May 2020: Still About the Birds

Highlights from this month included the following -- if you look back at the month of May historically at Standing Rush, it has been dominated by birds; 2020 was no exception . . .

I am always struck at how slowly coastal wetlands transition to green in the spring. But don't let
the drab tans and browns fool you: there is a mind-boggling pulse of new life and nearly constant change in the marsh -- particularly this time of year.

If eagles nesting on or adjacent to Standing Rush are "our eagles," than this is a pair of "our swans" from 2020, just setting up fresh quarters for a new brood.

Roy was embarrassed by his use of a Gatorade bottle for scale,
but it demonstrates the point: those are five big trumpeter eggs
that hopefully fledged as five more healthy cygnets.
The ecological success story continues at Standing Rush.

Another regular in springtime at Standing Rush:
a Bonaparte's Gull.

This juvenile seems content to be taking in some
welcomed sun & warmth.

Chalk another one up to the motion cameras . . .
The following are excerpts from literally dozens of trail camera images taken over an eight day
period on the southern fringe of the West Marsh. The mother Great Horned Owl (above)
accompanied what seemed to be three owlets individually on regular test flights -- day and night --
to a nearby, downed willow branch.

The last day on camera, the owlets were taking their test flights together.
Based on the timing of these repeated short flights, it is
likely the eggs were laid in early to mid-February
and the owlets were born in mid-March.

Despite the unprecedented cancellation of The Biggest Week in American Birding, and even 
amidst a global pandemic, the neotropical birds still made their annual pilgrimage.
Sadly, there were just precious few birders on site to observe their passage in 2020.

A warm May thunderstorm atop a fertile wetland is the recipe to fully break the bottled-up
relative dormancy of spring and launch into the lush green of summer.

April 2020: More Northern Fun, Assessing Winter Damage & Welcoming Spring

Management and wildlife highlights from this month included the following:

In addition to Roy's regular updates and photo-documentation, images from the property's multiple motioned-triggered trail cameras offer regular -- and refreshingly candid -- glimpses of activity on
and around the marsh (like this awesome impression of a Northern Flicker).

Northern pike trapping and tagging continued; 12 individuals were fitted with transmitters at Standing Rush by BGSU with initial assistance from the Ohio Division of Wildlife. This ~37" female was among the biggest of the 54 individuals tagged in all of the Western Basin of Lake Erie as part of this study.

Individual fish are carefully handled for the brief period leading up to and following their surgical procedure. The transmitter is about half the size of a AA battery, should have a 2-3 year lifespan, and then will ultimately reside harmlessly inside the body cavity. 

2-3 sutures and its time for release.

Management Priority #1:
A bent screw gate on the bayfront dike of the West Marsh
(lower left) was an early discovery after ice-out.

Within a week, Roy had a new gate fitted on the interior side
of the same pipe (insuring that even if the bent gate leaked,
the West Marsh would not inadvertently flood)

Management Priority: Poison Hemlock Spraying;
always scary when a plant gets a jump-start on Phragmites!
We're finding this new invasive is one of the first to green-up.

Management Priority: Phragmites Burning;
we are selective in what and where we burn, but this spring
practice gives us a much better feel for the condition of the
dike hidden beneath last year's growth.

Dike erosion has been a reality, especially amidst
continued historic high water levels
(extremely high water in the lake and bay often
forces managers to keep water levels higher
within the marsh to reduce damaging head pressure).

Spot repairs as part of ongoing dike maintenance gave us the
opportunity to experiment with some pretty versatile track trucks.

And Roy's make-shift stone grading drag proved to be just the
ticket to get the top of dike ready for easy management access.

Wherever we can afford to keep water levels low within the marsh this time of year -- or nearly 
any time of year, for that matter -- shorebirds (like these Lesser Yellowlegs) are sure to find it.

Marsh Mystery: What chewed the entire topside off this sizable willow branch, that in places 
extends 5' or more off the water?

Our guess would be a groundhog, but muskrat or beaver
are not out of the question.

Moment(s) in the Marsh -- Snippets from a Neglected Trailcam

Check out a new video that we just posted to our YouTube channel -- we just made updates to make it more publically available

When I first contemplated how to begin this blog project over two years ago, one of my first challenges was to come up with a fitting name. Moment in the Marsh came to me pretty quickly actually because I wanted something that would communicate my most fundamental goal -- giving any and all readers the chance to be transported from wherever they viewed their screen to give them a sense, even for a moment, for what it would be like to be in the field that day.

A somewhat rare glimpse of a coyote during full daylight, blurred by hasty
movement across the camera's view (click to enlarge)

My writing offers some additional opportunity to inform readers with context. The written word provides a venue to communicate challenges and lessons learned and/or simply allows me to journal (something I hope I can look back on years from now to appreciate even more). But it became pretty clear pretty fast that what readers really want to see -- understandably -- are the photographs. Short of being there in person, they really are indispensable as a means to communicate current conditions. Plus, they just convey life in their own unique way, especially when plants and animals are involved.

That's what makes this post so fun. Late last week, I came across a trail camera in our West Marsh that had a memory card that hadn't been fully downloaded in a while -- as it turns out, a long while. The files that I accessed this past fall where in one folder, but there was another folder with a mysterious name. When I clicked it open a couple days ago, I discovered that it had several THOUSAND images from the same vantage point, dating from just before Christmas 2017 through late May 2018. That's several thousand moments; and they all help tell a story.

One of my favorites of a doe in early spring light;
note that she's not alone
(click to enlarge)

A snapshot of nearly every day was photo-documented over this ~five month season. Not surprisingly, many of the stills are simply shots of passing deer, solitary birds flitting past, or grasses blowing in the wind. In all, the list of mammals included not just whitetails, but coyotes, red fox, raccoons, opossums, mink, squirrels, mice, and even a feral cat. Bird species included cardinals, blue jays, red-bellied woodpeckers, song sparrows, marsh sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, grackles, catbirds, and yellow-rumped warblers. The cattails, reed canary grass, dogwoods, and lesser-dominant plant species transitioned from snow-covered and dormant to lush and green.

None on this list is particularly noteworthy. Most sightings are actually fairly common. The collage above was assembled for a different reason: I was drawn by the tremendous diversity of visible life that was attracted to one solitary downed limb (toppled by wind and then cut by chainsaw). Starting with a common fox squirrel, I counted twelve species of birds and mammals perched on this woody lookout over just five months. In fact, I counted a fox squirrel -- maybe the same fox squirrel -- on 46 days out of roughly 150. Seems this little critter likes the view at Standing Rush as much as I do.

Even by early July, the familiar vantage point looks pretty markedly different than it did back in December (or any time in
the winter or spring, for that matter); the max temp (in the direct sunlight) is also a pretty sharp contrast from the lowest
recorded temp on this camera series (-12 degrees F) on a snappy overnight in late January