Friday Bird Blog

©National Geographic Society
female long-tailed duck with 7 eggs
photographed on St. Mary Islands, Quebec

Despite snow and ice, there is abundant sun here. Earlier this week, Monday and Tuesday, I believe it was, the sun was brilliant all day long. After days of gloom and fog, it feels like life is returning. Today we’ll have fairyland for a while – the trees and bushes look like they’re sugar-coated – but after a few hours of sunshine, it’ll be gone. Time for spring!

Dawn now features noisy chattering from the feathered crowd. On Sunday and Monday it was in the mid-60’s, and the robin was in full voice, notifying us of the coming rain. Rain it did.

The Michigan statewide bird report dutifully recorded each Thursday night, this week features 3900+ long-tailed ducks, formerly called oldsquaw, along Lake Michigan in Allegan County, site of many a bird walk in my days of youth. The duck’s official name was changed to conform to British nomenclature. As well, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska petitioned the American Ornithologist’s Union to change the name, potentially offensive, because the bird’s declining numbers in Alaska would require cooperation from Native Americans to sustain the population.

The sand hill cranes ought to be making an appearance soon. They were like old friends on the little lake where we lived when I was very young. My mother taught me how to identify cranes and herons in flight when I was maybe three years old. I was a font of wisdom, knew the black-billed cuckoo from the yellow-billed, the cedar waxwing from the Bohemian. When you grow up with this stuff it doesn’t seem difficult at all, and, of course, a child’s impressions are so strong and clear, not muddled and over-wrought.

We have a serious robin invasion, lots of squabbles over territory. Time to put out pieces of string and hair, although robins will use just about anything to construct a domicile. Maybe I should have a contest for the most original nest.