The Week In Pictures: Migration

 

Summer is coming to an end and many North America birds are beginning their annual migration south.

And so it was for me this week, traveling from north to south, Michigan to Florida.

I was in Michigan's Lower Peninsula, in farming country south of Grand Rapids along the Thornapple River. The place used to be a mill town long ago with a dam on the river creating a miles-long pond to power the wheels and stones that once ground corn and wheat from local farms into meal and flour. Those products were first carried away to the city on horse-drawn wagons and later by train. 

But those days are long gone and so is the mill and the train, though the dam and the pond remain. 

The farms are still here too, but nowadays their products, corn, soybeans, diary, are carried away on trucks bound for modern processing facilities far away, and the town has become a bedroom community wrapped around a modern plant that manufacturers hot water heaters. It's a clean, quiet, safe little town with a block-long main street of small stores, a few good restaurants, and an absolutely excellent coffee shop. 

And that long gone railroad is now a rails-to-trails conversion, part of the North American Birding Trail, used by joggers and cyclists and people out for a morning walk with their dog. A paved portion of it runs right through downtown, next to the old dam, between the river and what's left of the millpond. The pond is now overgrown with returning native wetland plants and a hundred of varieties of birds, mink, muskrat, bobcat, fox, woodchucks, and other species. 

It's also become a stop on the migration route for birds traveling between Canada and their wintering grounds in Central and South America.

Like these Canada Geese flying in formation. Their honking filled the air one evening as I hiked along the trail.

And these mallard ducks.

Or this great egret (also known as a great white heron), who I watched each morning while he hunted his breakfast of small fish, leeches, and fresh water mollusks in the shallow waters. 

And this pied-billed Grebe, a small waterbird with rear-facing legs like a penguin (unlike penguins, grebes can't walk on land), and massively webbed feet like twin propellers giving the bird the ability to move torpedolike through the water. They have short bills with sharp tooth-like serrations that they use to grab their prey of small fish such as brim, perch, and bluegills, which they then swallow whole. Grebes aren't common in this area, they're just passing through on the way south. 

And speaking of passing through, Sandhill Cranes stop each night to rest and feed along the edges of the millpond, and are gone again in the morning before first light. 

This eastern phoebe was probably my favorite picture from Michigan. I snapped her in the early dawn, just before sun up, when everything was damp from the fog and the whole world was still and silent. Looking through the big lens, I could just make out that spiderweb, highlighted in fine droplets from the mist, and realized she was watching it. Phoebes are flycatchers and she was guarding that web and ready to take advantage of the spider's hard work should the opportunity present itself. I was pretty proud of this image. It was a difficult shot in the low light. I posted it to social media ... only to realize later no one could see the web on their tiny phone screens and the small drab bird didn't impress anyone very much. Sigh. The tribulations of a bird photographer. 

Speaking of social media, this yellow-rumped warbler was also a favorite shot. They're very common birds in this area (along with about a dozen other species of warbler), but not easy to photograph as they tend to hide in the thick brush. Not only did I get a clear close-up shot, but one framed in beautiful fall colors of red and yellow. But when I posted it to social media, all anyone could talk about was that the leaves are poison ivy. I had to take the image down when people started complaining about being "triggered" and the conversations devolved into snide passive aggressive arguments -- as if they were somehow going to get a rash from looking at an image on a phone screen.  I'm honestly not sure how some of these people manage to make it through the day. 

And so long as I'm posting pictures of poison ivy, here are some bluebirds among colorful ivy leaves covering an old pine stump deep in the swamp. The light filtering through the forest canopy gives the silvered wood a blue cast, which I thought was a perfect compliment to the birds. 

I drove out into the country to an Audubon sanctuary I happen to know about. I didn't find any birds, but the fields were full of butterflies and bees, like this Viceroy -- a monarch mimic.  

I left Michigan and drove a thousand miles south to the Florida Panhandle. 

Migration isn't quite in full swing here yet. 

I caught this this female kingfisher in the pines of Santa Rosa Island near Fort Pickens. I feel a kinship with her, given that's the same WTF? expression on my face most of the time these days.

These feather-legged scoliidae wasps were busy gathering nectar in the flowers outside my office. They look fearsome indeed, but they're the good guys. They are non-aggressive pollinators and they destroy the larva of invasive tree bark beetles. Scoliidae are an indicator of a healthy ecosystem. Plus they just look so damn cool. 

The hummingbirds are still passing through on their way south, though most of the males have gone on ahead now and I mostly only see the less colorful females and juveniles. Like this beautiful lady, backlit by the morning sun. 

I spent much of yesterday out near Perdido Key and in Big Lagoon State Park with a friend and fellow photographer.

We'd barely gotten out of the car and were still setting up our equipment when this lone bald eagle appeared over the bay. 

I must have at least 10,000 shots of Great Blue Herons, but I'm always taking more pictures of these birds.  I can't help it. They're such weird dinosaurs-looking creatures. Like this one, standing in the wind-whipped grass of a small barrier island off Perdido. 

Note the bird's pupils are different sizes, one in the light, one the shadow.

Osprey (seahawks, aka river hawks) are very common in this area year 'round. There's a boardwalk and an observation tower at Grand Lagoon where you can watch them diving in the inland waterway for fish. This shot is a composite, a stack of five images merged together showing an osprey in the last moments of her dive. Note how the legs and talons swing forward, going from a high-speed low-drag aerodynamic shape to forward-facing grapples ready to snatch the bird's prey on impact. 

She was successful, catching a large mullet. 

But, she dropped it about twenty feet into her climb out. That's got to be disappointing. 

She later caught another mullet and settled into this treetop to finish the meal. This is probably my favorite shot from yesterday. I love the stark, almost black and white pencil sketch look. I'm going to print these in large poster size on canvas. 

And finally, there is this young red shouldered hawk, hunting the pine barrens over Perdido Key. The wind was blowing hard and he was beating into it, hovering, looking for prey in the scrub below. One of those moments where everything just lines up, the camera was ready and programmed to the correct settings for the conditions, the light was behind me, and the bird held position for several minutes. I got these amazing shots ... and then he was gone, gliding effortlessly off in search of a meal down the coast. 

That's it. That's my week in pictures.