We bypassed Detroit and headed north up the peninsula. Population density fell away as we went, northern Michigan has some of the least populated areas in the eastern half of the US and some absolutely gorgeous forests.
Our destination was Boyne City where we would be staying with very generous friends for a few days. En route we stopped at Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge. This is open to the public from June to October from an hour before sunrise until sunset. It’s a one way six and a half mile drive (10.4 km) mostly along an embankment giving good views over fields and wetlands. Views of the wildlife tend to be quite distant but it’s a good place to make the acquaintance of a few ducks, Sandhill Crane and Bald Eagle. Well worth putting on your travel plans next time you’re passing through Saginaw County.
Boyne City sits at the end of the north arm of Lake Charlevois an off shoot of Lake Michigan. We would get a cruise on both in our host’s very nice 40 footer. We also got to explore some nearby state forests and the Darnton Family Nature Preserve. Some of the highlights …
Green HeronCommon MerganserEastern ChipmunkRed Squirrel
Eastern Grey Squirrels were also quite common, a good proportion of them were black in colour, the melanistic form.
The American Sparrows are nearly as much fun as the Warblers. I might have to revisit them. One to keep you going …
Specifically the New World Warblers of the family Parulidae, if it’s opera singers you’re after you should head <HERE>.
The Warblers have something for everyone. For the bird watcher they are very close to addictive. For the taxonomist they provide a lesson in total chaos and for the superstitious their entry in The Handbook of the Birds of the World Vol 15 starts on page 666. Scary.
Authors have written books on them, dozens of books. Mt favorite is The Warbler Guide by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle. No voyage to the New World should sail without it. On the journey it will serve as ballast, once landed it will serve as a deterrent to theft … no one will steal your suitcase with a copy inside, they won’t be able to lift it.
Currently the Americas are home to 116 species, at other times the family has been submerged in a much larger family, the Coerebidae, or itself enlarged, or reduced, or in the immortal words of the HBW …
… which had contained, among others, the Neotropical honeycreepers, and placed the Conebills (Conirostrum) and the Bananaquit with the New World Warblers and …
If you’d just hold my beer for a moment there will be a new arrangement by the time you give it back. The one thing that does remain certain is that they are not closely related to the Old World Warblers or the Australian Warblers.
Identification is a challenge not made any easier by their frenetic activity, their changes in plumage through the seasons and their habit of taunting you from high in the canopy. I managed to capture a few presentable images which I offer here along with my suggestion as to identification. Should it be the case that you disagree please state your case for an alternative ID in the comments.
Cape May WarblerTennessee Warbler
One particularly confusing duo comprises the Blackpoll and Bay-breasted Warblers. The spring males are easily distinguished but in fall plumage things become challenging. Some folks simply record them as Baypolls. A very useful article by Tom Schultz can be found on ebird.
There is a little ochre on the flanks and the legs are black which indicates that this is Bay-breasted (against that is the streaking on the breast which points to Blackpoll but the ochre shows well in other photos and clinches it for me).
Bay-breasted Warbler
For some really stunning Warbler photos you should head to Glenn Bartley’s site <HERE>.
Australia’s national parks are actually managed by the states with grant money from the commonwealth. In Victoria a State Park has exactly the same level of protection as a National Park and is governed by the National Parks Act.
In the USA National Parks are Federal affairs while State Parks are run quite independently by the States. American State parks are quite different from Victorian State Parks. You are likely to find a golf course and tennis courts, you can take your dog, there is likely to be a full service camp ground and there may even be a nice hotel.
Maumee Bay boasts all of the above, although the dog can’t stay in the hotel (but there are dog-friendly cabins – prior notification required).
Natural values aren’t totally neglected. There is a boardwalk through marsh and woodland. It extends for a couple of miles and is an excellent way to work up an appetite for breakfast.
White-tailed Deer
Here’s the front end of an Eastern Fox Squirrel …
Eastern Fox Squirrel
… although it’s the rear end that earned it its name.
A night walk is sure to turn up a Racoon or three and there are Muskrat present as well.
When the sun is a bit higher turtles might sit out to enjoy the warmth.
Midland Painted Turtle
There is plenty of bird activity. Red-winged Blackbirds are abundant, woodpeckers are plentiful, there is the odd sparrow. This Heron was intent on finding its breakfast and took no notice of me at all …
Magee Marsh and the surrounding region offer a mix of habitat that is attractive to birds and other wildlife. Throw in the fall migration and the chances are good that a bird watcher from another continent is going to have a very frustrating time trying to identify lots of half seen, hyperactive, totally uncooperative little brown jobs. It’s so much fun.
There’s only one road into Magee Marsh, pity about the spelling, so navigation is pretty easy. The first obvious land mark is the visitor centre. It’s an attractive building set behind a small lake. Adjacent to it is a trail that takes a loop through the woods around some more water ways. The visitor centre didn’t open during the three days we were there and the nature trail desperately needed some pruning. The area wasn’t getting the love it deserved.
Continuing on that single road the woods give way to genuine marsh some of which has been mowed for the benefit of Sandhill Cranes.
Sandhill Cranes
And leads to an extensive parking area on the lake shore. Back from the shore there is a boardwalk through the woods again. This is in good condition. So, excellent access, shore birds on the shore, long-legged birds in the marsh, swimming birds on the water and bewilderment on the board walk.
Herring Gull
The Warblers are one particular group of American birds that offer excitement and challenge to all. They are migratory, so no matter where you live in the US you are likely to have some pass through your neighbourhood twice a year and if you’re lucky there will be a few that spend a whole season with you. There is a little book by Chris G Early that has advice for the beginner – start with the spring males. Cool, it’s autumn, I’ll come back next spring.
Well no, I’ll put the camera to good use and email the photos to my good friend from St Simon’s Island who is currently living in a motor home in Virginia. It’ll help to keep his mind off what hurricane Irma is doing to his house.
Heading west along the Erie shore the next birding spot is Ottawa National Wildlife refuge, this is more open habitat mainly in the form of shallow ponds.
Trumpeter Swan
Further west there is Metzger Marsh, then Maumee Bay State Park and if you keep going a little further there is Pearson Metropark which is mainly forest. Plenty to keep the visitor entertained.
The impressive skyline of Cincinnati welcomed us to the midwest.
You will recall that our departure from Florida coincided with the evacuation brought about by Irma’s impending visit. We were four days on the road. On this fourth day the proportion of Florida number plates finally tailed off. We hadn’t done justice to the states we’d passed through but it was our intention to spend the next few days on the shores of Lake Erie. It was time to get off the Interstate and hit the back roads of Ohio.
Our first stop was Fort Loramie.
It’s a pretty country town. Its heyday was back in the late 1800’s as a canal town. The Miami and Erie Canal made it possible to navigate from the Ohio River at Cincinnati to Lake Erie at Toledo. Almost 250 miles (400km) long, it boasted 19 aqueducts and 106 locks. Loramie is situated at its highest point 512 feet (156m) above the Ohio River. It was open end to end from 1827 until the new fangled railway put it out of business in the early 1900’s.
The Ohio countryside is fairly flat, open agricultural land dotted with big barns that hint at severe winters.
We stopped for a little birding at nearby Lake Loramie. Bird watchers do tend to be somewhat obsessive and Gayle is no exception. Tattooed down her side are the names of all the birds that she has seen and I have not. In Georgia she caught up with the Black-and-white Warbler and I did not. Fortunately we hadn’t passed a tattoo parlour en route.
The fall migration was just getting underway. At the lake we caught up with a few warblers including this little guy. It’s not a prizewinning photo but gee it was a sweet moment …
Black-and-white Warbler
Our destination that day was Maumee Bay State Park. Where there is an almost luxurious hotel conveniently close to the world famous birding spot, Magee Marsh.
At the start of the year I had no intention of pursuing a big year. However an unusually busy travel schedule has provided an interesting opportunity. My bird tally will break no records except my own but I arrived in Georgia having seen about 900 species so far this year.
Glynn County, Georgia includes St Simon’s Island, Jekyll Island and nearby Brunswick. I birded with the local A team, Eugene Keferl, Bob Sattelmeyer and Sterling Blanchard. A hundred more birds? No problem. In fact I don’t think I could have left the county until we’d got them.
Sterling Blanchard made sure that we got out to the outer limits of the barrier islands with Brooks Good of Coastal Outdoor Adventures. Brooks knows his birds and where they hang out. We went around Little St Simon’s to Egg island picking up shore birds and more …
Black SkimmerForster’s TernRoyal TernLong-billed CurlewBald Eagle
We had beautiful morning on the water. Brooks was taking his boats out of the water right after he finished with us and putting them under cover until Irma passes.
Irma has taken out the jetty. I hope Brooks can get back to business quickly.
“I now belong to a higher cult of mortals, for I have seen the albatross!” – Robert Cushman Murphy, 1912.
Murphy, ornithologist, ecologist, conservationist, was writing to his wife from the whaling brig Daisy in the vicinity of South Georgia. He describes the Albatrosses “Lying on the invisible currents of the breeze” which beautifully portrays their flight in light airs but it’s when the wind rises to a gale that I find them most impressive. When your hands are clasped tightly on the ship’s rail and you hope your pyloric sphincter will maintain an equally strong grip on your gastric contents, the Albatross passes elegantly by demonstrating a complete mastery of its elements. I saw my first Wandering Albatross just outside Sydney Heads and I remember it well.
The Albatross family is one of the four (extant) families making up the order Procellariiformes. When you go to the seaside you encounter numerous seabirds, gulls, cormorants, and gannets for instance, but most of them don’t venture too far out to sea. The procellariiiforms are true ocean goers, they may spend years at a time without coming ashore something that they usually do only to mate.
To get amongst them you have to go to sea. This weekend I did exactly that sailing about 30 nautical miles south of Port Fairy to the edge of the continental shelf.
Shy Albatross
The largest albatrosses are the Wanderers and the Royals but they didn’t put in an appearance this time out. The largest on this occasion were the Shy Albatross. They were present in good numbers and not at all shy. Slightly smaller and rather more numerous were the Black-browed Albatross …
Black-browed Albatross
The black margin on the underwing is broader, the bill a different colour. They come in two subspecies (full species according to some) which can be distinguished by the colour of the iris, yes you do need to get reasonably close. One has a dark eye, the other is honey coloured, both were present.
Smaller still is the Yellow-nosed Albatross …
Yellow-nosed Albatross
Sea birds tend to be black, white, gray or combinations of black, white and grey! Diagnosis has its challenges. Albatrosses are actually the easy ones.
All the procellariforms have tubes leading to their external nose. If you look at the top close up of a Shy Albatross you can see that there is a small nostril on the side of its beak. The Albatrosses all have two quite small nostrils, in all the other families that make up the order the tubes merge into a single opening on top of the beak.
The four families are :-
Family Procellariidae (shearwaters, fulmarine petrels, gadfly petrels, and prions)
Family Diomedeidae (albatrosses)
Family Hydrobatidae (storm petrels)
Family Pelecanoididae (diving petrels)
and at least one member of each family turned up. Here are a few of them …
Although we were now in the big city our quest for wildlife isn’t quite at an end. The city boundary is, in part, formed by the Nyabaronga River and just over that is the Bugasera Swamp. The river is home to Hippos which you can find with diligent searching, they are just around the next bend. And although the banks are intensively cultivated the birding is excellent.
HammerkopBlack Crake
Perhaps because the farming is mostly labour intensive by hand implement the birds permit quite close approach, a chance to sort out some Weavers, generally a challenging group …
Holub’s Golden WeaverSlender-billed WeaverSpectacled Weaver
Other denizens of the marsh include …
Speckled MousebirdSwamp Flycatcher
Whilst in a vegetated area we encountered two of the African Babblers …
Arrow-marked BabblerBlack-lored Babbler
and along the river some Herons …
Little EgretGrey Heron
To keep the hippos out of their crops the locals dig a trench between the river and their field. It only needs to be about two feet deep and two feet wide to keep the hippos out.
You sometimes hear the expression “And the food was to die for”. I don’t think that means it was poisonous, or so fatty as to instantly clog your arteries. I think the suggestion is that having eaten such delicious food life is complete, nothing will ever match the experience again, you may as well die now. Birdwatching is evidently nothing like eating.
I had seen the Shoebill, I could never tick it again, but life goes on. There are other pebbles on the beach, fish in the sea, birds in the swamp. The Papyrus Gonolek would be nice.
It’s rare, has limited distribution, skulks in the papyrus and is a lot smaller than a Shoebill. And considerably prettier.
You can’t beat local knowledge, our guide for our couple of days in the Entebbe region was Nanyombi Proscovia. It would not be easy but she would do her best, she said, to find us the Gonolek.
Prossy, the bird guide.
So, Mabamba for the second morning, back into our boat and back into the swamp along with the local people going about their daily lives.
We nosed along, sometimes through narrow water ways, sometimes across more open expanses, mostly driven by outboard motor but where the vegetation was particularly dense the boatman resorted to pushing us along with a pole. It was surprising how close some of the birds would let us get.
On the last morning of our Thailand tour Polly and Paul celebrated their 4,000th bird.
Well, they celebrated too soon. When everything was entered up on the computer it turned out that the true total was 3,999. Ouch. That had to be remedied and the opportunity soon presented itself in the form of a King Eider at Cape Cod Canal. So they jumped on a plane, I’ll let Polly take up the story …
We impatiently picked up the rental car and headed for the canal. We arrived at the parking lot just as a flock of Eider flew from Herring Run. After listening to a birder/photographer tell us what she had witnessed of the birds’ behavior we went back to the car drove a short distance. We told ourselves that after the flights we needed a nice brisk walk and hurried in the direction the flock had flown. Soon the granite jetty was as tall as we were thereby blocking our view of the canal. We climbed up to the top and continued our quest. The jetty was very stable and we soon discovered most of the slabs had been cut with a flat top. As we made our way we had, of course, to stop and take quick looks at each bird we saw. We passed a great many Common Loon Red-breasted Merganser, Black and Surf Scoter. It was such a treat to see so many of these birds in breeding plumage. We paid special attention to the Common Eider. As we approached the mouth our pulses quickened while our spirits dipped. We stayed close to the mouth for around 20 minutes and then realized as 5:30 approached we were probably not going to see the bird that day. We made the difficult decision to go grab some dinner and a pint of stout. It was only then that we realized we had had no food for over 24 hours. We had skipped breakfast, there was no meal on the first flight, not enough time on our Chicago layover and only a tiny bag of pretzels on the second flight! We would have to cross all our fingers and all our toes and hope it would stick around for another day. Paul was ahead of me, he had just made it to the sand and was turning to give me a hand. I was on the last boulder and debating whether to sit down and slide to ground. The next thing I knew I was falling, face down, onto the sand. I landed forehead first….a “graceful” face plant. Dizzy and dazed, slightly nauseated I tied to get up. A family close by had witnessed it and came to help. I was protesting that it was okay and would be all right, but as I tried to stand up I could not put weight on my left leg. Paul and I just could not grasp what was happening. One of the women offered to have her husband drive Paul back to our rental car. She her friends and children stayed with me. She kept asking how I was, checked my pulse and pupils. I finally managed to say “you have to be in a medical profession.” She smiled and said she was a Registered Nurse. When Paul and her husband arrived with our car. Her husband and her friends’ husband made a basket of their arms and “fireman carried” me to the car. They told us there was a hospital very close by and gave us quick directions, then programmed our google maps, handed me a bottle of water and offered to escort us to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical. We said we could get there, that they had already done so much. She would not let us leave until we promised that we would go straight to the ER. By this time we both knew we had no choice. Tears streaming down my face, feeling such a fool off we went.
The diagnosis – fractured pelvis. Polly spent three days in hospital where an international lineup of staff looked after her brilliantly. The airline rescheduled her trip home with no fuss and at little extra charge but there was one thing left to do …
we hatched a plan…get me out of the hospital as early as possible and go for the bird on our way to the airport. We asked the Ortho Doc if that would be okay. He said “no boulder climbing”. One of nurses was a beginning birder and was so excited…Wednesday was her day off and she was going to try for it then too!
We left the hospital at 10:00 and headed for the canal. Paul parked the car and went to scout. He came back breathless and excited. He had not gone far enough to see it, but had seen photographers and spotting scopes. We hurriedly got me transferred to my wheelchair headed to the spot. There was the King Eider in all his breeding splendor! We told the others there a very short version of our tale and one of them volunteered to take pictures of us. After about a half hour of continued viewing we were getting ready to go when we heard a familiar voice, it was Ellie the RN, and beginning birder. We got her on the bird, visited a little and headed toward Boston and the long journey home.
bobmcgee 