Spring Migration is Upon Us

 Guest Post by Barbara Duerksen

What a delight to welcome back the birds we have not seen for months! There’s music in the air – honking geese and calling swans flying to the northwest, robins, blackbirds, and cardinals singing in the morning, and the loud, rattling bugle calls of Sandhill Cranes.

Sandhill Crane photo by Dave Franks

When the ice goes out, the ducks come in. They might stay for a day, sometimes longer, as they make their journey from the southern states to their nesting territories.  A few of the duck species like Wood Ducks, Blue-winged Teal, and Mallards, stay in our area to raise their broods, while most of the other ducks head for farther north wetlands.  I find Hooded Mergansers particularly elegant and fun to watch. The males are black on top with white stripes in front and back, brown sides, and a black and white head that looks very large when the crest feathers are raised.  Females are brown and also have crest feathers that can be raised or lowered.  They look a little less elegant and more like a bad hair day.  I have found Hooded Mergansers in the Kickapoo Valley Reserve in early spring swimming in the wooded wetland at the junction of Hwy 131 and County P.

Hooded Merganser photo by Jack Bartholmai

Migration is all about food.  Waterfowl need open water to find fish, snails, worms, roots and other plant food.  Insect eaters need warm enough temperatures to find a good steady supply of insects, and that takes them far south of Wisconsin.  Seed eaters and some of the predatory birds can find enough food to get through the winter season, so we’ll see jays, chickadees, cardinals, crows, Cooper’s and Red-tailed Hawks all winter.  Juncos, American Tree Sparrows, Purple Finches, Rough-legged Hawks, and Northern Shrikes are among the species that come from way north to stay here for the winter.  They will be leaving soon, and instead we’ll see Fox, White-throated, and White-crowned Sparrows on their way north, in addition to other early migrants like kinglets and phoebes.

April brings some notable insect eaters, despite the possibility of cold weather and snowstorms. Hermit Thrushes, Yellow-rumped Warblers, and Winter Wrens are all insect eaters that seem to be able to withstand colder temperatures than others of their kind.  Their diets ae a bit more flexible –they prefer insects, but all three are able to digest fruits like juniper berries.  Cold spells with deep snow that last too long can be life-threatening to these birds, as we witnessed with in April, 2018.

Winter Wren photo by Dan Jackson

Winter Wrens are small brown birds with very short tails that they often hold upright.  They are smaller than the more familiar House Wrens that spend their summers here, and most of them fly farther north to the forests of northern Wisconsin and Canada. Winter Wrens have nested in cool microclimates in the Kickapoo Reserve and the Baraboo Hills, preferring areas with coarse woody debris or tangled roots. Some older field guides recommend looking for migrating Winter Wrens in stacks of firewood in the yard. On nesting territory, the male sings a loud, rich, lengthy, bubbly song.  You can listen to the song here by pressing the audio button.

The colorful familiar songsters like grosbeaks, orioles, and Indigo Buntings, will show up a bit later, some in late April and the rest in May, along with many migrating warblers. These are the long-distance migrants that spend the winter in warmer climates, some—Yellow Warblers and Barn Swallows, for example—as far south as countries in South America.

Migration is a perilous journey with hazards that range from bad weather and natural predators, to human-caused habitat destruction, window strikes, poisoning by pesticides, and predation by cats. How to help?  Study up on what birds need, support bird conservation groups and reserves (like the KVR), consider planting bird-friendly plants and trees in your yard.  The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a list of suggestions here: athttps://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/seven-simple-actions-to-help-birds/

                                            American Woodcock photo by Jack Bartholmai

Ready for an evening adventure?  Go out at dusk to listen for the American Woodcock call and sky dance.  American Woodcocks are in the shorebird family, but nest on the ground in shrubby woodland edges. An odd-looking short-tailed brown bird, they are about robin-size, plump, with long beaks and eyes positioned high up and near the back of the skull. In early spring, the males, looking to attract a mate, find an open area to sit and call a series of single buzzy, nasal “peent” sounds, and after a while, fly up with a twittering sound in a large circle, descend to the same area with a slower chirpy sound, and start again to do the call. This occurs about 20 minutes after sunset. The open area around the Kickapoo Reserve Visitor Center has been a reliable spot to observe this spring ritual of the woodcock. 

For great reading on the woodcock dance check out these favorites:

Aldo Leopold, in A Sand County Almanac, describes the Sky Dance of the woodcocks on his farm in the April section of Part 1.  Frances Hamerstrom, in Walk When the Moon is Full, devotes her April chapter to the story of gong out with her two children to witness the sky dance of the woodcock.

Looking for Spring

  C. Chybowski

A guest post by KVR Educator Cathy Chybowski

Spring is in the air!  Even if the calendar says “March,” the cold winds blow, and the snow lingers, those of us tuned in to the changing seasons know that spring is fast approaching. By observing and recording natural events year after year, we can accurately predict and anticipate the sequence in which these events occur. 

The study of recurring natural events like the migration of birds or the flowering of plants and their connection with each other as the seasons change is called phenology.

Everyone practices phenology whether they realize it or not—naturalists, gardeners, farmers, and homeowners, among others. “April showers bring May flowers” is pure phenology.

Islay Pictures Photoblog

What tells you that spring has arrived? Is it the first robin of the year? Like Aldo Leopold, many people sense that spring has sprung when they see and hear a flock of geese flying in the typical V-formation proclaiming the change of season. 

 “One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring.”          

Leopold continues .  .  .  .  “A cardinal whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed.  But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges.”

     Greg Gillson

 Sid Hamm

It is time to check last year’s phenology records for the order of events. We can predict that in southern Wisconsin, the red-winged blackbirds return to the marshes before the end of February and the bluebirds return to nest by March 15. The wood frogs begin their choral courtship the third week in March and ground squirrels and woodchucks emerge sleepy from hibernation by the end of March.  Hepatica begins to bloom around mid-April  and bloodroot blooms about one week later.

                                                                                                                                     awaytothgarden.com

                 C. Chybowski

Nature’s grand production runs from the time that skunk cabbage pokes up through the snow, through the time when the woodpeckers begin to drum, male red-wings “onk-la-ree” from the cattails and pussy willows fluff out. Killdeer and meadowlarks return, chipmunks awaken from their winter dormancy, song sparrows sing “hip hip hooray guys, spring is here,” balls of garter snakes appear, painted turtles pop up on sunning logs, mourning cloak butterflies and little brown bats flit about, and spring ephemerals emerge from the woodland floor.

   V. Charney

All of these observations were made before April 15^th.  Soon thereafter the great wave of warbler migration begins (about a month after the woodcocks begin their aerial courtship display). Then the tree leaves burst forth, flowers in gardens and fields bloom and the air holds the sweet scent of lilacs just in time for Mother’s Day. The show continues on and on . . .

“During every week from April to September there are on average, ten wild plants coming into first bloom. . . No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them.”                                                                                                                                                       -   Aldo Leopold

No two years are exactly the same and some signs of spring are more reliable than others. Frogs are good predictors of spring. Wood frogs and spring peepers begin to sing soon after ice-out when the water has warmed to 46 degrees F. Earthworm castings become visible when the frost has come out of the ground. The return of robins and bluebirds is not a reliable indicator of spring because some of them stay in our area throughout the winter.

                                         petponder.com

            

Spring usually invades our state in the southwest corner and marches north and northeast at a rate of about fifteen miles a day. This was determined when residents across the state were asked to record the date at which the lilac, a species familiar to everyone, was in peak flower.

According to Hopkin’s law, phenological events vary at the rate of one day for each fifteen minutes of latitude, 1.25 days for each degree of longitude, and one day for each one hundred feet of altitude, being later northward, eastward, and upward. When applied in Wisconsin, this law seems to hold almost exactly along a north-south axis; except that Lake Michigan retards the spring warmup.

Above is merely a sampling of the discoveries that await the curious nature observer. It is a fun time of year for each of us to get outside and take a closer look at what Aldo Leopold calls the “hundred little dramas” happening right outside the door when spring is in the air.