Ice and Light

Some snowflakes had come down the night after Ann Arbor had received its icy sprinkling and the next morning I was greeted by blue skies and a wealth of light.
After my prolonged lunch break the day before I was very tempted to stay at home and catch up with my excessively interesting computer work but finally succumbed to the begging and whinging of Nature to get outside and watch it shine.
So I eventually did, what can you do, the soft side of me.

I have mentioned in my previous post on the icy rain that it was remarkable how one suddenly noticed so many things as being extraordinary that were always missed or went unnoticed before. This was already obvious on my way through town towards the Arb.
Take this building for example.


What is so noteworthy about it?
Well, nothing of course, but have you noticed the shoes hanging off the power lines? Neither had I during all my walks to the Arb and back. Here they are cropped a bit :


Or this annoying branch that has always been blocking the sidewalk.
Suddenly not all that bad, this time, I shall think?


Well, the first sight of the Arb was more than promising, it was breath-taking. It hadn't been bad the day before without snow and a misty surroundings, as will be remembered:


But this time, it was just beyond anything:


Well, looking at the landscape with the sun in your back wasn't bad, but turning around and looking at the ice against the sun was not what one would call boring either:


The forests were almost deprived of birds (the creepy side to icy rain) but the trees just about managed to look good by themselves and without their usual avian decor.


I especially liked the sharp contrast of the black branches and the sparkling ice against the blue sky. Apparently I have always had a weakness for branches and my mom always told me that I would sit underneath a tree as a baby and just watch the leaves and branches for hours moving in the wind. It doesn't seem to have changed in the last 35 years because I still get the thrills out of sights like this one:


Even though bird numbers were low, with just a few species around like Northern Cardinals and American Robins, the local squirrels were putting on quite a show. There are three species of squirrels in addition to the vicious chipmunks at the Arb and it is great fun to watch them, I might write a bit about them at some point later. Meanwhile, here's a few picks:

Hey, man, where's the food!

Here below , the small tree on the left, that's Old Faithful, who faithfully kept all his branches.


There are quite a few American Robins still around, the most numerous species at the moment, and they just love to get a buzz feeding on the fermented berries. And as true gourmets, they surely enjoyed their chance to taste some selected berry sorbets.

The last few pictures are impressions from the Dow Prairie part of the Arb. There were still a few American Tree Sparrows around and to get an impression of how neat they can look under these circumstances, please visit the gallery of Andreas Kanon here. It is not possible to link to specific photos directly, so please go to his gallery, select "Sparrows" and then enjoy. Or just look through all of his pictures until you find the sparrow, you're likely to do so anyway...

Keeping an eye on Poe's "Tell-tale Heart"

I devoted some of my time recently to submerge further into the early writings of Edgar Allan Poe and discovered further proof of his connections to and profound knowledge of zoology, with a special emphasis on birds but also mammals.
Amongst a pile of old books and letters in the vaults of the library was this early draft of what was later to be acclaimed as one of his greatest, most haunting stories: The Tell-tale Heart.

I have taken the freedom of copying the relevant passages here word by word:

"It is impossible to say how first entered the idea my brain; but once conceived it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old chipmunk. It had never wronged me. It had never given me insult. For its acorns I had no desire. I think it was its eye! yes it was this! Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually - I made up my mind to take the life of the old rodent, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever."

As cute as your old average chipmunk may look, there are some amongst the leaves on the forest floor that do affect us with their stare, like this one I came across while wandering through the wilderness of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore early last November, and it is thus easily perceived why Poe ventured upon rendering this side of the chipmunk immortal.


Surely due to the pressure of selling more copies of his works to make a living, he later changed the subject of "the Tell-tale Heart" from a chipmunk to an old man.
A more interesting change however was an increasingly precise description of the old man's eye and the reference to a vulture's eye of a cold pale blue:

"One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture - a pale blue eye, with a film over it."

This comparison sent me on a wild journey towards the discovery of Poe's unexpected yet extensive knowledge on Neotropical birds.

Which vulture, I asked myself, shows a pale blue eye?

The first step towards the solution of this enigma was to refer to my photographic library in which I quickly found a picture I took of your average North American vulture, the Turkey Vulture (taken close to Ann Arbor in May 2005) which nowadays is the most common of North America's raptors and was surely comparatively common in the days of Poe.



Upon close inspection, I discovered that this vulture's eye certainly had no affiliation whatsoever to the colour of blue.
The same was soon found to be the case for Black Vulture, another bird likely to have been studied by the young and ambitious birder Poe, and even the California Condor.

I was thus at first left clueless in regard of the species Poe is referring to and - having his English roots in mind - turned the focus of my investigation to the Old World Vultures.
Amongst these species however, I equally failed in finding a species whose eye colour resembles the cold pale blue Poe is describing so vividly. It was only the Bearded Vulture that shows - as an adult - a pale eye that in some individuals may resemble a cold pale blue, but seems to lean towards a pale yellowish colour in most birds examined.
Furthermore, during his time in England from 1815 until his return to Richmond, Virginia in 1820, Poe is not known to have travelled to the mountainous regions of southern Europe in pursuit of Bearded Vultures and it is highly unlikely that during this time he had the opportunity to study a vagrant bird in the surroundings of London.

Having thus again utterly failed in identifying Poe's vulture, I turned my attention to the New World Vultures again, more precisely the purely Neotropical species as yet unexamined within my inquiry.
Here I quickly succeeded to my great astonishment and surprise, and the species now clearly identified as the vulture embedded in literature by Poe's "Tell-tale Heart" is no other than the King Vulture of South and Central America.
At first I was completely amazed by this unexpected discovery as Poe is not known to have ever travelled to the realms of this impressive beast. But then, gradually, a deep comprehension dawned upon me:
My discovery of Poe's vulture description referring to the King Vulture may indeed seem to add a significant piece to the puzzle regarding our understanding of the mysterious "Painted Vulture" described by William Bartram in the 1770s from Florida, not very long before Poe started his early work on the "Tell-tale Heart".
Bartram's "Painted Vulture", initially thought to represent a population of King Vultures in Florida or an unknown and now extinct species closely related to it, is nowadays generally considered to be attributable to the Crested Caracara. A quick inspection of the Caracara's eye colour however shows that it does not resemble Poe's pale blue, making it unlikely Poe was referring to this species.
If thus Poe is unlikely to ever have visited South or Central America to get acquainted with the eye colouration of the King Vulture, yet refers to this species in one of his tales, he might have come across a King Vulture on one of his travels through the South-East of the United States, supporting the identification of Bartram's "Painted Vulture" as a King Vulture.

Finally, a quick word on chipmunks: one day in the summer of 1988, during my year as a high-school exchange student, I was watching ducks on the shores of Lake Ontario's Presqu'Ile Park when I felt something touching my feet. Upon looking down I noticed that a tiny chipmunk had walked through the grass and was now standing on my left foot, looking up to me in a state of surprise before it made a quick retreat into the grass.
Back then I thought this was a wonderful and indeed cute event to have a wild and shy animal come up to you and stand on your shoes.
How wrong I was is only clear to me now after reading the early draft of Poe's Tell-tale Heart. The little bugger was probably trying to sneak up and tie my shoelaces together and then watch me fall over into the lake at my next attempt at taking a step forward.

Chipmunks, I tell you, the Evil Eye.

Breaking a Habit

Some of the positive things about New Year's Resolutions is that apparently they are also common practice amongst birds.
Let me explain:
Most birders will have what they call a Nemesis Bird, a bird that everyone else gets to see before they've out-grown their first pair of binoculars but this one birder, amongst all the birding crowds of the world, will never manage a sight even if it was a matter of life and death!

I have two Nemesis bird groups: rails (shame on them) and owls.
Take my birding trip to Michigan and southern Ontario in May 2005 as an example. I recorded 230 species, saw all 5 regular eastern Empidonax-flycatchers on the same day, had a Black-backed Woodpecker and Spruce & Sharp-tailed Grouse on the Upper Peninsular, a Summer Tanager, Kirtland's Warbler, great views of Henslow's and LeConte's Sparrow but ... not a single owl, neither heard nor seen.
Or my European owl list: lousy and half of them heard-only's.

But this year - for a reason I will surely never learn - one single owl in Canada's far North decided to have mercy on my soul. It sat there, somewhere on the coast of Hudson Bay on the first of January and solemnly decided that some Bell Tower Birder had suffered long enough and that this year, this one owl would make a change and break a habit of all owl-kind, which is to avoid Bell Tower Birders.
It took off and headed south until it found a suitable construction site right between an Interstate and the parking area of a shopping mall in South-East Michigan. Here it presumed there was a good chance some birder would spot it while waiting in the car for his wife (who'd be shopping), and the owl was right!
A few days ago the News spread that right at the site described above, a pristine and wonderful Snowy Owl had been spotted (without doubt by a genius birder, I don't know though if this was done waiting in the car for their spouse or what other reasons lead to the discovery).
It entertained a huge crowd of birders over the weekend and was photographed wonderfully, e.g. here (click on "next" and next and next, then skip a great Cooper's Hawk pic and go on for a real photo feast) and here (also check his amazing gallery for more pics of the owl and other magic photography).
Man, it was even filmed and can be watched here, here, here and here.
Fame's easy if you're a Snowy Owl!

Well, but this site is 30 minutes east of Ann Arbor by car and car-less I had to wait completely calm and relaxed (no, I always bite my fingernails, thank you) until today when the one and only Laurent of Gallup Park fame gave me a ride. It hadn't been found the previous day so I was even more calm and relaxed when we got there today around 9:30 a.m. and full of my usual optimism when in search of an owl.
Laurent on the other hand is relatively new to birding and it was probably his untainted enthusiasm that allowed him to spot the owl even before he had stopped the car.
Yes, no typo: he - and eventually we - spotted, not dipped the owl.

It was still there.

For me (and others).

To see (not only hear).

Sigh...

It was at first perched on a street lamp looking around drowsily with eyes half closed and we watched until our feet got cold and - yet again - Laurent came up with a great plan to save the day:
Next to the parking area was a "Panera Bread" bakery with a large window front towards the owl. But this wasn't all, nope, they also had good coffee with free re-fills and a huge supply of great food and two comfy armchairs were placed right there at the windows.

Man, this must have been the most decadent birding I have ever done: watching a Snowy Owl through my scope from the comfort of an armchair with hot coffee and a supply of donuts.

Finally it flew around a bit and landed on the ground not far away, giving the whole observation a more wild and natural feel. Eventually, after two hours of owl-worshipping, we drove - make that levitated - back to Ann Arbor.

Birding just doesn't get any better than this!

Oh, but don't worry, that's not all, not over yet ...

This afternoon I had two hours to kill while my wife attended some seminar in the south of Ann Arbor. There's a Golf Course right next to the seminar building and a Merlin had been seen for a few days along the eastern edge of this golf course in December. It hadn't been seen for quite a while but with nothing better to do, I asked at the office building and was granted free excess.

"Well, the Greens,... are you a Golfer? Do you know what Greens are?"
"Errr, no, I am not a Golfer."
"Hmm, never mind, just walk around freely, no problem, just don't fall into one of the ponds."

And so I did and didn't.

OK, it is a golf course, not a wilderness area, so I didn't expect Great Grey Owls or an as yet undiscovered population of Bobcats, but it was pretty nice with my first Red-breasted Nuthatches since moving here last October (gosh, they were so common all over the place in May 2005, what happened?), a Cooper's Hawk chasing around the city pigeons and in the midst of a thick flurry of falling snow (yes, falling, not zipping through!), there it was, perched high in a tree and looking around like the lion king: the Merlin.

Life, not birding, I meant life in general: it doesn't get any better than this.
Seriously.

Beauty and the Beast

Before I start, I'd like to mention that there are two sides of the story on icy rain.
There's the beautiful side which I have already talked about.
And then there's the destructive side (the title of this post). I am sure a lot of the birds I have enjoyed at the Arb before the rain crossed the river Jordan before being able to cross the Gulf, a few friends of mine were severely struck because they had no electricity for a few days (hence no heating, no warm water etc.) and a few trees at the Arb and elsewhere have suffered quite a loss of branches.

This young tree for example would have felt relieved at not having a central nervous system which would allow it to feel pain if it had a central nervous system that would allow it to feel relieved at not having... wait. Forget it.

You can see that the ice not only bent the tree down onto the ground (luckily not breaking it), it even pulled out the stick supporting the tree.

Now, here's the bright side of things, the beauty of icy rain.

Looking out of the window one morning I noticed that there had been a considerable amount of icy rain over night, coating everything in a few millimetres of crystal clear ice. I therefore decided to go and check the Arb in my lunch break to see if everything was OK and had survived the weight of the ice.
I was very glad to see that most trees were coping well, no serious damage done, and I failed not to notice the immense change in atmosphere that the ice had brought with it.
With the clouds still low, the Arb had turned into a misty fairy-tale landscape that Tolkien would have struggled to describe. Even the most ordinary things had turned into small wonders and the fascination that the Arb emits in its usual state was easily matched now by one group of trees, one single slope, in fact by every single twig alone.

This view towards the north is right at the southern entrance of the Arb at Geddes Road. This is the uppermost part of the small valley that forms the heart of the Arb and we are looking down towards the Huron. The section immediately to the left of this picture forms the border of the Arb with residential homes next to it, and these have a few bird feeders operating. Therefore one is usually greeted by a nice assembly of birds right after entering the Arb, often comprising of Black-capped Chickadees, Northern Cardinals, White-breasted Nuthatches, Downy Woodpeckers, Blue Jays and Dark-eyed Juncos. A bit of patience will almost always reveal the movements of a Carolina Wren under the bush seen on the left of this pictures and it is here that I got my best ever look at this species, approaching it without disturbance to within two feet.


From here I usually follow the path leading along the western slope of the valley which affords great views onto the open central part. The picture below shows the small ravine where "Old Faithful" is to be found and which is one of the most productive sites within the Arb this winter for birds. The bottom of the valley here is so wide that one small grassy hill is nestled within which I call "Philosopher's Hill" because in October and early November, before it got cold, one could almost always see people sitting on top of the small hill with a guitar or a book, once even a large wooden cross and so it seems that this small hill is an inspiring bit of landscape for those in pursuit of deep and important thoughts. I never ventured there but the grassy hill does inspire me to think of Sprague's Pipits. I wonder why...


This is just a random section of the forests within the Arb and they are just beautiful and incredibly varied.


I might have said it already, but the camera I was using is of the most simple kind, with no macro function, strictly auto focus and a built-in flash, so there was not much I was able to do regarding the details of the variety of miniature arctic landscapes that was to be found on each bush. As a matter of fact, this day at the Arb was not so much about binoculars than about magnifying glasses, and I hope the following images hold up to the richness of colours and shapes that unveiled itself before me that day.




This (image below) is the start of a trail along "The Ridge", a small ridge running parallel to the Huron River with a more open stand of mature trees. In spring this is a very good trail for watching warblers as one is at eye-level with the surrounding tree tops, but in winter it has been rather quiet. I did see a Fox Sparrow there once in November, surely one of my favourite - if not the favourite - North American sparrows and whenever a Hairy Woodpecker turns up at the Arb, it is mostly here.



This image below now finally allows the inclined reader a look at the famous Huron River, with "The Ridge" in the background. This area is called "The Beach" by locals - don't ask me why. There are usually a bunch of Mallards (real ones) hanging around the river and once in a while a few Canada Geese will test the acoustic of this area but it is generally also one of the more quiet areas regarding birds. On that particular day however a flock of 7 Eastern Bluebirds made an appearance and were another breathtaking treat in the white and misty trees of the Arb.


Here's an image of one of the Bluebirds. Oh, come on, show some good will, I don't have a fancy camera and they did look amazing in this kind of landscape, their blue backs being a reflection of their icy surroundings.


This section of the Arb (see below), which runs along the banks of the Huron river to the east, is called the Dow Prairie. I initially thought this name was chosen to encourage breeding Henslow's Sparrows to settle Dow(n) there, but it was probably named after Alden B. Dow.
This small patch of high grass prairie usually hosts a few sparrows, mostly American Tree Sparrows and White-throated Sparrows in the bushes along its edge. The most unusual bird species I have found here (in an Arb context) were Horned Lark and a Fox Sparrow. It is also not too unusual to hear the faint whispers of Golden-crowned Kinglets amongst the tall stems and bundles of grass, and trying to catch a glimpse is an excellent practice for secretive sparrows next spring.


I eventually returned home very happy and content.

Little did I realize what wonders the next day would bring...

Pictures !!

Hurrah, I just picked up a few of the digitalized films and am actually able to put some relatively decent pictures up on my blog. What you are about to see is not from Germany back in 2006, it isn't even from Michigan or Ontario in May 2005, nope, it is amazingly recent for the scope of this blog: the following images are from November 2006, not even 3 months ago.
Can you believe it?
No you can't because most blog will usually contain pictures from the day the post was written, but hey, I told you I will improve and I am simply taking it step by step.
So, now for starters a few images of the Arb from early last November.


This (above) is one of the nicest views in the Arb. The Arb is basically a small park, well an Arboretum, surrounding a small and steep valley at the southern flank of the Huron River Valley. The bottom of the valley is an open meadow and the slopes surrounding this open space are filled with all kinds of trees. Here we are looking towards the north where the Huron river flows from left to right.
I called this fiery red tree "Old Faithful" because it was amongst the very last trees to lose its foliage, but of course by now it is just as completely stripped off its colours as the rest of the trees.
Here's another view at "Old Faithful":


This little ravine is usually one of the more productive areas of the Arb and here I have seen - amongst others - a few Hermit Thrushes, Carolina Wrens, a Sapsucker and as a real cracker a rather late Orange-crowned Warbler some day in November (if you want the precise date, leave a comment, I am not rushing for my note book now).


Well, Bell Tower Birding is always striving to provide new superlatives to its many, many readers and yet again, we have easily managed to produce something never seen before on the Internet. It really is a world record and we kindly ask you to not violate copyright regulations because I still haven't figured out just yet how to best make money out of this:

The worst ever picture of a Northern Cardinal!


I know what you are thinking: where's the ice, where the sparkling and the sun and all those great pictures we were promised recently.
Well, I have those tucked under my belt and will write up some more posts about the Arb in the next few days. I just got them late today and can't think of anything to do for the moment other than just posting them, for which I'd say they are too good (always having the usual quality of my photography in mind).
I therefore hope you were somewhat disappointed at these images and will be eager to return soon for much and many more.
Until then ... happy birding!

A New Link

I have added a new Link to my site, Dean Birders.

In the "about us" section, they write:

"This project was the result of two keen birdwatchers getting together and wanting to share their hobby with those that have difficulty getting out and about. We want to set up feeder stations and nesting boxes in the gardens of those people that are either elderly or have a disability and are limited to the house."

I think that is a very neat project and they have a great bird gallery, too!
Well worth checking out.

Birding Bits

Yesterday was a very enjoyable day because I went birding with a French guy named Laurent. We met through the local birders email forum and decided to team up yesterday for some birding through the Arb and along the Huron at Gallup Park.
It was great fun birding with Laurent and obviously the birds thought so, too because quite a few goodies showed up, like a lone Hermit Thrush at the Arb, a whole bunch of Hooded and Common Mergansers, 4 beautiful Eastern Bluebirds up close, a Sharp-shinned Hawk attacking a flock of Starlings in midair and as a real price a Great White Egret amongst at least 2 Great Blue Herons.
This is apparently the first Great White Egret ever to spend the winter here around Ann Arbor and it was reported by numerous observers in the weeks before.
Today there is a harsh horizontal movement of Snow again, some of it even hitting the ground (presumably after a collision of two snow flakes one snow flake crashes to the ground while the other one gains speed, this way causing the whole snow storm to accelerate even more until it reaches Florida, melts etc.). Well, maybe if we went to Gallup Park today there would be two Great White Herons with the Great White Egret?