Keep Looking Up!

A Change of Perspective                         3 January 2015

Trumpeter Swans, soft sunrise, photographed with Canon 7D and 300mm f4L IS

Trumpeter Swan photographed with GoPro Hero 3+ Silver, set to time lapse once every 0.5 Seconds.  Eventually, a shot makes the hit!  

The Peculiar Case of a Missing Fox Squirrel

Roll Call and Life Without a Favorite Species                 28 November 2014

White-tailed Deer buck, momentarily taking center stage amid missing biodiversity, Upper Mississippi National Wildlife Refuge, Wisconsin

Where have my favorite fox squirrels gone? With no photograph to describe it from this 28th of November, I will paint a picture for you using some carefully chosen words.  The fox squirrel, Sciurus niger, is the largest squirrel in the Great Lakes states, a plump, pumpkin-orange-bellied tree squirrel.  While it is has the same general build as a gray squirrel, it is larger, sometimes nearly twice the size of a gray squirrel.   It is not the tiny, hyper-active red squirrel of the pines.  It is a slower, laid-back and stately squirrel of bottomland forests, open oak forests, and equally at home in weedy groves of box elder trees adjacent to corn fields.  My grandfather used to hunt them as he walked through corn stubble.  I hunted for them in old groves of bur oak in floodplain forest.  While some gray hairs adorn the back of this squirrel, the overall impression is a reddish-orange pelt.  The fox squirrel wraps itself in a luxurious tail flanked by long hairs tipped in orange.

Red-bellied Woodpecker, showing the red of the belly, Upper Mississippi National Wildlife Refuge, Wisconsin.  The red crown on this bird often lends to its being confused with the less common Red-headed Woodpecker.   While both species are in the same genus, Melanerpes, the two species have very different field marks.  Like the fox squirrel, the Red-headed Woodpecker is missing from this bottomland forest gallery today. 

About twenty years ago, fox squirrels were abundant in all of the lowlands containing bur oak and swamp white oak along my favorite stretches of Wisconsin and Minnesota's mighty Mississippi River.  In many places they greatly outnumbered the gray squirrels.  As I write, I am convinced I will need to spend a few days sauntering through those hardwood swamps of my younger years to collect some anecdotal data.  I sincerely hope I am wrong. To the best of my observation, the fox squirrel has all but disappeared.

The wildlife images in today's post were made in an area that used to gain its character from the presence of Red-headed Woodpeckers (gone) and Fox Squirrels (gone).   The nature of this lowland hardwood forest is still rich with many other beautiful spirits.  It seems obvious to me that such biological treasure could allow just about anyone to see through the phantoms of yesterday's biology.  In all of its apparent completeness, this ecosystem now lacks two of my very favorite animals.  

Northern Cardinal...

Attention-getter! A Tufted Titmouse brings beauty to the bottomland hardwood forest. 

A little digging in my memory, roaming to the buried acorns of my past, I can recall harvesting fox squirrels with regularity.  I harvested with care and respect, bringing about ten or fifteen to the table each year.  Just ten or twelve years ago, I could expect to see a ratio of nearly one fox squirrel to every five or six gray squirrels while I bowhunted for deer in the hardwood prairie edges of Saint Croix County's public land.  Two years ago, I saw a fox squirrel in the middle of a country road just a few miles from my home.  I have not seen one since then. Is this merely observer bias?  Maybe my habits have changed just enough to put me out of step with the fox squirrels of our abundant fields and forests.   My stepfather, a man who has lived in an important coulee country ecosystem for fifty years, has noticed the decline as well.  While they are still around as a species, I feel I am witness to a widespread regional decline.   If the decline goes unnoticed, it may also go without remedy.

All images were made with a Canon 7D and Canon 300mm f4L IS lens.  All images were made while feeling sadly aware in the mysterious absence of familiar forest friends. 

Ice Flows and a Walk in Beauty

Trumpeter Swans on a Winter Saint Croix River             29 December 2014

Trumpeter Swans on a "go around" landing approach

A distant sound catches my ear, and, for a minute, I am convinced I am hearing anthropogenic, industrial noise pollution.   Isolated from the modern world, it takes me a while to figure out what I am hearing.  It is not some kind of mechanical destruction, not some internal combustion machine, but the sound of nature's power and changing fury.  I am hearing the sound of a giant ice raft colliding with the frozen fields of ice between island and channel.  I am hearing the power of a wild river.

Trumpeter Swans among the ice flows

Most of the river is frozen, but the wild and swirling currents here maintain open water year round. An unusually warm stretch in middle December has allowed much of the river to open up again this year, but the more recent cold weather has hastened a second freeze.  With gathered power, the larger rafts of ice now crash into previously frozen and stationary ice.  Splinters of ice continuously slide over the top of smooth, glassy surfaces.  The millions of smaller events together, intermingled with the occasional giant crash of two huge ice masses, echo in the river valley.

The open waters of the river have invited a large congregation of Trumpeter Swans, more than thirty of them on this Polk County stretch of water.  Many family groups have shared this section of river since the late autumn.  It is refreshing to see their great numbers, since the hot summer droughts of Northwest Wisconsin had recently exposed many of the swans to old lead shot from decades gone by, lead that had been too deep, too far out of reach to pose a threat.  In recent years, lower water levels introduced the old lead as a new threat.  Swan mortality was high.

As I walk along the river in bitter cold air, feet moving silently in fresh powdered snow, my eyes are focused on the new snow.  It is perfect tracking snow, and it tells me many truths.  The deer have been very active since the snow fell less than forty-eight hours ago.  Squirrels have been out and about only sparingly.  Otters and fishers have wandered here and there.   Grouse have been working at the sumacs, walking around in the stands of small trees, flying up into the berries, littering the snow with a history of their busy feeding forays.  The white-footed mice have been out only sparingly, much like the squirrels, but the rabbits have had at least one very busy night.  As my eyes drift downward, my mind is mesmerized by the jazz ensemble of trumpeting swan voices drifting up from the river.

Swan music, warm breath, cold air...

Otter tracks and ice, Saint Croix River

I cross a small, shallow, frozen channel and sneak out to a favorite island.  Wearing camouflage from head to toe, I nestle into the sprawling limbs of a giant silver maple tree.  The show is free, and within a few minutes, the Trumpeter Swans add visual artistry of dance to the jazz brass they play so well.  The air is cold, but I am warmed to the core.

As the beauty of the late afternoon sun drops below the western treeline and crowns of bur oak, white pine and silver maple stood out as black silhouettes against a frozen blue-black and orange sky, I move east to the forested hills and continued tracking along favorite deer trails.  In the silence of the forest, I can still hear the distant crashing of ice flows and the echoing music of swans.  A flash of movement draws my eyes to the snow laden forest canopy.  A Barred Owl perches upon a limb and makes preparations to leap to higher boughs. The forest is strangely warm and calm as night settles in.  I head home with my mind in good order and my heart invigorated by a winter walk in beauty.

All wildlife images were made with a Canon 7D, Canon 300mm f4L IS lens, and layers of fleece and Gander Mountain Guide Series camouflage bibs and coat.  The otter tracks and ice patterns were made using my Nokia Lumia 928 smart phone.      

Over the River and Through the Woods

Red-tailed Hawk and November Snows             26 November 2014

This image was made with a Canon 7D and Canon 300mm f4L IS lens along the Mississippi River as a gentle snow fell upon the surrounding forest.   A beautifully plumaged adult Red-tailed Hawk surveyed the changing landscape, and its patience with me helped to create an image I have been pursuing for more than two decades! 

A Sense of Everywhere...

Closer to the Wild Than You Thought!                    November 6, 2014

A mouse of the genus Peromyscus

My students and I have been compiling population information on small mammal populations for fourteen years in the same ten acres of old-field, forest, and bog.  This year saw an unprecedented jump in the population of white-footed mice.  In "Boom" years, mice use every corner of available habitat and begin spilling into adjacent habitats of poorer quality.   Our Mark-and-Recapture estimates of the Peromyscus mouse population indicated densities of roughly 85 mice per acre.  To put that into perspective, let's imagine the mice are evenly distributed throughout the forested acre. Since an acre is roughly 4047 meters square, that leaves approximately 48 meters square per mouse. Some familiar math, we take the square root of 48, and, Presto! That is an area of just under 7 meters by 7 meters.  That is an area of about 23 feet by 23 feet.  Put yourself in the middle of such a square, and you are at most just twelve feet away from a mouse!  A quiet, frozen, and seemingly empty woodlot is teaming with unseen life, potential beauty for the most astute observers!

This image was made opportunistically with a Nokia 928 Lumia Smart Phone and its Carl Zeiss optics.

Fields of Gold

A New Autumn                                                                 28 September 2014

Sandhill Cranes, Crex Meadows, Wisconsin

Even in July, the leaves of the elm and the oak lose their luster and mature into a deep and older green. Fall has been hinting, reminding us of life's ephemeral nature.  Goldenrod grow tall along the forest edges.  The prickly ash fruits wither.  Now, as so much of summer has lived its life, that quiet lull that follows the late spring's mad rush, autumn greets us with sudden and almost merciless pace. Life is a fast track, and every day must be savored for its meaning. In a few short days, the leaves give up the green, roll to yellow or brilliant orange, and begin the slow drift downward to the forest floor.

Paper Birch and a veil of bluestem

Wetland plants shimmer from pale green to yellow and golden brown, glowing as fields of gold. Senescence is not just death. It is preparation for new life, dormancy that delivers resilience, promise of future, strength and resolve, wise living, and investment in continuity.  Death of parts gives life to the whole, the roots living on.  In all that it does, the autumn senescence also builds the great stage on which great migrations play their scripted dramas.

Quaking Aspen grove

Migrating birds echo a strength of preparation.  Small songbirds, the North American sparrows and wood warblers, fill the cool, clear night skies with delicate contact calls, sweet voices from invisible lives just above, hidden in the blackness and endless stars.  To the unaware, they are not there.  To the aware, the gentle sounds ring with brilliance, color, and memory.  They are out there, even if we can't see them, even if we can't be with them.  They are just out of reach, just beyond what we can know. They are there.

With such a vigorous and heroic story unfolding in the night sky, I imagine the morning light will bring hundreds or thousands of feathered travelers, all of them letting down to the safety of the trees below.  Now, in broad daylight, I find the hen of the woods, the Grifola fungi, delicious and meaty, to be growing near the base of a favorite oak.  Sugar maples glow on the hillsides, prickly ash turn brilliant yellow in places, and basswood quickly turn over from green to yellow to brown.  The quaking aspen dance between lime green and golden yellow.  Everywhere I look I see the signs.  Life is traveling by so quickly. Autumn has arrived, and it has done so quite suddenly.  The cranes will be gathering.  It is time to visit old friends.

All images were made with a Canon 7D, just purchased as used in excellent condition and with the best of all custom settings! Thanks Bruce and Tamy Leventhal (www.btleventhal.com). The lens was my usual Canon 300mm f4L IS lens mounted to a Gitzo Reporter tripod with Gitzo ball head.

Trumpeter Swans, early morning light.  Can you find all five swans?

A Tribute in Water

Watershed Repose                  16 August 2014

It has been said and said often in this day and age that the quality of water is indicative of the quality of the human relationship with the surrounding land.  This is an undeniable truth.  A watershed collects the local (and not so local) history of the land, both ancient history and recent history.  From glacial silt to nutrient run-off, the water speaks to the character of the land. 

I believe the quality of a human life is relative to the person’s relationship with water.  My father has taught me this all my life.  He has shown me the song of the canoe paddle, the little whirl pools that roll to each side of the blade of the paddle, and he has taught me everything about where to find good water in the wild.  As a kid, and even now as an adult, there are some places where water for drinking is collected from the surface of a lake, a few dozen paddle strokes from shore, skimmed from above a tall, cold column of clear water.   The aim is not just to drink the water.  It is also to keep it clean enough for the next drink or the next drinker.  Conscientious behavior on shore is a discipline that ensures water for the future. Perhaps there is more poetry in this than can be written.   When we sit on shore, we can only imagine what the water looks like below the canoe, out there where it is clean and deep. But our lives on shore pay tribute and respect to every dip of the pan into the top of that distant water.  We know it is out there, just a few paddle strokes away. We are mindful of it, even when we don’t see it.     When we forget to dream about that distant water, the water suffers in our forgetfulness.  To forget that distant water is to impair our well-being.  As we sit on shore, tending to those things done on land, we must remember how cool and clean the water can be.   Perhaps cold, clean water is dependent upon hope. As water would understand it, the quality of a human life is relative to the person’s hope.

Water moves over the landscape like the passage of a person’s life.  It picks up and collects and tumbles random material about, shifting and resorting the meaning of the land.  It rolls into plunge pools, pulling life-giving oxygen down into unseen spaces, nourishing the unexpected.  It pulls at the soil as it rolls on through, changing the course of the lives it passes.  It provides a steady current that brushes and touches all who thrive in the water.   Water speaks to us as it moves, laughing, reassuring us that we are here, that we love, that we live.  We can follow the course of the water, watch it bounce and roll along, dance and splash.  Eventually, we are asked to see it off to sea.  Water is a journey, sometimes placid, sometimes turbulent, sometimes deep and mysterious.  The sun leaps and plays on shallow water, inviting and clean, wild and joyful.   When the sun dives to the west in my favorite northern haunts, the wind grows still.  Expanses of clean water flatten out and become placid perfection, a flat, smooth mirror that gathers in the eternal night sky and wraps it all around my floating canoe.  I sit for a moment, surrounded by eternity, stars above and below, suspended over cold and clean, seeing out into forever. I am embraced by the quality of hope.

All images were made with a refurbished Canon 7D, an EF 28-135mm lens, and a Gitzo basalt “Reporter” tripod.