Author: turndoozie

We had a great day. Lovely weather and eight new species. Thanks to Lise’s sharp eyes, one of those was a lifer for both of us. New species for the year were Eastern meadowlark, pied-billed grebe, common loon, hermit thrush, golden-crowned kinglet, osprey, red-necked grebe, and the lifer, a cinnamon teal.

We got back and I posted the cinnamon teal on the local listserve, including links to some poor quality pictures for confirmation. Pretty quickly someone else confirmed our sighting and posted pictures they took about an hour before we saw the bird. Then I saw my post forwarded to two other listserves, including the one that is only for serious birders. I can assure you there are no, “I saw my first robin of the year” posts allowed on that list. I didn’t directly post to that list because I was afraid someone would ask me if I counted the primary feathers or some other silly ornithological folly.

Cinnamon teal a long way off. It’s the one on the right.

The osprey was kind of interesting too. In a measure of avian adaptability it has nested on the top of a cell tower. Which naturally brings to mind a couple questions. Will the offspring imprint on the blinking red light? Kind of like B.F. Skinner’s pigeons. Will they expect food to be everywhere they see a blinking red light? More importantly, does the nest affect reception?

Avian adaptability

Volleyball tournament in Mt. Pleasant. At least this is the last of the season. Having to spend a Saturday in Mt. Pleasant is bad enough. Throw in sitting around waiting for games to start is putting salt on the wounds. I enjoy the games and watching Molly’s team play. It is the sitting around in some sport complex that offers at best weak coffee and corn dogs that’s a test of parenthood. At least they won their first game. And it’s a cool gloomy day outside so we aren’t burning a good outdoor day.

Kicking butt

Our species counts now stand at 102 for me and 101 for Lise. Still only a pheasant apart. A lot of the migrating ducks have already passed through but a number of the summer resident species are checking in. The lsitserves are ringing with “first of year” sightings. Species that we should be getting without much more effort  than just being outside.

I thought we would do more local chasing than we have. It’s not for want of knowing where to go. The listserves are pretty good at getting word around when something unusual pops in. Unfortunately you need to be a bit more nimble than we are. We have too many commitments. Like work. And volleyball. And water polo.

Molly is doing the Vball and water polo. Lise and I are too athletically challenged. Especially for water polo. From what I can tell water polo is rugby with a chance of drowning. It’s like watching sausage getting made. You really don’t want to do it. Water polo is for the wet warriors.

Busy, busy, busy. Beautiful weekend makes it hard to do the more mundane things – like work, or grading papers. It’s a lot more fun to be sitting in a wetland taking frog pictures, or birding, or just sitting on the patio with your feet propped up and a gin and tonic in hand. Contains quinine you know. Helps keep the chance of malaria down. Unfortunately all the things you blow off catch up to you. Like work, grading papers and blog posting.

Saturday was St Patrick’s day. St Pat’s day on a Friday or Saturday is not a good time to be out and about. Kind of like a Friday payday at a Marine Corps base. Too many amateurs out there.

I opted to spend Saturday night in Barb’s wetland. It was nice, wearing waders, sitting in a wetland at night, warm enough I didn’t need a jacket on. Listening to all the cool sounds in the night. A chorus of frogs so loud it almost made your ears hurt. Bunches of them all at once jumping around in the water right by you. Hard to believe it is the middle of March. I had some mosquitoes hitting me up for a blood feast already. God knows what kind of mutant eggs they will lay using my blood. Wonder if the kids will have red hair or beards. Or crave scrapple.

Sunday we went birding at a place we have often driven by, but never checked out. A State Wildlife Area called Maple River. It is mostly a bunch of impounded wetlands with some associated upland habitat. The place is primarily designed for shooting animals but it turns out to be a good birding place too. We picked up ten new species: Eastern phoebe, tundra swan, blue-wing teal, swamp sparrow, chipping sparrow, rusty blackbird, cowbird, tree swallow, and wood duck.

It was a great place for the herps too. We saw three garter snakes, a painted turtle, hordes of frogs, and a yellow-bellied slider turtle. The yellow-bellied slider is a turtle of the Southeast, not native to Michigan. In some areas it is a common pet turtle so this one is likely a released pet. Born free, as free as the wind blows, as free as the grass grows….. Doubtful this is a global warming thing. Being from the Southeast this guy probably doesn’t know about hibernation. Or scrapple.

Peak-a-boo

Yellow-bellied slider

The frogs were having a major party. Lots of mating or fighting. Or both. I’m not so sure there is a lot of difference between the two.

Frog follies

The signs of spring are popping up everywhere and love is in the air. The listserves are full of First of the Year (FOY) sightings. We got two easy new species, common grackle and killdeer, without any particular effort. Just had to be outside. Common species but they spell the end of winter. A bunch more should be falling in shortly too.

Last Tuesday we had a warm evening with rain. I went out hoping to find a salamander migration. Apparently the first warm wet nights in March salamanders migrate to any available pond for a big mating party. Even if the pond still has ice in it. This is the party of the year in the salamander world. I didn’t see any salamanders but I did get barred owls whooping and hollering. Given the unseasonably warm weather I may have already missed the big salamander event. 

Last night I went over to our friend Barb’s wetland to take some frog pictures. And hopefully see some salamanders. Couldn’t get a much better night. Warm enough to be comfortable, not so warm you suffered in waders, and lots of frogs. The sound was absolutely deafening. There was so much noise that I had a hard time picking out individuals from the background cacophony. Masses of boy frogs throwing out the frog version of “yo babe, wanna get lucky?”  A bit of a buyer’s market though. Something like when the fleet comes in. The ladies have a lot to pick from so the boys need to do something to set them apart from the rest of the sailors. I guess it’s all in the call.

Hey babyyyyy, hey babyyyyy!!!!

Beautiful day today. Molly and I went to the zoo for her photography assignment. She took pictures of a little stuffed monkey in a variety of settings. Looking through an aquarium at turtles, looking at fish, almost getting nipped by a llama, etc…. It was a lot of fun and made me think that I should do something similar.

Monkey checking out the boa from a safe distance.

With the time change this weekend it now gets dark about 8:00 PM. Lise and I had an hour or two so we ran out to a local lake and got two new species, American wigeon and lesser scaup. Then we ran over to another park and got woodcock doing their courtship flights. We were the first to report woodcock for the county. We tried to call in barred owl and Eastern screech owl with no luck.

Eighty-nine species so far. Spring is coming and new things popping in all the time. Lots of common things we should start getting soon.

Not too much in the way of birding today. We did a volleyball tournament in Dansville, Michigan. Hard to describe Dansville. It’s kind of like Oolitic Indiana, but without the nightlife. A gas station and two churches catty corner to each other. One church is Free Methodist and the other one is United Methodist. That must have been an interesting rift. You can be any religion you like, as long as it’s Methodist. I guess the take away message is that you can be free, or united, but not both.

We did get to check out Dansville State Game Area in between Vball games. No new species but the area has some interesting potential. Walking around there for a half hour was a lot more fun than sitting on bleachers. And we did have sandhill cranes fly over calling. Always a good thing, even if we already have them for the year.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LINDSAY!!!!!

We had a wonderfully warm day yesterday so Lise and I went out for a quick look at local lakes. Waterfowl, and some other species, are starting to migrate through. Unfortunately, with the warm temperatures came a wicked wind.  I mean a really fierce wind, barely able to stand up wind. Lake Lansing, our local bathtub lake, had waves on it. Usually waves on Lake Lansing come from the yahoos on jet skis burning off some testosterone.

Surf’s up on Lake Lansing

Using the scope was almost impossible. Lise even tried to use it inside the van. The only new species we got was ring-necked duck. Still, even with the wind one really can’t complain about a 60 degree day in early March.

Wicked wind

Desperate times

We made it back from the Detroit waterfront today. Always an adventure. Lise has a project down there and wanted to visit the site. This is a state park, right on the waterfront and made up of a hodgepodge of different parcels with different ownerships. Part of the park is already in place and looks pretty nice. As other parcels are acquired they will be added to the state park. That’s where Lise’s expertise comes in. Helping to come up with the best interpretation for the site.

It’s an interesting neighborhood with some really stark contrasts. On one hand there is the Renaissance Center, GM’s world headquarters. Gotta sell a lot of Chevy Volts to pay for that puppy.

A view of the park and the Renaissance Center

I’m sure this is bulletproof glass. I wonder if Hoffa is buried under it. Kind of like that St. Peter gig.

Then there is the Globe Building, which may become part of the park. At least we didn’t find any bodies while walking the area. Filling out the paperwork would have taken all day. And no, we did not even try to go into it.

Front of the Globe Building

Back of the Globe Building

Some of the neighboring buildings could be called colorful. This will take some major interpretation.

These quaint fixer uppers come with their own certified local artwork. Get in on the ground floor of the next gentrification. Just call the Dewey, Chetum, and Howe Real Estate Company for details. Ask for Fast Eddie.

After the Detroit waterfront we headed up to Huron Clinton Metropark’s Metrobeach Park. The park is located right on Lake St. Clair. Along with the St. Clair River and the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair connects Lake Huron to Lake Erie. St. Clair is considered too small to be a Great Lake. So if it isn’t a Great Lake I guess it’s a so-so lake.    

We got five new species there: redhead, canvasback, American coot, greater scaup, and the highlight – a merlin. I’m now at 85 species and Lise at 84. Still only a pheasant apart.

(Lise) We also saw a Great Horned Owl on a nest. The man-made nest was a wash tub wedged into the crotch of a tree about 25’ up. The GHO was our first species identified this year, so I have a fondness for them.

This weekend has been kind of nasty for birding. Friday night and Saturday were crazy windy, gray, and cold. There have been reports of woodcocks just a little south of here so we thought there may be a chance of getting one. Saturday, right about sundown we went out to a local park that looks like prime woodcock territory. I know that if I was a woodcock looking to get lucky I would hang out there. Anyway, it was horribly windy and cold enough that even the most desperate woodcock wasn’t willing to “peent”.

So this cold gray morning found us in one of Mid-Michigan’s more uncivilized areas –  downtown Lansing. A number of basically worthless organisms exist in Lansing.  Mostly scurrying in and  out of a white domed building, desperately trying to be important. They tend to come in two distinct herds, donkeys and elephants. Dominance between these two herds tends to cycle back and forth every couple years. In the most recent cycle the elephants have come to dominate the donkeys. Usually the dominance of one over the other ends up showing some form of mutualism and cooperation for the betterment of all. Not so much recently. The current crop of dominate elephants doesn’t seem interested in improving conditions for everyone.  Seems their only purpose is to better their own, irritate the general population and do what they can to disparage the donkeys.

Lair of the worthless

We did have a reason for being in beautiful downtown Lansing. We got a new species, peregrine falcon. In an interesting adaption strategy these former cliff nesters have taken to tall buildings. The tallest building in Lansing is the Boji Tower. For the past several years peregrine falcons have nested on this 23 story building. In the summer you can watch them fly around feasting on the ample supply of pigeons.

Two highlights of downtown Lansing – peregrine falcon and Decker’s Coffee

Boji Tower (Formerly the Olds Tower, named after Ransom E. Olds

There really was a peregrine

Beaner’s (Biggby) Coffee – Another of the few high points of downtown Lansing

Tomorrow we will be in another Michigan wild area – Detroit. If there are no more posts after this it is safe to assume we didn’t make it back.