad light partially hidden behind leaves. Lise and I seem to repel birds. We don’t even see the dozens of quick flashes that are the migrating warblers.

At Schuler’s bookstore I saw “The Warbler Guide” by Tom Stephenson and Scott White. It’s an impressive book. According to the reviews it “enables you to quickly identify any of the 56 species of warblers in the United States and Canada”. This is with “more than 1,000 stunning color photos, extensive species accounts with multiple viewing angles”. The book has pictures of every warbler from the side, underneath, the butt view and 45 degree view. Poses you actually see them in the field. The issue is trying to sift through a six pound book with a thousand pictures to ID something high up in a leafed out tree that’s as active as three-year-old on espresso. Ain’t gonna happen.

We have gotten a little other play time in too. Like a trip to Trippers for some pool and a few senior pictures at a local graffiti spot. Last night we had five girls from the swim team sleep over and shortly we head to a swim tournament. As sands through the hourglass, so goes another warbler migration.

The hustlers.

Too cool.

Not too much birding wise. On Labor day Lise and I hit McNamara’s Landing on the Grand River hoping to catch some early migrants. Saw several warbler species like Nashville and chestnut-sided but no new species. After McNamara’s Landing we popped over to a property just acquired by Mid-Michigan Land Conservancy, of which I’m a board member, to get some newsletter pictures. The property has a half-built house on it. Last fall there was a screech owl roosting on the front porch but no luck for Ed and Lise on their Michigan big year quest. The real kicker was Lise having a major pollen allergy attack while we were there. I did get to see a black saddlebags dragonfly while there.

Lise in a field of goldenrod suffering from an allergy attack.

Black saddlebags. Taken handheld, off balance, and without a macro lens.

This property is pretty nice. It’s 130 acres with a mix of old field, restored prairie, some open water, emergent wetland, and forest in different stages. The forested area contains some vernal pools. The person that owned it planned it as their own little retreat. She was building a rather spacious house in the most inaccessible spot on the property. She ran into some unexpected family issues and had to move away to be a parental caretaker so she donated the property to Mid-Michigan Land Conservancy. A major gift and she wants to remain anonymous. 

When we got back from our little outing there was a report of a rufous hummingbird about a half hour away. We hightailed it up there only to find out that the hummer hadn’t been seen since it was captured and banded earlier in the morning.

While we were standing there, waiting and hoping beyond hope, another birder showed up. He was coming down from the U.P. and heard about the hummer from a listserve. Turns out he is doing a Michigan Big Year, while working, and his count is at 314 species. That’s a real Michigan Big Year. Only 77 more species than me this year, within the same geographic boundary. Not too shabby.

I believe the Michigan Big Year record is 329 species so he has to pick up 15 to tie and 16 to beat the 2005 record. Like us, he is down to chasing migrants and rarities, but unlike us, he has nailed all the breeding species. I need another 13 species just to get to my low 250 species bar. I’m starting to get feelings of birding inadequacy. Time to blame Molly’s sports and school schedule for everything. Or blame the Republicans and Fox News. Nah, Jon Stewart’s back on the job. He can do a good enough job skewering them without my help.

Been a long dry spell for birding, odonating, and writing. The only new bird to report is an American golden plover we saw at the MSU sod farms. I spent one afternoon at Barb and Ellen’s now dried up wetland for some odonating. Nobody cooperated too much except some white-faced meadowhawks and a female spread-winged damselfly. It could be one of three species but you need to look at it under a microscope to differentiate it to the species level. Since I didn’t have a scope with me nor did I feel like killing it to put it under the scope it goes down as a Lestes species.

White-faced meadowhawk

Female spread-wing species

Part of the reason we haven’t been getting out much, or writing much, is a set of crazy schedules. Molly’s swim team practices have started up, several weeks before school starts. In fact she has had two tournaments before school even started. One was the Waverly relays held this past Wednesday. Eight very vocal teams with their equally boisterous supporters packed into a small, hot, stuffy, reverberating natatorium. It really felt like one of the inner circles of hell.

The tournament has been going on for 35 years and Okemos has now won it the past 10 years. Molly swam the 100 meter freestyle in two relays. She got a 1:02 in both of them. If I tried really, really hard, and completely wasted myself, I could do a 50 meter in 1:02. Two in the same night is out of the question. Then she had another tournament Thursday night in Battle Creek. I was teaching so couldn’t make the Battle Creek tourney.

The team with the Waverly trophy, just outside the gates of hell. (S. Wozena photo)

I’m now teaching two classes as adjunct at Lansing Community College (LCC), or as it’s also known, Last Chance College. Both classes had a low enrollment so I didn’t think they would go. Then at the last minute the Dean let one of them go because it is required for a couple students to graduate. Then some students asked if the second class could be offered independent study so I agreed to do that too. Throw in that LCC has switched to a different course management system, and I have been scrambling the past two weeks.

In the middle of getting courses ready I got hit with an unexpected one-day trip up to Rogers City. Monday afternoon my boss and I were on a conference call with a client and Tuesday morning I was heading north for a 10:00 AM meeting. Five hundred mile one day trip and I had to come back through some torrential rains too. On the up side I got to hit Plath’s Meats, a great Rogers City butcher shop and smoke house. Loaded up on smoked pork chops and bacon. Almost as good as Weaver’s back in Lebanon. We tried a blind side by side taste test between Plath’s bacon and Weaver’s bacon. In a unanimous decision, Weaver’s won out. Life can’t be all bad when you get to do bacon taste testing. Pity Plath’s doesn’t do scrapple too.

The golden plover brought me up to 237 and Lise up to 231. Getting 250 will be challenging. The shorebird migration is tapering down already. We may pick up another shorebird or two but it’s not something I’m counting on. So we need to hit the passerine migration to pick up the summer residents and the migrant species we missed. Fall migration birding is a lot tougher than the spring migration though. The foliage is up, the birds aren’t really calling, and their plumage is changing to the confusing winter colors. Which reminds me of a story from the time of the first Iraq war under Bush I.

The most popular bird field guide at the time was Roger Tory Peterson’s. Peterson devoted several pages to “confusing fall warblers.” A group of us birders were walking under the canopy of the Deam Wilderness when a flight of military planes flew low over us. Someone said, “Must be Warthogs,” referring to the A-10 Warthog tank killer popularized in the Gulf War. Without looking up I said, “No, those are F-4 Phantoms.” Lise quickly quipped, “Ed knows his confusing fall war-birds.” Anyway, it was hilarious at the time. (He was right too about the F-4s – recognized them by their call. – Lise)

We’re now in the dog days of August. Molly has already started swim team practices, meaning our lives are now centered around practices, swim meets, tournaments, and butt crushing, back wrenching bleacher seats.Gotta love it.

Lise and I had an outdoor weekend. Saturday morning we kayaked the Grand River. Hardly a pristine river but the trip was great. Lovely temperatures with swarms of bugs that weren’t interested in us at all. Just smooth cruising. 

 

Lise cruising through the bugs on the Grand.

Saturday night, dining with Barb and Ellen, we decided to do Pte. Mouillee on Sunday for shorebirds.Good birding with good friends. Most fun you can have without scrapple.

Barb the well-equipped birder. (photo by E. McCallum)

Ed and Lise doing Pte. Mouillee. (photo by E. McCallum)

Bird migration as a whole is pretty amazing but the shorebird migration is something different. Birds weighing a few ounces fly from South and Central America to the Arctic in the spring to nest, then turn around and make the trip back starting in August. It’s kind of the ultimate in snowbirding. They breed in the northern latitudes during the northern summer and head to the southern latitudes for the southern summer. Sounds like the ideal retirement to me.

Along the way they need to stop and refuel. There are some pretty critical stopover sites, like the Delaware Bay on the east coast. Places like Bombay Hook in that internationally known speed trap of Leipsic, Delaware, can get tens of thousands of shorebirds at a time. The shorebirds feed on the invertebrates and the local police feed on the birders.

 

Bombay Hook shorebirds.

In Michigan we have places like Pte. Moo that get hundreds to thousands of shorebirds at a time. With the help of a local birder we did pretty well. For new birds we got Wilson’s phalarope, red-necked phalarope, white-rumped sandpiper, Baird’s sandpiper, and a yellow-headed blackbird. I never expected to get five new species in a single day this late in the year. Barb also got black-crowned night heron and snowy egret for new Michigan birds. The white-rumped and the Baird’s are lifers for Lise and me. My Michigan count now stands at 236 and Lise’s at 230.

Baird’s sandpiper, chowing down.

White-rumped sandpiper. You only see the white rump when it flies.

Semipalmated sandpiper, chowing down.

Red-necked phalarope in winter plumage already.

Yellow-legs with very muddy feet.

No birding this past weekend, we did the Windy City. Molly and Lindsay wanted to do Chicago for vacation this summer. So to Da Loop we traveled. We went Friday evening and stayed through Monday morning. Within about 30 minutes of arrival Molly and Lindsay ran into one of their classmates.

The big city in black and white.

We had to drive. Not for the faint-of-heart. The cabbies can’t communicate in English so they use their horns. One long blast means they think you’re a jackass, two long blasts means they hate you and three long blasts mean they will kill you if you get out of the car. Delaying a few seconds to read a street sign rates a long blast. Waiting for pedestrians to clear the intersection during a turn arrow rates the death penalty. There are no short blasts. Or reasons to ever get out of the car.

We stayed right downtown, something that costs close to the GNP of a third world country. It was fun though, being right in the middle of things. There are not too many large cities I like, but Chicago is one of them. Seattle is probably my favorite but Chicago is right behind it. There’s an edge to it that I just like. It’s gritty, it’s tough, and it’s great.

Not one, but four photographers for the blessed nuptials. Right in the middle of State Street no less. Never mind the cabbies trying to knock you off for sport. This takes some chutzpah.

Where else are you going to find the Acme Hotel? Right out of the Road Runner cartoons.

Downtown Chicago has a compactness that you don’t find in the burbs where we live. We parked the car Friday night and didn’t use it until we left Monday. Major attractions and everything we wanted to do were in walking distance. Central Camera, a great camera store founded in 1899, just a few blocks from Millennium Park and The Bean. I have to drive 25 minutes to get to the mediocre camera store we have here. The best way to describe Central Camera is a hardware store for photographers. There is no self service. Just one long narrow passageway lined with counters, shelves and drawers. Everything is tucked away in rows of drawers and bins and the staff knows where everything is stashed. Kind of like Kliendorfer’s Hardware in Bloomington, minus the veil of cigarette smoke. And like Kliendorfer’s they have just about everything imaginable, including film, darkroom enlargers, papers, and chemicals.

Central photo, founded in 1899. This may be where Mathew Brady and Edward Curtis got their supplies.

The Bean.

So we saw the sights, wandered the city, and generally hung out. Used the subway to see my nephew Zack and his wife Nikki but could have walked the two miles if we had to. Always good to see family. They took us to a restaurant specializing in waffles. I had pork meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce served over a cheese waffle. No scrapple, but hey, who can complain about waffles with a meatball topping?  

The Bean Skyline.

Lise and Ed do The Bean. One of the few pictures where we’re together.

Self portrait at The Bean.

I love watching people interact with this thing.

Reflections inside The Bean at dawn.

Kids playing in the Millennium Park fountains.

Fire escapes and shadows.

This morning Lise and I ran down to the Schooner Waterfowl Production Area in Lenaweee County to find a whooping crane. Not quite sure what a waterfowl production area is but I imagine it involves some happy waterfowl. Apparently the crane has been around the area for a couple weeks but nobody put it on the listserves. We drove an hour and a half, found the parking area, hopped out of the car, and there it was. Whoopers nest mostly in Alberta with a small whooping crane breeding ground in Wisconsin. Either way, this guy was off course but gave us another species for the year.

Whooping crane with sandhill cranes.

I just finished reading The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. They do a great job of taking some fairly complex topics and boiling them down such that we mere mortals can understand them. Life, the universe, and everything, without equations. I find the weak and strong anthropic principles particularly interesting as a way of explaining the universe. 

The weak and strong anthropic principles go something like this; the laws defining the universe fit into a model that produces intelligent life because intelligent life is observing the universe. Only in a universe capable of producing intelligent beings will there be intelligent beings that can observe the nuances that make a universe capable of producing intelligent beings. If there wasn’t intelligent life to observe it, the universe wouldn’t be what it is and couldn’t be observed by intelligent life.

While the weak and strong anthropic principles can explain that the laws guiding the universe are what they are because they produced intelligent life is all well and good, how does one account for the huge lack of intelligence in FOX News, Al Qaida, the Flat Earth Society, the Tea Party, and Jersey Shore. Lately the Republican Party seems hell bent on getting into that club too.

To account for this lack of intelligence in a universe that produced intelligent life I’d like to propose the misanthropic principle. For a universe to produce intelligent life it must also produce a certain level of idiocy as a negative feedback to temper unchecked gains in intelligence and progress. That prevents the intelligence of the universe from getting so dense that it warps space time and creates an anomaly that sucks us all down into it, thus ending the universe that supports intelligent life. Might need a little work to come up with the math behind it but I’m pretty sure it goes something like that.