Author: turndoozie

It’s been a mixed week. The downer part was having my bike stolen while I was on campus. I was in the lab for about an hour and a half and came out to find my bike gone. I’m pretty sure I had it locked but I only used a cable and padlock. Obviously nothing that will stop a determined thief. Anyway, I wonder if the miscreant’s parents will ever get married. Or if someone will kick his mother as she runs down the street barking.

We didn’t get in too much in the line of outdoor activities during the week, but we got out both days this weekend. The weather was great. About 25 degrees cooler than what we expect for this time. Quite comfortable. Saturday we went to Riverbend Natural Area, a local park on the Grand River. Instead of chasing birds I was chasing a riverine clubtail, an uncommon dragonfly that was reported there. Didn’t see the clubtail but some other cool things were out and about. As we were leaving we ran into a couple other Odonata aficionados who did see the clubtail but we had to go pick up my new bicycle.

Blue-fronted dancer.

Double-striped bluet. A new species for me.

Female meadowhawk, not sure which species.

Calico pennant.

Cute orange mushrooms.

Wood frog.

Today we hit Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge. Someone reported a red knot, red-necked phalarope and a few other good things there yesterday. We didn’t get the red knot or the phalarope but we did get a pectoral sandpiper and an American white pelican. The pelican was a really good bird to get. They’re reported occasionally in the refuge but aren’t always real obvious. While scanning sandpipers another birder passed us and told us where to look for them. And Lise got a stilt sandpiper so now I’m allowed to sleep in the same room as her again.

Today’s outing put me at 230 species (92.0% of the goal) and Lise at 224 (89.6%).

Busy busy week. And the moral of the week would be do not delay if you’re counting birds. They don’t really care about your yearly counts.

The girls went down to West Lafayette Tuesday and came back Wednesday. On the way back they swung by Saugatuck for their annual girls outing to have lunch and stare at the high priced merchandise in the boutiques gig.  Meanwhile, on Wednesday word of a couple cattle egrets at Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge came across the listserve. This is a really good Michigan bird. The refuge is a bit over an hour away so as soon as I got off work I drove over. I found the cattle egrets and showed them to two other people that were looking for them.

Lise was busy Thursday so we had to wait until Friday to chase the egrets for her count. We figured (make that I figured) we should be there at dawn to try for rails and least bitterns as well as the cattle egrets. That meant getting up at 4:30 to head over there. Good thing we did. Apparently the cattle egrets left but at least we did get a least bittern and bank swallows.

Meanwhile, Thursday evening a curlew sandpiper showed up in a small Douglas, MI park on a backwater bayou of the Kalamazoo River. All you had to do is stand in the gazebo and look out over the mud flats to see this rarity. The curlew sandpiper nests in Siberia and winters in Africa, but occasionally stops by North America. Years ago Lise and I saw one at Bombay Hook in Delaware. Word went out on the North American rare bird alert and on Friday people came from Chicago and Columbus to stand in the gazebo and see this rare treat.

Friday night Barb called and we decided to make a run for the curlew sandpiper. So the three of us left here at 6:00 AM Saturday for Douglas, MI. Unfortunately the winds changed during the night, the mud flats got covered with water, and the curlew sandpiper headed for parts unknown. So we dutifully spent a couple hours in the gazebo, along with numerous other disappointed birders, hoping beyond hope the sandpiper was just hiding in the weeds and would pop out for our viewing pleasure. Long sigh……. I don’t want to say we were jinxed but Barb did say, “This will be a lifer for me” as we headed out.

The Gazebo of Disappointment in Douglas, MI.

So we had breakfast at the Bluestar Café, a small diner with a Mario Lanza movie poster on the wall. They didn’t have scrapple but you could get gyros meat scrambled with your eggs. Best I can tell gyros is kind of the Greek version of scrapple. Sheep scrapple in a pita.

The Bluestar Cafe. Mario Lanza and Greek scrapple.

Oh, and there was the ugly stilt sandpiper incident. While scanning for the curlew sandpiper a couple of us mentioned that a stilt sandpiper was out there. I thought Lise and I had stilt sandpiper for the year so I didn’t give it much thought. Apparently the conversation took place while Lise was wondering around and no, we didn’t have stilt sandpipers on our count. Well at least one of us has stilt sandpiper now. So the count now stands at 228 for me and 221 for Lise. I’d put a graph up that would probably be my death knell.

It has been a beastly hot week. Not much motivation to do much of anything outside. Even Fido the sun loving desert lizard just liked lounging in the shade. We finally got a little relief yesterday, with temperatures only getting into the mid-eighties.

Fido chillin’ in the heat.

Yesterday was a summer water polo tournament over in Holland, MI. Summer polo is kind of like the pickup basketball games I remember as a kid. Any warm body drifting by would get drafted. Molly’s team consisted of girls from eighth grade up through high school seniors and they ended up playing a boys high school team for the last game.

Holland is close to Lake Michigan and has a nice little downtown area with shoppes and restaurants. It appears to have been founded by the Dutch and there’s lots of Van der names floating around. True to their Dutch roots, Holland is a bastion of staunch conservatism in Michigan. After the last election, if you looked at one of those blue for Democrats, red for Republicans maps, Holland kind of glows red.

Downtown Holland.

Molly and Rachael, chillin’ between games in downtown Holland.

Holland has an excellent brew pub called the New Holland Brewing Company. They make a great oatmeal stout along with a host of other fine brews. Quite a popular place. Lise and I ate lunch there. When we tried to do the team post tournament dinner there, the wait would have been over an hour just to get in. But on Sundays, city law prohibits them from selling the beer they make on premise. They can, however, sell you a glass of whatever whiskey or hard liquor you want that was made somewhere else. They just can’t sell their own locally made beer. Now you can color that any way you want but it still comes out dumb. It sure isn’t very progressive.

Today was our first birding for a week. We went out to try for a prothonotary warbler along the Grand River. No warblers but we had great views of a barred owl. I had just finished saying that we still didn’t have barred or screech owls when I looked over and saw a barred owl sitting close to the ground. One of those Zen birding things. Almost made up for the blood sucking insects that tried to turn us into jerky covered with welts. I’m now at 224 species and Lise is at 219.

Barred owl.

Got in a little odonating today too. Nothing too special but I did get my first white-faced meadowhawk of the year. And a cool looking grasshopper.

White-faced meadowhawk male.

White-faced meadowhawk female

Ahhh grasshopper, you have learned well.

We got back from San Diego just in time for a summer water polo tournament yesterday. In a first for us, Molly played a night tournament game in an outdoor pool. They played against some California team that flew in just to show us how lacking in water polo Michigan really is. Our girls lost but except for about a five minute stretch they were right with the California team. For a long time the score was 2 – 1. The sole goal we had was a little lob Molly got in. She’s done that shot before. The other polo parents started calling it the Molly Lob. During a break the coach told the team, “Stop shooting for that corner. It’s a dead corner. They have it covered and you can’t hit that corner. Molly’s the only person that can hit that corner.” They lost the game but we were happy.

We got some birding in today. A glossy ibis was reported down at Pte. Mouillee so Lise and I headed down to find it. Pte. Moo is a large area accessible only by walking or bicycle. Biking with a scope and camera on tripod is a bit more interesting than I want life to be, so I bought a bike trailer. Worked pretty well. I could haul the scope on a tripod, a camera on a tripod, and my camera bag. Apparently this trailer is sized just right to fit a cooler. So if we ever bike to an event requiring a cooler we’re set.

Ed and his bike trailer.

We got the glossy ibis as well as a snowy egret, short-billed dowitcher, and a red-headed woodpecker. The snowy egret was a real bonus. Made up for riding around on dusty berms in 80 plus degree weather. Saw some other cool things too, like a breeding plumage horned grebe, and pied-billed grebes and coots with young. Too cute for their own good. Lots of dragonflies too, including a large hatch of Halloween pennants. There were hundreds of them flying around. 

Halloween pennant.

Another view of a Halloween pennant.

I’m now at 223 species for the year, and Lise is at 218. That’s 89.2% of the goal for me and 87.2% for Lise with 53.2% of the year gone. Most of the easy ones are gone now so it’s time for the real work to kick in.

The graph.

Spent the past week at the ESRI conference in San Diego. Five days in the Hilton overlooking San Diego Bay. With superb weather. An easy climate to be homeless in. Coming back to Okemos isn’t easy. Don’t know where I’m going once I retire but I can guarantee it will not be Okemos.

Overwhelming conference. This is THE conference for people in my profession. About 15,000 attendees from around the globe. Monday consisted of massive plenary sessions. Including the singer Will. I. Am. He created a foundation to help kids from the low income neighborhood he came out of get into technical fields. Four of the kids presented their GIS work to 15,000 GIS professionals. It was impressive.

Me at the conference taken from our hotel room.

A closer view of me at the conference.

Tuesday through Thursday consisted of concurrent sessions and meetings. The first time slot for Tuesday had 53 different concurrent sessions. There were over 500 different things happening that day. Wednesday and Thursday were just as busy. I did a paper presentation Thursday afternoon. That late in the conference I figured it would be me and the moderator. Had easily over 40 people in the room. They didn’t throw stones at me so I guess they liked it.

Thursday night ESRI rents out Balboa Park for an evening get together. All kinds of music and food. We had access to all the museums. There was a photo arts museum with a display of the top photojournalism photos of 2012. This was the first time I was at a major photo exhibit that was all archive inkjet prints and no darkroom produced photos. In the fine arts museum was an exhibit of Arnold Newman portraits. Absolutely stunning. I’ve seen a lot of them in books or magazines so seeing the original prints was a real treat. These were flawless darkroom prints.

Balboa Park architecture at dusk.

There was some chalk artist that did a big drawing on the sidewalk. She was explaining how it represented the transitory nature of our impermanent world. I bugged out and went to see the juggler with glow in the dark bowling pins. Pretty cool.

Too cool.

A lot of good booty was given out at the vendor show. I got water bottles, a first aid kit, Frisbees, beach balls, squeeze balls, a boomerang, ear buds… Not as good as last year when Molly scored a Spock doll and inflatable frogs. And I never did find the company giving out the rubber ducks. One vendor was handing out Hagen Daz ice cream bars. That’s about one notch above crack dealers. Once you’re hooked they own you.

The area around the conference center is quite nice. Right on the waterfront with a promenade and attractions. A couple of million dollar yachts were moored in the marina by the promenade. Right by the conference center is an old area of San Diego called the gas light district. Like most old city center areas it had a heyday followed by decline. In the not too distant past it was a pretty seedy area. In the past couple decades it’s been rejuvenated and is full of restaurants and shops. None with scrapple though. The Comecon convention is going to follow the ESRI convention. We saw Spiderman crawl down the side of the Hard Rock Hotel a promo for Comecon.

Lise along the promenade. (half-blinking)

Some guy on the promenade balances rocks. There are is no glue or pins. He just picks them up and works them until they balance.

One hotel showing the reflections of another hotel.

Flying home on an airplane with a bent wing.

The day before we left for San Diego Lise and I went to Shiawassee Wildlife Refuge for some birding. The only new bird for the year was dicksissel. That puts me at 219 and Lise at 214. There were some other cools things too; including some farmer on the road to the refuge that was might proud of his John Deere collection.

Mighty proud of them tractors.

Great blue heron with a defiant stance. Maybe he’s from New Jersey. “What are you looking at? You want a piece of me?”

Tree swallows hanging out.

Baby barn swallows. Too cute.

Where the barn swallow nest was located.

Before my father went into a facility for Alzheimer’s, Anita had him make bird nesting boxes for Christmas presents. I hung one up this year and we had house wrens use it.

Dad building bird boxes.

House wren using Dad’s bird nest box.

Been a while since I’ve had time for birding, odonating or writing. I’m going to be a bit more diligent about writing, even if I don’t have much to say. Kind of like being a FOX News commentator. Nothing intelligent to say but we can fill up our time slot with it as long as we have Obama to blame for everything. It’s probably his fault we don’t circle the sun in exactly 365 days so we need to add a day every four years. Surely it’s part of his progressive agenda to have an extra day in the year so illegal aliens have one more day to come across our border and do the nasty jobs no one else wants to do. We don’t want them coming in here and becoming productive citizens. Unless they’re Canadians. Them we like. They’re almost as good as us Americans. They just talk a little funny. Kind of like Kennedy did.

I had one last vacation day for the MSU fiscal year so I took it on June 27. Lise and I went up to the Mio area to get Kirtland’s warblers and a few other species in that area. We got the Kirtland’s as well as Brewer’s blackbird, upland sandpiper and vesper sparrow. Lise got her brown thrasher too. Hoping for Lincoln’s sparrow too, but we missed that one.

Kirtland’s warbler is an interesting species. They summer in the Mio, Michigan area and winter in Bermuda. Not a bad gig. I could live with it.

Species fall into two groups; generalists and specialists. When times are good it’s better to be a specialist. One can better take advantage of the resource you specialize in. When times are bad, it’s better to be a generalist. You can make do with anything. Not as efficiently, but there are more resources and opportunities available to you.

Kirtland’s warblers are a specialist species. They only nest in large blocks of young, 10 – 20 year old, Jack pines. Since no competing warblers use the same habitat niche this is a good thing as long as there is a lot of that particular habitat. Jack pines require fire to propagate so they tend to grow only in areas that are built to burn. Like the Mio area. That place is the ecological equivalent of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. Periodic wildfire would sweep the area, killing off mature Jack pines and making a huge seed bed for new Jack pine regeneration.

Then along came Europeans. We suppressed wildfires, which allowed Jack pines to mature and repressed new growth. Kirtland’s lost their breeding habitat and almost went down the tube. About 50 years ago they were about extinct. Now that we understand their habitat needs, and the dynamics of the system, we manage for them and the species is rebounding nicely. But, they still only breed in one small area in Michigan. So if you’re doing a North American big year, figure on a night in Mio, Michigan.

One of the more bizarre parts of the Kirtland’s warbler story is the involvement of an ornithologist named Nathan Leopold. He did early research on the Kirtland’s, including filming the warbler on its nesting grounds. Unfortunately, in 1924 Leopold and his friend Richard Loeb decided to kill a boy just to show they could commit the perfect crime. It wasn’t so perfect a crime and they were caught. Loeb was killed in prison. Leopold served over 30 years in prison, was paroled and moved to Puerto Rico. He eventually published a book on the birds of Puerto Rico. Weird.

Today we popped over to a local park where we got sedge wren. That brings my total up to 218 for the year and Lise’s up to 213.

So the main reason I haven’t gotten out to play or written much is senior photos. I’ve been working with Molly and Lindsay on their senior photos. I can muddle my way through landscape and general nature photography but I’ve generally avoided taking formal pictures of people. Partly because it’s hard. Taking a good portrait requires knowledge of lighting and subject placement. There are a lot of nuances to portrait work and it takes time to get a good one. Especially when you lack portrait experience as I do. So you are usually dealing with impatient people that just want you to just take the picture and be done with the whole process. The girls have been patiently working with me to get the perfect photo. Or at least one good enough for the year book.

So we turned the garage into a temporary studio and made a trip to the MSU gardens. A couple more trips are planned too. A sample follows. Note that these are all pre-touch up. The magic of Photoshop has yet to come into play.

Is it art?

An artist makes a political statement. Why do I think he may be a tea party sympathizer?

Other interesting things abound. Birding at Shot Point we found the backwoods basketball hoop. Chocolay zoning must not allow basketball hoops in the driveway. I wonder if they play on snowshoes. And the shed covered with license plates from the 1930s. Pre-zoning I’m sure.

Backwoods basketball.

The license plate shed.

The trip back on Thursday was fun. We bought a dining table set from Joanna so the van was packed and we were hauling a trailer with kayaks and gear. The front seats were crammed forward so we could get everything packed into the van. We woke up at 4:00 AM to do Seney NWR when they opened at dawn. Did six miles of a dirt road wildlife tour with a packed van and hauling a trailer. We also picked up about half the Seney mosquito population for transport downstate. They pretty much filled up every void not filled with dining set. We tried killing them as we drove but it appears they produced a couple generations just on the drive home.

When we got home we shoveled the mosquito carcasses out of the van, unpacked the van and trailer, went out for a quick dinner, then headed down to the Detroit airport to pick up Molly at 11:30 PM. After hearing the Costa Rica stories we all crashed about 1:30 AM.

Birding wise we did pretty good. Missed a couple target species like boreal chickadee and black-backed woodpecker but got some other good ones. Around the cabin and at Shot Point we got purple finch, Philadelphia vireo, merlin, Blackburnian warbler, and winter wren. At Seney we got ovenbird (Lise), alder flycatcher, Northern parula, Virginia rail, sora, and black-billed cuckoo. At Grand Maris we got piping plover and sanderling. Along the Peshekee grade and the McCormick Tract we got least flycatcher (Lise), mourning warbler, Cape May warbler, black-throated blue warbler, blue-headed vireo, yellow-bellied flycatcher, and goshawk. Got some cool dragonflies and damsel flies too. Didn’t do any netting so I’m not sure of some species.

Female northern bluet.

Familiar bluet.

Dot-tailed whiteface, female.

Newly emerged skimmer, unknown species.

Beaverpond baskettail.

Four-spotted skimmer.

Newly emerged slaty skimmer (I think)

Unknown emerald species doing the hanky-panky.

Lise got 20 new species on the trip and I got 18. After repairing the corrupted spreadsheet as best I can, the count now stands at 209 for me and 206 for Lise. So I’m at 83.6% of the 250 goal and Lise is at 82.4%. We are missing a few easy common species like thrasher, barred owl and screech owl that we better be able to get locally, but now the serious chasing has to start.

An update since this was written yesterday. Today Barb and I cruised over to Allegan and south of Dowagiac chasing worm eating warbler, cerulean warbler and blue grosbeak. We missed on the worm eating and cerulean but got the blue grosbeak. I also got veery and brown thrasher, bringing my total up to 212. Barb also got a cliff swallow for her year count.

We are in the UP staying at Jean’s cabin on Sand River. Can’t think of a better place to be. We got up at 2:30 AM Thursday morning to take Molly to the airport for her high school Costa Rica trip. Note that I got to go to Hershey Park in High School. We then drove back to Lansing, grabbed a couple hours sleep, then had breakfast at the Brunch House. The Brunch House has some Middle Eastern roots and serves something called Housa and eggs. Housa consists of some form of ground meat, not beef, with pine nuts and I believe cardamon mixed in. A Middle Eastern version of scrapple I guess. They mix it in with scrambled eggs and it kind of turns the eggs a shade of gray. But, it tastes great and I highly recommend it.

After that we headed north across Mighty Mac, the Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula. We kind of played our way north. Stopped at the bridge for lunch, cruised along Lake Michigan, headed up M77 to Seney National Wildlife Refuge, then went up to Lake Superior at Grand Marais. Lise got her ovenbird at Seney.

Crossing the bridge, heading to heaven.

The Mighty Mac.

As opposed to Michigan’s Downer Peninsula, where we live.

Grand Marais is one of the places where the Federally Endangered piping plover nests. In Delaware they close off the whole Cape Henlopen Point for the piping plover. Here they just put up some enclosures with little fenced in areas where the nest is. We got piping plover, semi-palmated sandpiper, and sanderling at Grand Marais.

Plover management.

Piping plover wearing many leg bands.

Sanderling.

Sanderlings.

Semi-palmated sandpiper.

Grand Marais has about 30 buildings, one of which is the Great Lakes Brewing Company. We had a quick dinner and local brews, then headed to the cabin. It was about a hour and a half drive, but the last half hour seemed to take a long time. We finally rolled into the cabin, unpacked, checked out the river, and then crashed for about 11 hours.

This morning we got Philadelphia vireo at the cabin and a merlin while driving in to Marquette. Then this afternoon we were completely fooled by a first year American redstart. A real rookie blunder. We tried to turn it into everything except a first year American redstart. But we got some time on the river and that makes everything good. Plus fresh fish at Thill’s.

It don’t get fresher than this.

Got some odonates too. And something I’ve never seen in the wild. From a bridge over Sand River we saw lampreys building a nesting area in the river. These are some real primitive fish. I’m not familiar enough with them to know if they were native brook lampreys or the invasive sea lamprey.

Familiar bluet.

Female northern bluet.

Female dot-tailed whiteface.

Lamprey.

More lampreys.

Even more lampreys.

I believe the counts now stand at 197 for me and 192 for Lise. I need to get the spreadsheet fixed but who can do something like that when there’s so much fun stuff to do here.

 

Got out for some early birding on Saturday. I made it to the Shiawassee NWR when they opened at dawn. Which means I left here by 5:00 AM. The goal was to listen for bitterns and rails and I did hear American bitterns.  They bring my total up to 192 species. A few other things were out and about too.

Immature bald eagle at the refuge.

One of the many song sparrows on the refuge. Seems there are more song sparrows on the refuge than extras in a Cecil B. DeMille movie.

One of several snapping turtles I saw.

Dawn is a prime time for  birding. A lot of species quit calling by about 9:00. At one time I really liked dawn and the early morning. For some reason I always liked the sunrises more than the sunsets. Maybe because there are fewer people around then. Out at sea I often found myself working at night, so I would try to get out on deck for the sunrise and a few breaths of fresh air. When we go to Delaware I try to get out at least one time during the trip to catch the sun rising over the ocean. For some reason I can never seem to drag any of my family members along with me for this near religious event.

Shiawassee NWR at dawn. I had the place to myself.

I have to admit that lately it is harder for me to drag my carcass out in the early morning. My body seems to have shifted to a different schedule. Today I had high hopes of getting up at 4:00 AM to run up to Maple River for rails and owls. Instead I stayed up until midnight and then slept in until about 8:00 AM. There was a time when four hours of sleep would have been plenty. Now it takes me four hours just to fall asleep.

Which may explain the interest in Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies). Not only are they incredible fliers and kick butt top end predators in the insect world; they don’t come out until the sun is way up. You can have that second and third cup of coffee and they’ll be waiting for you. So much more civilized than birds that are impossible to find after 9:00 AM. So after crawling out at 8:00 AM this morning, I went out to do some odonating. Got some pictures of emerald spreadwing damselflies and what I believe is a brown phase variable dancer. I’ve never seen a brown phase damselfly so I need to confirm that one.

Emerald spreadwing (female)

Emerald spreadwing (female)

Emerald spreadwing (male)

Brown phase variable dancer (I think)

Today was also Faux Father’s Day. Molly thought it was Father’s Day and I didn’t know it wasn’t. Apparently Molly inherited my inability to do dates. So Molly decided to make empanadas for me. Empanadas are the Central and South American version of pasties, so you know they gotta be good. Lindsay decided to help and invited her dad and family too. It was only after they called Lise looking for an ingredient that we found out it wasn’t Father’s Day. But, since Molly will be in Costa Rica next Sunday, and Lindsay will be in Montana without Jim, we decided this would be a good day to celebrate Father’s Day. The empanadas were great and all is good in the world. Much better than something mundane like sacrificing a goat in my honor.