We began our day poking into the Green Island rookery with our scope. The gulls were still there, but they were not swirling in clouds as they had been the night before. We end up debating the significance of the "swarming" behavior without coming to any conclusions. Driving east on the highway down the coast of Lake Huron, we went in and out of several bays, inlets and boat ramps. My idea is that birds don't know where the boundaries to those national wildlife refuges are.
Caspian Terns (Sterna caspia) are the largest of the terns in North America. I like terns because they are acrobatic, easily identifiable and have a generally clean look. Down next to it plopped a tiny tern, Forster's Tern (Sterna forsteri), our smallest tern. The difference in size made the situation crystal clear.
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There was a male Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus) on the side of a tree at Brullee Point. There we also saw several Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) along the road. We have seen plenty of "Cedar" waxwings during our birding trips and at home on our grapevines; we need a "Bohemian Waxwing" (Bombycilla garrulus) for our "Life List" so there was a serious discussion of possibilities and probablities. We finally let go of the waxwing issue and drove on.
An old man walking down the road with binoculars said he had lived there since 57. He talked about a moose that he had seen and a bear that had gone on his porch to eat bird seed. Berry was amazed that Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) perch on things from time to time. At the causeway over to the town of Hessell, we watched two beautiful blue-gray Merlins (Falco columbarius) darting left and right at high speed over the reeds. We were hypnotized and watched them for several minutes. Their swept-back wings are sharpened at the end.
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For lunch we ate at a cafe in De Tour Village that only took cash. We are in the backwoods of the Upper Peninsula, after all. After lunch we saw a sleepy Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) on a wire just north of that town. One of the best birds we saw was the Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus). This bird "courses" low and slow over a field, looking for mice or bugs and pouncing down on them from six feet. It is dramatic to watch, because anything can happen in an instant. The biggest bird we saw was an olive green US military helicopter working for Border Control along the middle of the Saint Mary's River, between Michigan and Ontario, Canada. Right where Al Qaida will infiltrate.
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We found the home base for the Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis) community in Michigan. There were 25 at one point. I lost count. From there we came north toward Sault Sainte Marie (Saint Mary's Rapids in French). In English the locals call it "The Soo". You can see Canadians piddling around on the other bank of the Saint Mary's River, Eh.
Robert
photos courtesy of kkarlson and wikipedia
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