County Parks Tour (Fox Science Preserve)

It has been warm but dark and stormy around here as of late. We've visited a couple of our favorite county parks, sites that we were already familiar with, to fill out the site records for our summer tour project, but only today did we finally visit another park that was completely new to us. Fox Science Preserve is county park land on the site of an old gravel pit. The pit was used to mine gravel for the creation of I94 over fifty years ago, then the family that owned the land closed it to mining and gave the space over to the park system.

The park is starkly different from those that we usually visit. Having been a gravel pit, it is a low, open valley surrounded by wooded hills. In my mind, the terrain is reminiscent of the southwest—a vast rocky landscape dotted with scrubby bushes—only it also has low lying wet areas. Because it was mined for gravel, the area boasts large rock that were uncovered, and a unique look at the geological underlayer, and the park system has used this to its benefit. Instead of the usual meandering hiking trails intended to keep visitors in specific areas, the entire floor of the valley seems open to exploration, and signs describing and explaining the topography and its geologic significance are located throughout. Apparently it is commonly used by local schools for field trips, although I don't remember having ever been here before myself.

We had a really great morning together here. It was cool and overcast when we started out, but sunny and warming as we left. Though the park trails only measure about .8 miles, we spent over two hours exploring everything there was to see, and looking closely for bird and animal sightings. We saw over thirty species of bird, including the Belted Kingfisher and the Northern Flicker, a wide variety of insects, and evidence of mammals, as well: a good haul for such a small area! I was surprised by how much we enjoyed the park, and because it is so close to home, I imagine we'll be back to enjoy walks together when we are short on time but longing for a little quiet space in nature.

Spider web in deer track

Igneous rock

Metamorphic rock

Sedimentary rock

Field Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Eastern Bluebird, female

Golden-backed Snipe Fly

Red-winged Blackbirds, female

This week's favorite hiking moments

It was a rainy week, and a little chilly again, too, but we had some good birding opportunities anyhow, like watching the swallows play over the lake at Dolph. We captured four different species on our camera card (can't say film anymore, eh?) to positively ID at home; the tree and barn swallows are easy to ID in the field, but the other two we weren't sure about. On another walk through the same park, we got within three yards or so of a Great Blue Heron fishing in the pond area. We also saw a bit of the fuzzier side of nature this week.

Northern Rough-winged Swallow (brown above with brown shading below)

Bank Swallow (brown above, white below with a brown ring, or "nacklace", around the neck)

Barn Swallow (blue above, peach/brown chest and chin, white belly)

Tree Swallow (blue above, white below)

Eastern Kingbird (not a Swallow, but he looks like he's wearing a funny hat here)

Eastern Cottontail

Great Blue Heron

American Redstart, female

Snapping Turtle (in the parking lot)

Robin, after a bath

County Parks Tour (part 1)

With the advent of real spring weather comes a decline in average birding success rates. What I mean by that, of course, is that gray, rainy days and thickly leaved trees make it hard to see the birds, and almost impossible to get pictures. On the other hand, though, hiking itself is more enjoyable in a greener environment, and the wild flowers are really starting to spring open everywhere.

Last year we made a goal for ourselves to hike every single county park and preserve in Washtenaw over the course of the summer. It's a big undertaking, with over thirty sites to visit, and with so many travel plans last year we never quite reached that goal. So this year we're going to try again. We've got a map and a checklist and we're methodically crossing them off, one park at a time. If we can visit at least two parks a week, we should be good to go, and we're off to a good start.

At each park we make a record of the date, time, and duration of the visit, and the weather conditions; we note the size of the park, and describe its basic terrain and type of ecosystem or habitat; finally, we make note of all the species we see there (that we can positively identify). This week we visited two parks in the Northeast corner of the county. The day of our visit was cold and dark, but at least it was dry, and we had a good time. We spotted a variety of birds, including a turkey that was trying to hide in the grass, and identified evidence of a variety of nocturnal or crepuscular mammals. We also added wildflowers and trees to our species lists.

Tom A. Freeman Preserve

Ruby-throated Hummingbird, female

Eastern Wood-pewee

Wild Turkey, female

Indigo Bunting

Raymond F. Goodrich Preserve

House Wren

Gray Catbird

We also made a foray into a new township preserve in our area. The trails are not yet well developed, but it's a beautiful hidden spot with lots of wet areas and islands to explore. The best part of the hike, aside from the fact that we got to do it as a whole family, was our encounter with a Wood Thrush. I've wanted to see one for as long as I can remember. They have a beautiful, almost haunting call that sounds a little like water, and it echoes through the woods even while the vocalist remains well hidden, usually on the forest floor. On this hike, though, we could hear that he was close. To verify that I had identified the call right, I got out my phone and played it on my Audubon app. Not only was it the right call, but our friend in the woods answered. We had a short conversation after that, with him getting a little closer every time I played his tune and he'd answered. Finally he hopped out of the woods and onto a branch. He only stayed long enough to figure out he'd been duped and shoot me a disapproving glance, but that was just enough time for me to get the good look we'd been waiting for, and for me to snap a quick (and thus blurry) photo to share.

Wood Thrush

Magee Marsh

We've been having a great time with the bird migration. We've gotten out and on the hiking trails more than usual and, while seeking out rare bird sightings, have really enjoying the outdoor time in our beautiful spring weather and the first blushes of spring in pretty little blooms on trees and plants everywhere.

We're really fortunate to have a lot of parks and preserves nearby. We're just ten minutes from some of the best birding and hiking spots in southeast Michigan, and our county parks system is pretty rich in beautiful lands. But in Ohio, an hour and a half away on the shore of Lake Eerie, is Magee Marsh, a wildlife preserve that is famous in the birding world—as in drawing birders from all over the country during migration week famous. Being so close, Calvin and I decided it was worth a one day field trip, so on Thursday, May 14 (historically peak bird activity date), we packed school work for the car ride and lunches for after the hike and headed down there.

I laughed with Calvin because there is definitely a difference between biridng in our little parks and birding in a world famous park. One difference is the camera power. Around here my 70-300mm zoom is amongst the top dogs, down there Calvin and I decided it was more like a pocket camera next to the big guns most people were toting around. Another difference is the level of knowledge—not that birders here aren't knowledgable, but at Magee, everyone knows (or thinks he knows) a lot, and it was common to hear birders spouting rare facts or engaging in (usually) friendly debates about an ID. Which brings me to another big difference: the level of competition among birders. I've mentioned this before, but if it surprised me on the trails here in our little parks, its extent on the boardwalk in Magee totally threw me. And the aggression with which birders sought IDs and sightings ("Where did you see that one? When? When??? Which way did it go??? Where can I find it now???). It was an education in and of itself.

Our trip was great fun. One of the great things about Magee is the number of species that fly through the area on their way north for the summer, another is the sheer number of individual birds, but the best thing about it is their accessibility. The park has a boardwalk that goes right thorugh the brush, raising birders enough to put them at eye level with a lot of the birds, and close enough even to the tree tops to get good views of those rare species. Apparently it's so popular that the boardwalk can become almost too crowded to be passable, especially on peak weekend, but on Thursday morning towards the end of Big Week, it was relatively quiet, though there were enough other birders there to help us locate and identify species as we walked along. For all the competition, there's also a heck of a lot of comeraderie—a person would ID a bird, announce it, and help everyone else find it. Whether it was for bragging rights or not didn't matter, it helped Calvin and me find four species we had never seen before on this one trip alone.

Northern Waterthrush

Ovenbird

Gray-cheeked Thrush

Tennessee Warbler

Pine Warbler (female)

Pine Warbler (female)

Northern Parula

Black-and-white Warbler

Chestnut-sided Warbler

Baltimore Oriole

Blanding's Turtles (an endangered species)

Warbling Vireo

Yellow Warbler

Bay-breasted Warbler

Nashville Warbler

Mother's Day (weekend)

I got the greatest gift for Mother's Day this year. I loved the birding and fairy tale books my son got me, and the adorable picture he painted for me. And the elephant print scarf from Jon is my new favorite, plus the brunch he made me on Sunday was fantastic. I loved all of these things—they are all really thoughtful, considerate gifts that show how much they were really thinking about me for this special day—but none of these was actually my favorite gift of the weekend. No, the best gift I received was two full days of family time in the great outdoors—wonderful time spent together, enjoying each other and the world around us.

Because Saturday was Big Bird Day, the day when ornithologists and hobbyist birders all over the globe hit the fields to do species bird counts and record them on ebird. Right in the middle of migration and mating season, it's a great excuse to get out and go birding, and being Mother's Day weekend that's what I asked for from my guys. They both love hiking and wildlife, so the hardest part of that gift was probably the 6am wakeup call on both Saturday and Sunday, but they both got up willingly and their enthusiasm added a lot to our expeditions.

On Saturday, up at six and breakfasted, we decided to hike the Arb. I hadn't been there since I was a college student and I had forgotten what a hidden gem it is right in the middle of Ann Arbor's urbanish life. We managed a forty minute hike, on which we saw almost nothing, before it started to rain on us. I was pretty feeling pessimistic about the whole thing, but the boys convinced met to wait it out in the car for a bit. Twenty minutes later the rain abated, and on our second trip into the park we were greeted by sunshine, birds, and deer. We even managed to spot a warbler species we hadn't yet seen this year (though he was too high in the trees for great pictures).

The Arb wasn't our only stop on Big Bird Day. We actually spent the whole day hiking. On our way home for lunch we stopped to make a full trip around Dolph. And after lunch we joined a guided hike at County Farm Park where Calvin got to hold a tiny baby bluebird while the county naturalist checked the nest box to count the chicks and make sure they were free of parasites (they do this frequently, I guess). Then the celebratory nature of the weekend warranted a stop at Dairy Queen, after which we needed to kill time before dinner, so we did a tour of Eberwhite Woods before picking up pizza on the way home.

And as if Saturday wasn't superlative enough, Sunday rivaled it for perfection: up at 6 and breakfasted, we checked the weather report and headed to Independence Lake. The thing about spring weather in Michigan, though, is that it's unpredictable. We had checked the weather for home, and by the time we arrived at the park it was raining. Heavily. The thing about new technology, though, is that it is fairly accurate minute to minute as long as it knows where you are, so we could see that the storm was slated to pass through. And, after a thirty minute nap in the car, it did. Patience pays off. When the rain let up we hiked the park's two mile open field nature trail. It was our first time on the trail, and because of the long grass we came home soaked to the knees, but the trip was amazing. We spotted three bird species none of us had ever seen before, and because it was mostly open fields, we got some good practice with the binoculars. Back at home, Eggs Benedict, sweet and thoughtful gifts, then a little shopping with our growing boy (for summer shoes), and dinner with the grandparents to honor the other mothers in our lives, too, and let them know we love them. See, perfection again.

Arb in the rain

Mute Swans

Eastern Wood-pewee

Indigo Bunting

Arb not in the rain:

Eastern Bluebird

Black-and-white Warbler

Bay-breasted Warbler

White-tailed Deer

Blackburnian Warbler

Dolph Nature Area

Swainson's Thrush

County Farm Park

Veery

Tiny baby bluebird

(Horace's?) Duskywing

Independence Lake, after the rain

Bobolink

Orchard Oriole

Eastern Kingbird

Common Yellowthroat

Yellow Warbler

Eastern Towhee

Eggs Benedict