Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years

Haven’t had much time for birding. Work and nasty weather made it tough to get out during the week. Friday we went to a Lansing Symphony Orchestra concert. They did Appalachian Spring, one of my favorite pieces and something I have never seen live. Saturday it was catch up on chores and doing errands with Molly.

Today we went down to the Ann Arbor area, mostly chasing snow buntings. They have become our nemesis bird. Everyone else seems to be finding them, just not us.

Still, it was a nice day to be out. A bit breezy but nice and sunny. Lise’s line is, “There is good birding and there is great birding.” Good birding is just being out there. Great birding is knocking off a new species. We got outside had some great views of horned larks, kestrels, red-tailed hawks, and rough-legged hawks, which would have made it a good day. But each of us got a new species, making it a great day. Lise got a Northern harrier and I got sandhill crane. That brings us up to 79 for me and 78 for Lise. Only a pheasant apart. We tried, walking across fields and through standing corn, but just couldn’t scare one up.

Sandhill cranes, off Vreeland Road in Washtenaw County. For full disclosure I have to admit that I saw a flash of brown and said, “deer in the field.”

Spring is definitely on the way. We were in a flock of several hundred male red-winged blackbirds. Right now they are all buddies, hanging out and flying around together. By the time the ladies show up they will be mortal enemies, staking out territories and driving each other away. For now it is one big bachelor party.

One giant red-winged blackbird bachelor party. Hundreds of the boys, waiting for the babes to show up.

Went down to West Lafayette this weekend. I figured that being closer to the equator we will pick up some new species. Things are heading north for their spring business so some interesting things should be out and about. No such luck. At Prophetstown State Park we both added red-winged blackbird and I added Carolina wren.  At the Pokagon State Park nature center we added red-headed woodpecker. That gives us both 77.

The purpose of the trip was to visit family so we were not out beating the bushes too hard. Maybe a little more work would have added some species. Instead Molly and I played pool Saturday afternoon at a karoke and bubble tea place in West Lafayette. No, we did not sing. The world has enough problems as it is.

While not adding to our bottom lines, we did see some interesting things. There are some bald eagles hanging around Lafayette and West Lafayette along the Wabash River. Something that you would not have seen a few decades ago. Coming back we saw at least 30 red-tailed hawks along the highway. Most were in pairs. Pretty cool.

It’s difficult to not do some highway birding while driving. After all, we are trying to add to the count. I’m starting to question being allowed to count big year birds while zipping along at highway speeds. Going 70 mph, a car travels ~100 feet per second. It takes about a second to glance sideways and process that fleeting flash of brown. God that sucker was big. Was that a face pattern?  Was there a rump patch? Anyway, that’s more than enough time to scrape a paint sample from another car or to kiss a guardrail. Taking yourself out during a big year is probably acceptable. A dying for the cause kind of thing. Birding martyrdom.  Problem is, there are usually some innocent bystanders we need to worry about.
           
There are the ethical issues too. It’s amazing how easily a plastic Meijer’s shopping bag becomes a red-tailed hawk at 70+ miles per hour. How about that flash of black and white. Was that the hooded  crane that was down in Goose Pond?  An ABA Class 4 rarity. Only seen three times in North America. That had to be it. What else could it be?               

Sunday, February 12
University of Michigan-Dearborn Field House. Volleyball tournament. Deafening noise, whistles, yelling, commotion. Wasn’t I birding in the UP yesterday? Is this a nightmare? Did I do something evil in a prior life? Am I in hell? Apparently the answer to all of these is yes.

Yesterday we did some birding with our friend Barb in the Sault Ste. Marie area. As soon as Molly got out of school on Friday we headed north. As usual when traveling in Northern Michigan during the winter, we hit some snow and icy conditions. Interestingly, the further north we went, the better it got. By the time we got to Sault Ste. Marie it was just cold. Real cold. Like zero Fahrenheit. Like, Ice Station Zebra. Like, The Iceman Cometh. Like winter scenes in Dr. Zhivago. Like, what happened to global warming?  Still, it was better than being in the UM-Dearborn Field House for a Vball tourney. The field house is only slightly warmer. 

Typical birding with Barb and Lise.

Lovely day at the park.

Bird-wise we did pretty good. We were going for winter species. Didn’t get many but the ones we got were good. New birds for the year were red crossbill, hoary redpoll, pine grosbeak, evening grosbeak, Bohemian waxwing, and pileated woodpecker. Four of these;  red crossbill, hoary redpoll, pine grosbeak, and Bohemian waxwing are life birds for Lise and me.  The red crossbill was a life bird for Barb. 

Barb with a friendly chickadee.

We missed on a couple we were hoping to get. Sharp-tailed grouse and gray jays are regulars in the area. Gray jays we thought would be the easiest. They tend to find people, looking for handouts. Like deer in Brown County State Park. Barb even tried the sure fire “rattle the potato chip bag technique” to call them in. No luck. The DNR must have had a cull.

We saw some interesting places. One house had about forty thistle feeders up. There were easily a hundred pine siskins there. The plastic Santas, snowmen, and knocked over penguin were nice touches. The Dafter dump was another interesting place. Despite the potential health issues there were five bald eagles at the dump. Unfortunately the dump was closed so we couldn’t get close to the good stuff. Bird wise that is.

The ever popular Dafter Dump. Bird at your own risk.

Then there was the old Sault Ste. Marie power plant. A really interesting building that has part of the Saint Mary’s River flowing under it. Often times this is the only open water in the area. Some years a gyrfalcon or eiders can be found there. Apparently it is too warm this year.

The old Sault Ste Marie power plant

Right across the street from the power plant is Antlers, one of the dining highlights in the area. They have a couple hundred stuffed dead things hanging on the walls. Everything from a pride of lions to sharks and an anaconda. Not only do they have the classic Jack-a-lope but the incredibly rare fur-bearing trout. Fresh from the deep cold waters of Lake Superior. It don’t get any better than this. The food was pretty good. I had shephard’s pie made with venison. The part I didn’t eat is probably hanging on the wall somewhere.

The gang at Antlers

Why it is called Antlers

The very rare fur-bearing trout

The ever popular jack-a-lope

The “Pride of Michigan”, obviously not the Detroit Lions.

Lise being eaten by the giant anaconda. Maybe it’s time to talk about Mutual of Omaha insurance.

OK, so maybe the volleyball tournament isn’t a complete bust. Coming back from a coffee run we had seven great blue herons fly up out of the Rouge River. Number 74 for the year.    

Lise is down in West Lafayette. On her way there she stopped by to visit our friend Fred who is recuperating from a recent operation. She got sandhill crane and Cooper’s hawk while visiting Fred, and Carolina wren while down in West Lafayette. That ties us at 66 species each, but we have different species. Now I have to figure out logic functions in Excel so I can get a combined list for us.

I was glancing through Mark Obmascik’s “The Big Year”, from whence came the movie from whence came our biggish year.  Just to put our numbers in perspective, Al Levantin was at 245 species by January 19. That is about a new species every two hours. By our species-a-day metric we are at March 6. Or at about 1.7 birds a day or about 0.041 birds per hour. My calculator doesn’t do birds per light year.

Busy, busy weekend. We did get a couple new species though. White-winged crossbills and a brown creeper.

I’ve been chasing white-winged crossbills at a couple places with no luck. There were a lot of reports of them here this year but we just were not seeing them. During our scouting trip to Rose Lake Wildlife Research Area a week ago we spotted some pines loaded with cones. I kept thinking, “If white-winged crossbills are going to be anywhere around here, this is the place.” We went out there yesterday morning and finally found some, just where they should be.

This area of Rose Lake reminds me of the places we would hunt small game when I was a kid back in Pennsylvania. It’s a mosaic of farm fields, fallow grasslands, and stands of trees.

The farmers would keep a couple rows of standing corn as wildlife plantings. Hunting was a family affair with uncles and cousins. To hunt rabbits and pheasants we would walk abreast, some of us through the standing corn, some in the harvested area, and some in the grassy border.

Often we were successful in our attempts to scare up a pheasant. Usually we scared up more than we actually bagged. Even with shotguns most fourteen-year-old boys are not what I would call marksmen. Hoping to scare out a pheasant I tried the technique with Molly and Lise, but with no success. Took me back about four decades though. (Thanks to Molly for the pictures)

Yesterday afternoon I was planning on going for the usual weekend workout. An hours or so of cardio, maybe swim a mile. It was just too nice to be indoors so Lise and I went for a hike instead. Thanks to her acute aural abilities we got a brown creeper at Legg park.

Today was Lise’s fifth annual ground hog’s day party, one of the gala events of the year here in Okemos. A number of our guests showed up without coats on, something a bit unusual for February in Michigan. A good time was had by all but no birding today. Apparently there was something else happening today too, the Super Bowl or something like that. Tough to keep track of when you don’t watch TV.

We had a lovely day, temperatures in the 50s. So maybe there is something to be said for global warming.

Lise and I took advantage of flexible schedules and did some chasing. We went down to Furstenburg and Gallup Parks in Ann Arbor. Got five new species; hooded merganser, white-throated sparrow, belted kingfisher, pine siskin, and common redpoll. A hoary redpoll is reported to be with the flock of common redpolls but we didn’t get it.

The siskins and redpolls in particular were good to get. The others we are likely to get in regular travels through the year but those two are a bit harder. They are winter birds here, and you need to be in the right habitat at the right time.

Today’s lesson was, when chasing, don’t look for birds, look for optical equipment. The redpolls and siskins were reported from these parks but Lise and I didn’t know the lay of the land. We spent a good hour and a half wandering the parks, not seeing too much. Then I happened to notice a side trail with a group of people looking up through some mighty fine optics. Score!!!!

Well birding was a real bust this weekend. Friday evening Lise and I checked out an area at Rose Lake. It has real potential and is fairly close to here. We were there late in the evening though, just about dark, so we saw nothing new.

The rest of the weekend centered around Molly. She had a great violin recital on Saturday and received a number of complements. She did some Irish songs and I think everyone liked the change from all the classical pieces that were done.

After the recital we went to Zap Zone for laser tag. I got killed by a bunch of nasty little six-year-olds. There was a whole pack of them roaming together. I could knock off one or two of the little terrorists but then the other five of them would nail me.  Six-year-olds and lasers are a bad combination. What really hurt was the, “Hey shoot the old guy,” comment.

Today it was a grueling all day volleyball tournament over by Flint. Grueling for Molly who had to play fourteen entire games and grueling for us to sit on bleachers all day. Molly’s team took the silver bracket which is something like winning college basketball’s NIT. Still, pretty good since they have only had six practices together and this is the first time they played together in a tournament.

Anyway, there are a number of winter species southeast of here that we need to add to our list. The listserve out of Ann Arbor is always active. Lots of birders and lots of habitat. The Lansing area just is not a hotspot for birding. We are not going to add many more winter species without doing some chasing. Unfortunately the weather the next couple days looks nasty and not conducive to good birding.

Well now I’m up three species on Lise. Yesterday I had a Cooper’s hawk fly over me while driving through Williamston. Now I have a Northern harrier, ring-necked pheasant, and a Cooper’s hawk that she does not. She will get the two hawks but maybe not the pheasant. You need to be in the right place at the right time for them. We usually miss on both counts.

We really are not having a competition between us. We started the year doing most of the birding together. Circumstances of our schedule will be forcing us to do some birding separately so our lists will diverge. Most of the trips we have planned this year will be together so I doubt our final lists will not be very different. Either of us could be up by a couple species by the end of the year.

This Sunday Molly has a volleyball tournament in beautiful Flint, Michigan, and on Saturday a violin recital locally. We may get out a little before the recital but chances of anything spectacular are unlikely. There are a number of reports of merlins, white-winged crossbills, and snow buntings to the Southeast but not too much for this immediate area.

Lise had to go to Chicago so Molly and I went out chasing some new species this afternoon. The weather was gloomy, cold and clammy. I was trying for white-winged crossbills and snow buntings. Both species have been reported in large numbers to the southeast of here.

Busted on both of them. I found the park where the crossbills have been reported on a fairly regular basis. Several other people were there too, but none of us saw any crossbills. Looking for snow buntings, we drove the roads in the area where Lise and I saw the short-eared owls a couple weeks ago.  We found another birder parked by the road. He said that said there were buntings far across the snow covered fields that can be seen against the trees when they fly. I saw some small light colored birds but nothing I could in good conscious say was a snow bunting.

The trip was not a total bust. I did get a ring-necked pheasant and a northern harrier. That brings my list up to 60. That puts me at February 29 using the species-a-day metric.

We haven’t gotten any new species since the Muskegon trip last weekend. Molly is doing Volleyball on Tuesday and Thursday nights and I am teaching Wednesday nights. This puts a bit of a crimp in our ability to take off and chase things. This weekend doesn’t look too promising either. Tomorrow we are supposed to have temperatures in the teens and four inches of snow. I’m not sure who ordered that weather but I want to have a few words with them.

Saturday I have an all day board meeting with Michigan Nature Association. Sunday Lise is tied up with church things in the morning and leaves for a project near Chicago in the afternoon. It looks like the best we can do this weekend is get in a an hour or so chasing local possibilities like snow buntings. Everything else I see on the listserves is at least an hour from here, maybe two.

Next weekend will likely be our next opportunity to do anything substantial. In the meantime, I guess we just plug away at the little chores around the house or the things I need to get done for my class, so that when we do have a chunk of time we can make it productive.