A Sugar River Almanac - The Harbinger of Winter

10/19/2019


Dark Eyed Junco in our yard today

At this point in the year, it's dark when I wake. There are no birds at the feeders. The sun rises just after I have the kids ready for school. And it's fully risen when I walk out the door. Weekends become about the only time I can bird. And sadly from now for the next two months, each day will be darker than the last.

This morning presented the first time this year I've seen juncos visiting the yard. Three slate gray, Canadian sparrows descended on our Highbush Cranberry bushes before beginning their morning forage. The white V of their tail feathers is a dead giveaway as they zip in and out of the shrubs. They forage on the ground under the bird feeders and around the compost.

Their arrival is sequenced after the last of our summer migrants have left. It was just a couple of weeks ago when the wave warblers and grosbeaks made a last visit to our yard. We had one last Painted Lady and Cabbage White butterfly today along with a handful of bumblebees. The juncos visiting is a sure sign that the cold weather is soon to be upon us.

Oddly enough, I needed to snap a picture today. As common as they are; I hadn't taken a picture of a junco in years. They are frequent visitors in the winter and admittedly a bird I must take for granted. I sat down this afternoon with the latest edition of Living Bird which is focused on the loss of 3 Billion North American Birds. A graphic near the end of one article caught my eye; it was on declines in common bird species. Species that we not even notice are declining because sightings are still frequent. 1 in 3 Dark Eyed Juncos have been lost as part of this massive decline which affects many bird species including Blue Jays, Rose Breasted Grosbeaks, and Baltimore Orioles.

The weather today was beautiful (sunny and 60 F) so after watching the juncos, we took the kids for a walk by Goose Lake. While our Quaking Aspen and Red Oak have not yet shed their leaves, the oaks and aspens along the trail were mostly bare. That made spotting a kinglet picking at the edge of branches easy. We'd hoped to see fancy ducks like Mergansers or Redheads, but instead we found Blue Heron, Double Crested Cormorants and Pied Billed Grebes.

The juncos arrival signals the start of the end of the year. Over the next couple of months, we'll watch for American Tree Sparrows, Pine Siskins, and Common Redpolls who are looking to escape the dark and cold of the Canadian winter. It's funny to think of the impending Wisconsin winter a warm weather destination for these migrants. We'll be sure to keep the feeders full in anticipation of our cold weather migrants, and as the leaves begin to fall; they should be easy to spot.

A Sugar River Almanac - Visitors During Fall Clean Up

10/06/2019

Fall has come upon us in full force. We started the previous week with Monday's high just over 80 F. And the rest of week we barely got over 60 F with overnight lows in the 40s.

It rained almost every day. And until this morning, skies have been gray.

Next week's forecast is looking to continue the trend.

Fall things are happening. The neighbors' Maples are dropping leaves and yellow is creeping in where green once was. Squirrels carrying acorns and walnuts hop across the lawn, digging holes to bury their nuts for the winter.

So yesterday, I started cutting back some of the wildflowers. This is really an act of practicality. Ideally, I'd probably leave them all up until spring. This would allow them to seed themselves better. And leaving them up would give insects a place to overwinter. But real life is often far from ideal.

Cutting everything, given the number of flowers and flowerbeds, takes time. A few years ago, I waited until Spring, and it took 3 full days in the yard to get everything cut back and cleaned up. And of course the number of flowers has increased. So weighting a full time job, 2 kids and fall's limited sunlight, I now cut back some of the plants in the fall.

The garden path which I put in last Spring is now visible again. It had been totally covered by the surrounding Milkweed this summer. And Creeping Charlie successfully grew into mats across the sandstone path.

I try to leave as much Coneflower as possible. It's an excellent food source for the Chickadees and Goldfinches. I stayed small, sort of balled up, and close to ground. I heard the Goldfinches peeping around me while cut the plants back, each time I stood to stretch my back out; their party would scatter.

The tops of the Coneflower are brown or black at this point. The seeds are fresh for the eating. The dark balls of seeds have been picked over already in some spots, looking more like mohawks. As the flowers dry up for the fall / winter, the American Goldfinches descend them in bunches.

Only once did I rise quickly in surprise, scaring the finches off some distance.

As I was pulling out a mat of Creeping Charlie, a smaller, grayer neighbor skittered across my boot. Looking like two circular lumps of dark gray fur, I knew exactly what it was, but it's unexpected arrival and proximity caused me to step back out of crouched position quickly. The Northern Short Tailed Shrew scurried under an old log in the garden and disappeared.

Not the first time I've encountered a shrew in the yard this year. While weeding out a flower bed a month or so ago, I had a similar experience. Shrews are not rodents, but my experience with small mammals like Eastern Chipmunks in the garden is that they run away from humans. Perhaps on account of their poor eyesight, startled shrews seem to make a run for it right over my feet.

Shrews are a welcome sight in my garden as they like moles are excellent bug eaters and will prey on other critters such as mice and voles. The shrew has a unique tool for hunting; unlike other mammals, the shrew is venomous, and despite being small it's able to paralyze or kill it's prey. I take the shrews as a sign that the yard is healthy. If they are here then there is enough prey for them to make a living which means the yard is biodiverse.


American Goldfinch eating seed tops in our garden.


Old picture of a shrew eating safflower seed at our townhouse circa 10-ish years ago

A Sugar River Almanac - Warbler Day

09/29/2019

It started a couple of years ago. The first wave that I can remember was on Sept. 11, 2017. Eastern Bluebirds, Yellow Rumped Warblers, Palm Warblers, and Flycatchers rushed our backyard that evening. They were in the Highbush Cranberries; they perched on the cable line, they darted into and out of the wildflowers.

A week or so later, we had a similar wave of birds. And again the same last year.

Like spring migration just in the opposite direction. These birds have spent summer eating, nesting, and now they are regrouping and ready to head home. For the juvenile birds, it will be their first migration. They'll need to fly back to places like Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

It's a Sunday. And it's raining. Always raining. It'd been raining since late on Saturday night. When it's not raining; it's misting.

Sitting, eating cinnamon rolls and drinking coffees; there were first the year-rounders: House Finches, Morning Doves, American Goldfinches, and our juvenile Cardinals.

Each time the rain let up, the insect eaters came out. Small birds, smaller than the leaves on our Redbuds; birds about the size of the leaves on the Highbush Cranberries. Jumping, flitting, hawking to catch tiny insects.


Ruby Crowned Kinglet in our Redbud.


Yellow Rumped Warbler in our Highbush Cranberries


Palm Warbler - yellow under the tail is the give away


Common Yellow Throat in our wildflowers.

This is probably the last of these little guys we'll see this year. The weather this week is expected to get colder, and fall migration always seems to be a bit shorter than spring migration. With a lot of luck, they'll return to warmer places safely and find their forests or wetlands still intact and ready to sustain them over the winter. In about 6 or 7 months time they'll return to Wisconsin just as the leaves are first starting to appear. And we'll be here watching to welcome them back.

A Sugar River Almanac - Fall Visitors and Losses

09-28-2019

Fall set in nicely this morning. After a day of storms in what's been an unusually wet year, the morning was cool and gray and dank. The yard is full of berries, many of which appeared this summer. Nannyberries, Cockspur Hawthorne, Black Chokeberry, and Red Twig Dogwood in the front yard. Washington Hawthorne, Black Chokeberry, Pagoda Dogwood (mostly eaten at this point), Allegheny Serviceberry (totally gone by mid summer), and Highbush Cranberry in the back.


Northern Flicker foraging on the ground

Birds abound. We first noticed fall migration when in early September Northern Flickers took up residence in the neighborhood, making regular trips to forage in our yard. Unlike most woodpeckers, the Flickers don't seek out their meals in the trees above. They move somewhat awkwardly on the ground hunting for insects. If seen from the side, they may appear a drab brown, but in flight, golden yellow feathers are revealed as is a snow white rump. Flickers were present this morning in the back along with the usual suspects: House Finches, House Sparrows, American Goldfinches, and Black Capped Chickadees.

The front yard revealed two visitors of particular interest falling in and out of the Nannyberry bushes. Their flight was some what disjointed. We were surprised to see two juvenile Cedar Waxwings in the yard. We were aware of the Northern Cardinals who successfully nested, and we had seen 3 young cardinals foraging in the yard before. We watched Robin's fledge in the late spring but immature Waxwings were new. Could there have been a nest in the bushes or the nearby Oak which we were unaware of?


One of the Cedar Waxwings hiding under our bushes.

Our assumption was that perhaps like the Cardinals who only recently fledged that maybe these youngsters were late in the season fledglings, perhaps still learning to fly. We've heard and seen the large flock of Waxwings in the neighborhood. They frequent the bright orange-ish red berries of a neighbor's Showy Mountain Ash each fall. We left for a planned engagement; the Waxwings were hiding under the Nannyberry bushes when we left. We returned 2 hours later to find that both birds had died. Both on the ground under the bushes.

I can't say for certain how long they'd been out there in the gray and wet weather, perhaps since the morning or maybe they'd struggled all night in the rain. We'd initially thought to leave them be in hiding under the bushes like we would have done for a Robin fledgling, and now I'm left to wonder if that was the correct call. In doing some googling, it seems more likely that these young birds may have been intoxicated and may have perished from exposure or alcohol poisoning.

In our 8 years living here, I think I've retrieved 4 dead birds; two House Finches before this and now two young Waxwings. Death is also part of nature. And so in supporting a host of wildlife, occasionally things will die too. There's a fine line in knowing when human interference is helpful and when it is not. Without a necropsy I can't say exactly what happened to these birds, but the situation did start a conversation with my three year old about what exactly dead is.

I placed the Waxwings in the compost, lying them next to each other and then took a walk through the yard. Other fall visitors had arrived. Our Asters are full of bees today, a Painted Lady Butterfly has stopped by as well. The coneflowers in the back were busy with Goldfinch activity and a Common Yellowthroat pair hunted for insects just below where the finches fed.


Female Common Yellowthroat back by our coneflower.

Warblers passing back through the yard is a sure sign that fall migration is in full swing. I typically encounter the Yellowthroats in the local marshes during the summer; if they are in my yard then they've since left the wetlands and are back on the move. They'll soon be back in Mexico or Central America, and instead our yard will have visitors from Canada for the winter.