A Bird of Peace

We're lucky that birds aren't really, really big. A number of species wouldn't hesitate to eat you if they could. Especially a lot of those more primitive, steely-eyed nonpasserines. If a Great Blue Heron was twelve feet tall, it would auger into you with that stiletto of a bill without a nanosecond of thought wasted.

Take the Sharp-shinned Hawk. Possibly not a more testosterone-filled, feather-clad ball of aggression exists. If these things were the size of a Piper Cub aircraft, we'd all be dead. Possessed of the fighting skills of Mike Tyson and the cunning savagery of Ghengis Khan, they also maneuver with the aerial skills of the Red Baron. We'd be tasty to them, and they'd have us for lunch.

Great Black-backed Gull? Swallow you whole, just like a gizzard shad, if it could.

Yes, it's lucky for us that they are small and we are big.

But some birds are the polar opposite of the primitive killers, and I encountered just such a species over the weekend.

I don't know how often Cedar Waxwings come into close proximity with Wood Storks, but if and when they do, I suspect these suave, debonair songbirds are thoroughly disgusted. But in a polite way. They'd never show their distaste at the oafish brutes as they wallow through the muck, churning about with those enormous bills and snapping up slime-coated crayfish. Then, of all things, defecating on their legs as they rest in the oozy mire. Nope, this sort of behavior is not for the waxwing - not one bit of it. I suspect the cedars whisper to each other behind spread wing: "Ooh! Buffy! Don't look - that old chap just evacuated on himself!" "Clarence! Really! These primitives are quite too much - let's retreat to the hawthorns!"

If there is a charm school for birds, Cedar Waxwings aced all the courses. Their pleasant manners and sleek plumage are a delight to behold, and the sheer civility of waxwings far eclipses most birds. Quite social, they are rarely seen solo, and engage in berry parties, twittering about the fruit-bearing trees all the while emitting ever so soft and mannerly lisping notes. Squabbles are rare, and in the event of an unfortunate disagreement, amends are no doubt promptly made.

They even pass berries down the line and feed each other, for shrike's sake! What in the world would a Cooper's Hawk think? Well, not much, probably. It'd just make a meal of 'em.

Leviathan of the Bonsai

Probably just about everyone who has visited Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area has noticed this tree. It may be one of Ohio's most distinctive plants, in part because it is along such a heavily birded corridor, has a very distinctive form, and it is one of few significantly vertical features in an otherwise open landscape.

While birding today at Killdeer, I could not resist the opportunity to do a photo shoot with this gorgeous Scots Pine, Pinus sylvestris (all too often mispronounced as "Scotch Pine"). I've driven by this tree myriad times; it has been there as long as I've been birding at Killdeer Plains and that's a long time. If you've been here, you've probably seen it. Jutting from the meadows along the northernmost road of the wildlife area, the pine is visible from afar and draws one's eye. Twisted and gnarled even more than are most Scots Pine, probably due to unmitigated impacts of fierce prairie storms sweeping in from the west, it for all the world resembles an enormous bonsai.

The contorted trunks spire upwards in a mad arrangement, beautified by the stunning yellow-orange tint of the upper bark that is so characteristic of this species.

Scots Pine is not native. It hails from Eurasia, but is fairly common as a landscape tree. This one was likely planted long ago to grace the yard of some old farmstead. Now, it sticks conspicuously from the flatlands like a sylvan beacon; the only tree of substance in the immediate vicinity. I'm sure many an interesting bird has graced its boughs over the years, drawn to the pine's charisma just as are our eyes.

Lucky Leaf leads to lots of Lichens

In the world of field botany and rare plant seeking, a bit of luck always helps. It's mostly skill - one has to know the common species well in order to recognize the unusual. And the botanist has to be very much aware of habitats and especially the nuances of micro-habitats in order to place himself/herself into situations where rarities might be found.

But a bit of luck always come in handy.

Early last April, a few friends and I went botanizing in Lawrence County, about as far south in Ohio as one can get. You can read more about that mission right here. Rolling along a country lane, I saw a roadside covered with Moss Phlox, Phox subulata. Not one to miss a good photo op with one of our most beautiful native wildflowers, we screeched to a stop and leaped out to snap some photos. What then happened is not uncommon when some good plant hunters converge on a site. Dan Boone, Ray Showman, and Jim Mundy began combing the slope while I tried for the perfect phlox shot.

Soon, one of them - I think it was Dan - stumbled upon a four-leaved clover! Sharp eyes to be sure, as there was plenty of the weedy non-native Red Clover, Trifolium pratense, growing on the roadbank and it is easy to ignore such plants when better finds might be made.

Four-leaved clovers are strongly associated with good luck. Some estimates claim that only one in ten thousand clover plants will produce an extra leaf. There are a number of legends purporting to explain the good luck that comes with four-leaved clovers, and here's a good one: on a normal three-leaved clover, each leaflet has significance. The first represents faith, the second equals hope, and the third means love. Add a fourth leaflet, and you've got a charm for luck.

To be scientifically pragmatic about it, and hopelessly unromantic, the fourth leaflet is merely a genetic anomaly. If you've got enough of anything, a small percentage will express abnormal traits. I've seen Common Boneset, Eupatorium perfoliatum, with leaves whorled in threes - it normally has two leaves. One occasionally stumbles into doubled flowers in the wild, like the rose breeders work hard to produce. And so on.

The reason four-leaved clovers turn up with some frequency is likely just a numbers game: there are millions of clovers plants around, so the odds of abnormality are greater, and so are the odds of someone finding the extra-leaved oddity.

But find one we did, and coincidence or not, the rest of the trip produced some stunning finds.

Ray Showman, Ohio's premier lichen expert, studying a lichen-encrusted tree trunk in remote Lawrence County not long after the four-leaved clover find. We went to this spot seeking a rare plant that I knew to be present, and ended up stumbling into an absolute treasure trove of lichen diversity.

Ray quickly found this state-endangered lichen, known but from only one or two Ohio locales prior to this find. It is Ramalina farinacea. Sexy name, huh? So far, the lichenologists have not managed to come up with alluring common names for many species, but I wish they would. I've seen two common names for this one. Dotted Ramalina is one. OK on the dotted part, but most people would say "what the heck is a Ramalina?" The other is far worse: Farinose Cartilage Lichen. Blech!

Whatever you call it, the lichen is a charmer, quite beautiful upon close inspection.

This was the BIG FIND, though, and the one that just maybe that odd clover led us to. It is Usnea substerilis, which is a first state record. This was very cool to stumble upon. It looks like a rotund piece of Spanish Moss springing from the side of the tree - very distinctive. I don't think anyone has even bothered to give this one a common name, although Usnea lichens in general are called beard lichens.

Who cares? I mean, what good are these mossy green tree crusts, anyway?

Ray Showman was the first, and maybe the only, biologist hired by a power company to study lichens. In Ray's case, American Electric Power gave him a job. Lichens are conspicuous and extremely sensitive air quality indicators. Their presence - or absence - reveals much about the health of the air and what contaminants are or aren't present. When Ray first began studying lichens near some coal-fired plants, no lichens could be found for huge swaths around the plants. As scrubber technology advanced and emissions became cleaner, lichens returned.

Hummingbirds and gnatcatchers also like lichens. They shingle the exteriors of their nest with lichens bound by spiderwebs. The elasticity of this construction allows the nest cup to expand as the young birds grow, and the lichens blend the nest with the bark.

Yellow-throated Warblers are bark-creepers, and often spend foraging time nosing in lichen clusters seeking the numerous insects that seek refuge there. One fascinating insect group co-evolved with lichens are some of the lacewings. Their larvae bedeck themselves with lichen bits essentially glued to their backs. Impossible to see, until a chunk of the lichen gets up and walks off.

Lichens look fantastic in winter, and that's a great time to look for them. Ray and I are heading back to this part of Lawrence County in early December, and it'll be interesting to see what turns up. Probably won't have any four-leaved clovers to give us extra luck, though.

Furry Spidermen

While out in the cool dark woods capturing Northern Saw-whet Owls a while back, we had an encounter with one of our more interesting animals. And one that is surprisingly common, although relatively few people have seen one.

If you are out in the woods at night, and very quiet, there are many animals to be heard. Quiet shuffling in the leaf litter gives away the little guys, like White-footed Mice, while louder clumsier shuffling might be a Virginia Opossum. Sometimes bloodcurdling screeches come from spatting raccoons.

But listen very quietly and you might hear a distinctive scrabbling of tiny feet on tree bark, coupled with chitters nearly inaudible to our ears. If you do hear this stuff, its likely to be foraging Southern Flying Squirrels, and that's what we encountered on our owl expedition. We heard the feet on bark, lit the tree up with the flashlight and there was the little guy, big eyes aglow. Like a circus trapeze artist, it put on quite a show for the group, racing high into the tree, darting from limb to limb with impossible speed and grace, and culminated his act with an impressive glide from the tree's summit out into the gloom beyond our pool of light.

These fuzzy little wack-jobs are something else. It's like someone took a quadripedal dwarf, covered him in fur, amped him up on Powershot and Espresso, applied superglue to the paws, then tied a bottle-rocket to his tail.

Off they go, roaring about the timber like maniacs. Hardly still for a second, and if multiple units are present short-lived battles are sure to ensue as Alphas and wanna-be Alphas duel for first place. The speed and sureness with which flying squirrels race about is nothing short of incredible, and what do they have to worry about? Falling? Not. A quick stretch of the appendages flaps open the patagial membranes, and you've got instant mammalian hang glider. They have been documented soaring for the length of a football field, and can even shift direction as they soar along.

No dummies, when a flying squirrel uses that beaverlike rudder of a tail to stall its airspeed and alight on a tree trunk, it promptly runs around to the other side. Good strategy and one no doubt learned the hard way as squirrels were sacrificed along the evolutionary trail to screech-owls who followed their flight plans.

Bob Placier, one of the owl banders, sent me a note reporting that a flying squirrel was recently caught in one of their nets. He reports that it was high-strung in the extreme, chittering and biting as they attempted extrication and only ensnaring itself even more. Eventually, they had to cut it free, thus liberating the big-eyed madman but essentially destroying the net in the process. Southern Flying Squirrel - 1. Owl Banders - 0.

If you've got decent-sized trees, even in suburbia, you've likely got flying squirrels. Wanna lure 'em in and watch the show? Slather Jiffy peanut butter up on a tree trunk, about as high as you can reach. Use the crunchy varieties; these are discerning little beasts and you don't want to make them mad.

I took the shots above at a friend's suburban feeding station, and it was a show, let me tell you that. Up to seven El Locos were in the tree at once, squeaking, chasing, combating, gliding, and grabbing Jiffy's finest until displaced by another beast, and every one of those scenarios generally took place in about three seconds per squirrel. They burn the calories, these boys.

But what a show.

A Blizzard of Sawbills

Eastlake, Ohio, just east of Cleveland. Hard on the shore of Lake Erie, it is distinguished by that large power plant looming in the backdrop. As part of its operations, thousands of gallons of heated water are regularly spewed into the lake, attracting scores of Gizzard Shad. Also working in our favor here is the nearby Chagrin River, which confluences with Lake Erie just to the east. The reaction of river water hitting lake water seems to also attract lots of fish.

The upshot is, if you are a fish-eater, this place is the horn of plenty - a piscine paradise. And Red-breasted Mergansers are as into scaly swimming things as a Londoner is into fish & chips.

Of course, it does get cold here. In fact, in a good winter - a winter as winters ought to be - the lake freezes solid. But not the pool of water behind the plant. When conditions are as above, the winter birding is spectacular.

But by then, when ice has overtaken Eastlake, most of the Red-breasted Mergansers are long gone. Now into early to mid-December is the time to catch one of Ohio's most sensational avian shows. This is the time for massive swarms of migrant sawbills (a colloquialism for mergansers) to gather. On Tuesday, I saw tens of thousands between Eastlake and Mentor, which is a bit further on east. Some estimates from skilled observers have put the total sawbill count seen in one day in this area as high as 200,000.

The central basin of Lake Erie is indisputably a global hotspot for this duck.



This video gives one a taste for the number of birds here. This was shot on Tuesday, and according to locals the birds had been present in much greater numbers in the few days preceding. And the video doesn't begin to show all the mergs that were present. Scanning out on the lake with my scope, giant swirling storm clouds of Red-breasted Mergansers were visible on the horizon.

Truly a spectacular show, and an act worth catching.

A long winter ahead

I love winter. Always have. That's probably a byproduct of a lifelong fasciantion with nature, coupled with growing up in the upper Midwest. One comes to appreciate the changes of seasons, and the diversity that comes with seasonal shifts.

We had our first big taste of winter Tuesday. Driving up to Lake County in extreme northeastern Ohio that day, I experienced near whiteout conditions just south of Cleveland. You know, dense flurries that made it tough to see, freeway down to a lane, and traffic slowed to 10-20 mph. Fun. Now our temps here in the great state of Ohio are hovering around or below freezing - 29 degrees right now - but it's cool (literally). I'll look forward to lots of interesting wintery excursions for Arctic gulls, hardy waterfowl, winter finches, and raptors.

But one does pine for spring, when the days grow short and the nights are frosty.

So tonight, after installing a fantastic new 22" monitor, I needed to put a new screen saver shot aboard. And so I scrolled through my vast archive of photos. And came across the following:

A sea of Wild Leek, Allium tricoccum, tumbling out of a ravine in Shawnee State Forest. This native onion - tasty, too, particularly if you are of West Virginian extraction - is one of the first plants to burst forth in spring. This shot was taken on April 5th.

That's only about five and a half months from now. A long time, sure. So you might as well make the most of winter. Perhaps consider joining us on the Ohio Ornithological Society's annual winter raptor extravaganza at the Wilds, slated for January 17th. Last year, 120 bird enthusiasts braved the Arctic-like conditions and had a ball.

Watch for details on that excursion here and elsewhere soon. And get out your igloo and anorak.

Purple Sandpiper

We have a lot of shorebird diversity in Ohio, but few of their lot create the stir that Purple Sandpipers do. Partly because they are rare, partly because they are unusual in their seasonal appearances and habitat, and partly because they just look cool.

I had the good fortune of seeing not one, but two of them today at Ohio's epicenter of Purple 'Piper sightings, Mentor Headlands. The long rocky jetty that extends out into Lake Erie is probably the best bet for birders seeking this species in Ohio.

Headlands veterans Ray Hannikman and Emil Bacik spotted the birds and had them staked out when we arrived. But my day started with a propitious omen, as a Red Crossbill flew over me not long after I got out of my car in the parking lot. We went on to see a Parasitic Jaeger, Little and Franklin's Gull, and a smattering of Black and Surf Scoters. Headlands almost always produces great birding.

The Headlands crew, on sea watch from the breakwall. It was a cool day - in the low to mid 20's to start - but not very windy. As you might guess, this can be a rather brutal locale when the winds are whipping and the surf is up. The Purple Sandpipers were along the base of the wall, foraging on the rocks by the water. Literally at our feet.

Purple Sandpiper, Calidris maritima. They breed in the highest reaches of the Arctic, and most winter along the northern Atlantic coast of the U.S. and southern Canada. Maritima means "of the sea"; apropos as this species spends a good deal of its life cycle in salt spray. But small numbers wing through the Great Lakes. November and December are the months to catch their act here, which necessitates venturing out in weather starkly different than what most shorebirders encounter. Broiling along the margins of a big mudflat in August is nothing like this.

Birds of rocks constantly pummeled by waves, the purples forage for small animal life in the patina of moss that encrusts the stone. Cute and dumpy, when seen well they do indeed take on a purplish sheen, set off by those bright orange-yellow legs.

The video above, while brief, shows the two purples rather well before they flitted a few rocks down the jetty and out of camera range. Always a treat, and the highlight of a great day of birding filled with other sensational finds.