Looking the Part...A Way of Life

Bald Eagle and Blood-stained Feathers                     16 June 2015

This Bald Eagle was feeding on a deer carcass.  Normally bright yellow, the feet are a strange hue of orange, an accent of dried blood.  The blood on the feathers of the face is more recent, as you can see a full crop on this well-fed bird!   Canon 7D and Canon 300mm f4L IS lens.  

Brewster's Warbler

Musings About Habitat               25 May 2015

Brewster's Warbler singing in prickly ash

The Brewster's Warbler is a hybrid, the outcome of a mating between a Blue-winged Warbler and a Golden-winged Warbler.  The two species are very recently diverged, sharing some similarity in basic song and nearly identical Type II aggressive song. Though it is clear a number of events have caused them to be two distinct species, hybridization still occurs when ranges overlap.  While Brewster's Warbler hybrids lack the black throat of the Golden-winged Warbler, each one seems to be unique. Some are pale yellow with a white face.  Others are largely gray and pale, like a Golden-winged Warbler, but with splashes of lemon yellow on the breast.  Some are not easily distinguished from the Blue-winged Warbler except for a pale gray cheek.   Check the face, the back, the breast, the wing patterns, and it becomes clear that there are many plumage possibilities at play!

Brewster's Warbler in young burr oak

 Both nest in younger, brushier habitats, though ideal habitat for each species is really quite different, the differences being felt better than described.   To me, Blue-winged Warbler habitat is found near young farm forests, mowed walking trails bordered by dogwood and prickly ash, the thickets within a stone's throw of a bluebird house trail, maybe even older upland forest adjacent to a wide and marshy clearing with a stream, dead trees, and a margin of sun-dappled grape.  In Blue-winged Warbler habitat, the red fox slips by just out of view, cows bellow in the distance, and elements of the wild are woven amid neatened rows of agriculture and forgotten back field edges. A lazy "tzeeeeeee bzzzzzz" rings out while Field Sparrows, Gray Catbirds, Common Yellowthroats, and Eastern Towhees join the song chorus.

Golden-winged Warbler habitat is a little more stoic, a picture of "up north" wild.  To me, Golden-winged Warbler habitat is found in a grove of young aspen at the edge of flooded wiregrass sedge, a broad finger of alder running far out into a wild and timeless wetland criss-crossed by deer trails.  It may be, perhaps, a wide clearcut patch of county forest stumps, brush and young chokecherry adjacent to a deep and dark forest of oak, birch, maple, and white pine,  Wolves have marked the sand road with their droppings here, and bears keep cool in the shade of older trees just down the slope.  Scarlet Tanagers, Nashville Warblers, Sedge Wrens, and Chestnut-sided Warblers provide the background ambiance to the invigorated "beee-bzzzz-bzzzz-bzzzz-bzzzz". 

A problem emerges in my habitat generalization, of course.  I have found Blue-winged Warblers in equally wild land.   But I also have found a common player where ranges overlap--European Honeysuckle.  My realization is just tantalizing enough as a hypothesis to maybe find its way into research.  As I write this, I find myself looking into the research of the Golden-winged Warbler Working Group to see if they have had a common thought... Could a European exotic provide ecological stimulus to influence hybridization?

Brewster's Warbler in young white oak

Brewster's Warbler lurking behind the honeysuckle flowers

Foraging in the honeysuckle

A wonderfully wet May, all around life is flourishing.  Time moves along relentlessly, and for just one month each year, Wisconsin shares nearly the same climatological data as a Costa Rican rain forest. The birds are here, back from the tropics, joining our resident birds, and they are busy!

Belted Kingfisher and beaver pond

Tree Swallow and overcast sky

All images were made with a Canon 7D, Canon 300mm f4L IS lens, and a lot of drizzle, fog, and cloud. A beautiful, tropical day along the St. Croix River!  Spend a little time afield with the Brewster's Warbler here at my YouTube channel!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcsjcRIjaU

Back When There Was Film...

Sedge Wren and Aggressive Display                     Date: UNKNOWN

There is a certain beauty to film.  Only a few years ago, we loved the different grains and the character given to an image by its imperfection.  We chose films for their colors.  I was a big fan of Velvia and Provia for their "Spring and Summer up at the Lake" kinds of colors, but I also loved the look of Kodak Lumier S.  The "S" stood for "Saturated".  The saturation leaned toward "warm."  Perhaps the greatest beauty to the film was the simple fact that we could get away with just a little more imperfection in our craft.  A razor-sharp look at a bird's eye was still ideal, but there just wasn't enough information in the protein-and-chemical matrix to cause us to throw out a shot if we loved it. I have grown to love the sense of anonymity in time presented by my old film.  There is no digital stamp, no record of travels in a series of numbered files.  A lone slide in a sheet of twenty archived favorites is at high risk for sliding into mystery, giving up its exact time and context to the aging memory.  This Sedge Wren was photographed amid the alders on the south end of a dirt road in Burnett County, Wisconsin.  I still know the exact spot.  The dirt road still exists as a levy, and the wire-grass sedge and alder lowland still beckons me to explore.  This Sedge Wren sang a territorial song there one year in late May, perhaps June.  It was after 2003 and before 2007.  It was a beautiful day that I remember well, but I really don't remember when it happened.   Sometimes the joy in a memory is the strength of the grain and the imperfection in the image.

This image was made with a Canon A2E that I purchased in 1999.  It was made with a Canon 300 f4L IS lens that I purchased in 2003.  The film was, most likely, Fuji Provia 100.

Sharp-tailed Grouse

Life on the Lonely Lek?               20 April 2008

Sharp-tailed Grouse male, displaying

Brushland prairie is rare, valuable stuff.  Very few places in Wisconsin have the right sands, a history of wild fire, and the right landscape to promote the Sharp-tailed Grouse.  The places that remain tend to hand wildlife biologists plenty of challenges and mysteries.  Piles of grouse feathers were scattered in piles about the lek in 2006. Perhaps it was the work of a talented harrier, a grouse lek picked apart by predation?  And what about the nests and the continuing promise of new birds?  Overrun by nest-dumping Ring-necked Pheasant, perhaps?  By 2008, this dancing ground held only a single bird.  He was determined, but, on this day, he danced alone.

All images were made with a Canon Rebel XTi and Canon 300mm f4L IS lens.  It seems like yesterday, but these images were made nearly seven years ago!

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.