Sunset No. 1

The photograph above offers further proof that life in a cabin a few feet from the edge of Lake Superior in upper Michigan is far, far better than existence in a boring suburban house in northern Illinois. You just do not get sunsets like this in Chicago.

Of course, Chicago doesn't suffer stable fly hatches like the one we had last Saturday, when the wind blew in from the south and the temperature soared into the upper 80s. Stable flies are the vampires of the North Woods, nasty nanovelociraptors that feast on every square inch of mammalian flesh exposed to their fangs.

This was unusual. Ordinarily stable flies don't swarm until July 4 or so, when the smaller but equally vicious blackflies settle down (more or less), but the extraordinarily balmy two weeks in March that enveloped the entire Midwest has got nature happening early.

Some friends of ours arrived Saturday morning at their cottage down the beach, took one look and rushed for their front door without bothering to unload their luggage. They stayed in all day, and after a blue norther brought in heavy rains and 40-degree temperatures Sunday, said bah humbug and returned to southern Wisconsin.

We watched from our car early Saturday as a young woman in a skimpy tank top and shorty shorts emerged from her tent at a nearby campground and sprinted for the bathhouse screaming, arms windmilling and flailing, as a cloud of stable flies enveloped her.

I would not have blamed her had she shot the boyfriend who took her camping.

In fact, for a brief moment I thought that maybe stable flies might provide an engine for an interesting homicide. In the next moment I realized that first-degree murder—the only sensible charge to build a mystery novel around—isn't reasonable when biting insects are the provocation.

No prosecutor in this neck of the woods would entertain a charge more serious than involuntary manslaughter. Not after experiencing a weekend like that.

Mention in Dispatches

Scored a modest success with one of my macrophotographs in a local contest today:

(scroll down to bottom of the page)

See here.

What's this?

This visitor to my backyard bird feeder today looks like some kind of warbler to me, but I can't find an exact match in my bird book. Possibly it's a pine warbler, but the yellow patch is considerably smaller than the bird book suggests. The bird's about the size of a chickadee, maybe a tad larger, but noticeably smaller than a sparrow. Can any of you eagle-eyed birdwatchers identify it? Click on the photos for larger versions.

Great White-tailed Squirrel

This is a rare photograph of the elusive Great White-tailed Squirrel, much rumored but almost never seen in the deep wilderness of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I captured it this morning in the back yard of the Writer's Lair. Click the photo for a good look.

What's this?

It's a lousy shot (some kind of white stuff drifted in front as I took the photo) and it's cropped way too much, but what species is this bird? My bird books aren't much help. It's sparrow-sized, but with a heavy beak. Could it be a common House Finch, or maybe a more exotic Pine Grosbeak? I appeal to all my birder friends to tell me.

Mystery bloom

Can anyone tell me what flower this is? I bought a bunch of them a few days ago at the supermarket for a dinner-table centerpiece, and tried out a new ring light for my camera's macro lens with them.

Bird show

Great Horned owl

The crown jewel of Ontonagon County in upper Michigan -- basis of the fictional Porcupine County of my mystery novels -- is the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park at the western end of the county. It figures in all my novels, and yesterday the Lady Friend and I attended an event there that one way or another will make its way into a whodunit.

This was a splendid "Birds of Prey" presentation put on by the Wildlife Recovery Association, a refuge in Shepherd, Michigan, that takes in sick and wounded birds found in the wild and nurses them back to health for release into their natural environment -- or gives them a permanent safe haven if they are too injured to return.

Joe Rogers and Joanne Williams, principals of the refuge, brought a large clutch of birds, mostly of prey, to show a small audience in the park's little auditorium. Rogers is a born showman as well as an ornithologist, and he charmed the youngsters while keeping the adults rapt and laughing with his slick patter.

He astounded everyone with his vocal imitations of owl hoots and hawk cries. The Lady Friend said they were dead on; she couldn't tell them from the real things she had heard in the woods.

He opened the show with a pygmy python, hardly a winged raptor, but a gentle creature that caused adults to squeal and small children to beam while they petted it as Rogers passed around the audience:



Then it was time to bring out the actual birds of prey:



Screech owl



Great horned owl



Barred owl



Joanne Williams brought the barred owl to every kid in the audience, and their cell phone cameras got a thorough workout.



Broad-winged hawk



American Kestrel



Aggressive birds pecked an eye out of this saw-whet owl, brought to the refuge by the volunteer who found it. It remains as a permanent resident.



In his windup to the show, Rogers grossed out the grownups but delighted the kids in telling them how the turkey vulture delicately picks carrion out of its huge nostrils with a talon after dining.

Mystery bird of the week

Can any of you avian experts out there tell me what species of bird this is? It visited my back yard in Evanston, Illinois, the other day. It doesn't seem to be in any of my bird books. It is about the size and shape of an English sparrow, with striped black-and-white head, slate-gray breast and belly, dark brown barred wings and back, lighter brown hindquarters.

Dunkerque

This is for the bird brains who flock to this blog:

The last few days I've been watching the grackles in our back yard dip their food in the birdbath like cops at Dunkin' Donuts. That's an odd behavior, I thought, so I went onto the Internet to research it.

Seems that Carib grackles on Barbados do that, too, and the phenomenon has been extensively studied.

The reason for that, the aforementioned study says, is to soften hard, dry food. But the Midwestern grackle in the above photo was dunking a sunflower seed. It's doubtful that dunking softens sunflower seeds, at least immediately. Maybe the grackle didn't know that, or maybe it was just swallowing the seed with water, like a pill.

The grackles also land on the bird bath with dry leaves in their beaks, dip them, then fly away with the sodden mess -- perhaps as wetted material for their nests. They leave a lot behind, however, and by the end of the day the bird bath looks like a swimming pool left open to the elements all summer without cleaning.

This is not all that grackles do. They also congregate in fields and stare at the sky, as if watching for space aliens, and rub ants on their feathers.

Grackles are at once annoying and beautiful -- and a bit weird.

First foray to the Gardens, 2009

It being sunny and in the 60s yesterday -- the first real day of spring we've had -- the Lady Friend and I set out with our Pentaxes to the Chicago Botanic Garden in nearby Glencoe. While the L.F. sought blooms, I hunted birds. They were in short supply, except for a few yammering grackles and a solitary couple of mallards on the big pond, and I took dozens of shots of them. A bit later, as we investigated Spider Island in the interior of the gardens, a pair of colorful red-breasted mergansers appeared on the inlet, plunging for fish. The diving-duck species we see every day at the Writer's Lair on Lake Superior is the less colorful common merganser, and this was the first sighting of the red-breasted variety for me. Their red eyes are weird. Another check mark for my bird book and another keeper of a photo. Yay! (Click on the photo for a much larger, detailed version.)

A flicker of glory

Yesterday I experienced a rare moment that rational people would call a simple lightning stroke of luck but which William James might have put in The Varieties of Religious Experience.

I was sitting desultorily on a stool at the Lady Friend's office window, camera ready for action if birds or squirrels visited the feeder or birdbath in the back yard. Now and then a couple of sparrows (ho-hum) would flit into view and occasionally a squirrel (yawn) would hop by. Now and then I'd snap a photo just to keep the camera from getting rusty.

Suddenly a whirlwind of life fell upon the back yard as if dumped by a tornado. In an instant half a dozen squirrels madly chased each other around the place. At the same time, unmannerly grackles jostled cowbirds and robins at the feeder, and a cloud of quarreling sparrows and finches set aquiver the leafless bushes. I picked up the Pentax with 300mm lens and trained it on the action.

In the middle of the melee I spotted, out of the corner of my eye at the bird bath, a gorgeous northern flicker, a species of large woodpecker common to forests and prairies but not that often seen in the burbs, so quickly do they shoot across the scene. I whirled, aimed and fired half a dozen shots. (The one above is the best.)

Just as instantly, all the creatures disappeared and quiet again settled over the place.

I will forever treasure that moment. Especially since I got a keeper of a photograph. (Click it on for a larger version.)

Lurking

It's tough to get close to birds and other wildlife, both in the backyard and out in the boonies, for good photographs. Maybe I've solved that problem with this portable, knock-down hunter's blind, $40 plus tax and shipping from the outdoor outfitter Cabela's. The neighbors (and the Lady Friend, who took this photo) might chortle, but we'll see who laughs last when I finally get photos so large and sharp you can count the whiskers on a nuthatch's chin. My plan is to leave the blind out all day, then as the sun settles into the west creep inside it with the camera and long lens, a glass of wine and the iPod Touch with a Kindle e-book at the ready, and wait for my quarry to flit within range. Life could be worse.

What's this bird?

Yesterday I took a quick backyard portrait of a bird I didn't recognize. It's bigger than a sparrow and slightly smaller than a robin, with a dark gray back and head and white belly and underbutt. My bird book suggests that it's a Slate-colored Junco, whose range does embrace the Midwest, but I can't tell for sure. Can any birders out there confirm my guess? Click on the photo for a larger version.

Not the Stanley Cup

Last night our game camera captured a raccoon and a skunk as they waited for the ref to drop the puck. There were no other photographs of the two species together; perhaps they don't get along very well. The photographs that were taken afterward (the camera snaps them every 30 seconds) showed the skunk alone, suggesting that he won the face-off and the coon took his skates home in a snit.

What's this?

Purple thistle-like flowers fading to white, purple stem, long, sawtoothy leaves. What is it? Some kind of knapweed? It was growing all by itself on a sandy, stony crib on our beach at Lake Superior. If anybody has a clue to what it is, please let me know.

Ready . . . Aim . . .

But this skunk, captured in the back yard on the game camera at 1:22 a.m. today, didn't fire. I'm posting this photo as a public service to inform clueless city slickers that if a skunk should present its posterior in this manner, it is most advantageous to vacate the premises with alacrity, as Henry James would have said.

Bristly fellow of the forest

Here is the south end of a porcupine headed north, a photo I took by the side of the road this morning on the way to the Upper Michigan wilderness state park that is his namesake. I tried to entice him to turn so that I could get at least a profile of his head, but he remained in full defense mode, keeping his hind end, quills elevated at the ready, aimed at the threat.

This is the first porcupine I've encountered in years up here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. They are not rare, but they tend to stay out of sight in the deep woods rather than hanging with humans the way skunks do. Good thing, for while after a skunk encounter we could fix Hogan the Wonder Dog with a little elbow grease, it would require major veterinary surgery after a run-in with a porky.

Night-ridin' buddies

Deer seem to be the Swedish peacekeepers of the animal world. They get along with skunks and they get along with bunnies, as attested in this photo (cropped) from the new game camera of a neighbor two miles away. Maybe President Bush should airlift a few deer to Georgia instead of rattling dull and rusty sabers. The rabbit, by the way, is a domestic one that escaped its enclosure, went feral and now cruises with wild cousins.

Beijing-bound?

Never mind Michael Phelps. This bird, captured the other day at our backyard feeder at the Writer's Lair on Lake Superior, deserves its own Olympic gold for its prowess on the high bar. It is a red-breasted nuthatch, a sparrow-sized species notable for its ability to scoot headfirst down tree trunks. Who would have thought it also can hang upside down while it dines on sunflower seeds?

Not this city slicker, although many bird sources cite the nuthatch's ability to dangle headfirst from twigs while feeding. In fact, chickadees can do that, too.

But the nuthatch seems to have one truly singular habit, according to the Cornell ornithology website. It "applies sticky conifer resin globules to the entrance of its nest hole. It may carry the resin in its bill or on pieces of bark that it uses as an applicator. The male puts the resin primarily around the outside of the hole while the female puts it around the inside. The resin may help to keep out predators or competitors. The nuthatch avoids the resin by diving directly through the hole."

I wish I could do all that with my front door.

Manabezho Falls

Here is a scene familiar to anyone who has ever hiked in the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan: glorious Manabezho Falls on the Presque Isle River in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. I took the shot today, and am posting it because it's a bit of a milestone: It marks the first time in half a decade that I've been able to negotiate the steep half mile to the falls, thanks to the skill of the shipwrights who overhauled my keel three months ago. (The photo looks more spectacular in the original bandwidth-hogging 10.2 megapixels you can see if you click it on.)