WI: Trip Log August 10-11: Central Wisconsin NWRs and the Mississippi Flyway

I spent last week in Baraboo, Wisconsin attending a conference  hosted by the Aldo Leopold Foundation. This is Ice Age Country! I had no trouble imagining mammoths and dire wolves and saber toothed tigers, and an abundance of wetlands can only mean one thing for this Mid-Atlantic naturalist - Mississippi Flyway Birds! Much of the flat plain around Baraboo is ancient glacial lake bottom so wetlands abound in all their variations from ponds, bogs, marshes, lakes, and wet prairie.

Necedah NWR

I jumped into a van early in the week with a group touring some NRCS and NWR cooperative wildlife projects and did some birding along the way. We stopped at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge briefly, but after lunch and the end of the tour, I circled back on my own and spent the rest of the day hiking the beautiful trail system. And, lo! LIFEBIRD! Whooping cranes!

By the end of the day I counted six whoopers with two colts (chicks) in sight. The big whoopers chased the sandhill cranes around the marshes and generally kept the smaller cranes on the move. If this had been 1948 I would have been looking at almost half the known population left in the world, as biologists suggest there may have only been 20 individuals left in the wild. After fifty years of careful captive breeding at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland and the International Crane Foundation here in Baraboo, WI,   wild populations have slowly increased to about three hundred belonging to two small wild migratory flocks. 

Whoopers and Colt.

The more I looked across the marshes from the big observation tower and the high bluff spotting stations located along the trails, the more cranes I saw! I even got to witness their beautiful dances and listened to their clattering calls and unison songs. The sandhills were way more plentiful and very vocal. I also observed white pelican, red-headed woodpeckers, and a small family of spruce grouse. The good folks at the Visitor Center were pretty excited about the white pelicans and I listened to some senior birders from the area talk about the range shifts of the big birds. 

Chase Scene - Whooper moves Sandhills around the marsh!

Both whooping and sandhill cranes were once very plentiful throughout the Central Flyway until western settlement swept across the Upper Mid-West during the 1800s. But as agriculture quickly mechanized and industrialized,  tens of thousands of acres of marsh were drained to claim for farming wheat and corn. Without standing water to provide safety against predators, the cranes would not breed and their preferred nesting habitat continued to drain and shrink until after WWII when conservationists and biologists took action to save the few that were left.  The National Wildlife refuge System, established by Teddy Roosevelt, worked hard throughout the Central Flyway to reclaim former wetlands and re-establish critical habitat for cranes and many other species of wetland birds that had been in steady decline through the first half of the Twentieth Century. 

Boardwalk trail across the wet meadow and marshes at Necedah NWR.

With re-introduction programs underway by the 1970s and '80s  the endangered whooping crane began making a slow return - painfully slow. Some of difficulties were overcome by changing the way humans interacted with cranes. Biologists learned how to discourage imprinting on humans by wearing crane costumes during feeding times. Teaching young cranes to fly and establish migratory route memory is accomplished by leading small flocks into the skies with ultralight aircraft. When old enough to reintroduce into the wild, young cranes suffered high mortality by predators, vehicle strikes, and mistaken identity during hunting season (though how anyone can mistake a crane for a goose is beyond me). As I hiked the boardwalk trails and across the great grass flats I thought about all the dedicated people who made my being able to see so many whooping cranes in the wild even possible. 

Sandhills and colt.

Globally many bird species are in rapid decline and the equally rapid effects of climate change give little hope that some species can adapt fast enough to survive.   Aldo Leopold worried whether he would hear again the calls of sandhill cranes on the sandbars near his beloved shack and to him during the 1940s the greatest concern was habitat loss. It still is, but habitat conservation on a continental scale is where the greatest attention is being directed by agencies, foundations, and universities. International treaties and conservation initiatives are creating multi-nation partnerships to protect flyways and the habitat they encompass. Cranes travel extraordinary distances and dont recognize political boundaries, so having international conservation partners is critical to the continued success of whooping and sandhill crane recovery. 

Whooping Crane!

There was only an hour or two of daylight left when I finally left Necedah and I remembered a member of the tour earlier in the day had recommended a visit to Roch-a-Cris State Park to see the rock art there. I drove thirty minutes east to the park and met the park manager at the office.  She gave me a ten minute explanation of the rock art and pointed to what many people suggest are turkey tracks carved into the soft sandstone formation at its base. She puzzled over the tracks which were faint but recognizable as bird feet. 

Canoes in stone.

"I think these are crane tracks," she said, " not turkey like a lot of folks say. The turkey has a rear toe for perching in trees. Cranes have no rear toe, just three long toes forward for walking through wetlands. I think these are crane tracks. Which makes sense given that this area would have been swarming with cranes given how wet is is." The more I studied the three toes carvings the more I agreed with her. There were also canoes, human figures, and raptors etched  into the 'mound' - really a huge stack of sandstone that was once an island in ancient Lake Wisconsin. These high and dry sky islands are all around the flat plain of the region and would have looked much like the well-watered northern lakelands of the Great Lakes region.

Crane tracks rock art.

I hiked all the way around the mound at its base, about a mile on paved road, trying to get a feel for the height and width of the sandstone stack. It stands about 200 feet high and is cloaked in greenery this time of year, a fire-dependent pine and scrub oak forest that climbs the steep flanks of the mound and covers its top. Where the rock art survives a viewing platform keeps people at a safe distance where visitors can also observe the later graffiti of cavalry soldiers (carvings and pock-marks of gunfire) that obliterate much of the indigenous work.

Council house or traders cabin carving.

 

After my hike around I hiked up! Three hundred and fifty five steps climb the southern flank of the mound to the top of the sky island where a beautiful platform juts out into the breeze, There were mounds near and far - visible from miles away - the tops of which were also islands in the glacial lake. Vultures soared, a red-tailed hawk screeched, and in the nearby red pine boughs a pair of red-breasted nuthatches peeped. What a stunning view! 15,000 years ago the leading edge of the glacial advance was just a few miles from here but it never quite closed the distance and began to recede leaving the Johnson Moraine within view. 

Fish in red-ochre paint near the top of the 200' sandstone stack.

The glacier never made it to the mounds, so the these sandstone stacks were untouched by the carving and smoothing effects of moving ice. The rocks are sharply defined, angled in rough blocks, cracked apart by freeze-thaw weathering so close - just miles - to the great ice sheet. I studied the flat planes of sandstone faces for more evidence of Indian artists and found turkey tracks (with hind toes!) and a painted fish, quite near the top of the mound. The lichen was thick up there and I'm sure it obscured many other carvings and paintings. 

A steep and long climb up!

I had a full day to explore on Tuesday so I awoke at 0430 and jumped into the car for an hour and a half drive east to the Great Horicon Marsh. I've read poems and heard songs about the Horicon, but I wasn't prepared for the how vast it was! Thirty three thousand acres of marsh, pond, and wet prairie complex echoing the rattling calls of sandhill cranes, the Horicon did not disappoint. Another important link in the Central Flyway habitat conservation chain, this vast freshwater marsh and wetland complex is administered by the Horicon NWR and the State of Wisconsin. 

The Horicon - 30,300 acres of wetland!

The sun came up just as I was arriving and as the light improved I observed a sora rail sneaking across a reedy edge of the Rt 49 passage through the upper reach of the NWR. I got out and walked about a mile along the road and back - taking my life into my hands as one huge truck after another roared by nearly blowing my over each time in their wind wakes. I wondered how many birds, turtles, and mammals who cross this road must meet their end here. On a happier note, standing looking out over a mud flat and shallow pond, I counted twenty black-necked stilts, dozens of American coots, fifty or more blue-wing teal, fifty or more green-wing teal, black ducks to numerous to count and many mallards. Clearly the fall migration has begun!

Boardwalk through the shallow weed marsh.

I drove the auto road and couldn't stay in the car for long. I jumped out and hiked every one of the trails all the way through including a long floating boardwalk that snakes its way across a shallow weed marsh. I had the whole place to myself until about nine o'clock when I spotted two lone birders and a fitness walker, but by then I'd walked nearly five miles, heading back to my car. It was all very birdy! Cranes rattled and geese called, but the spring sunrise chorus of warblers and other small forest and meadow birds had mostly gone silent in the late summer morning. Yellowing leaves were beginning to brighten along the woods edge. Prairie flowers were coming into their peak.

The Horicon and Necedah National Wildlife Refuges lie within the Mississippi Flyway, a vast system of migration corridors that birds use to travel between winter feeding grounds and summer nesting grounds. Like the Atlantic Flyway to east, where I live, and the Central and Pacific Flyways to the west, the Mississippi Flyway describes ancient but always shifting aggregates of migration pathways that may be different depending on species. I observed many trumpeter swans in both Necedah and Horicon and compared their sound and head characteristics to the more familiar tundra swan of the Atlantic Flyway. For me, exploring these two valuable Wisconsin links in the Mississippi Flyway path, the distinct sound of the trumpeter swan distinguished this region from the sounds of the tundra swan in the Chesapeake and Susquehanna area.  Flyways have their own bird language and bird sound.   

Black-necked stilt.

The idea of flyways for migratory birds was established in the 1930s and came into common use to describe regions within countries and across continents as aides in establishing regulations for waterfowl hunting and conservation by the 1940s. As conservation science began to include new technologies in tracking birds, banding larger fowl like swans, geese, and cranes, and interpreting data, biologists were able to understand that flyways were not only ancient and evolutionary, but critically essential to provide protection and resources for species survival in the modern human world.  Like many of the natural sciences in the mid-century, bird conservation sciences were using larger and larger concepts to identify population and species conservation goals. But the work still came back to understanding the kinds of birds that used the flyway system.  

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher.

With more recent technologies like GIS satellite imaging, and radar, we can see even more broadly how flyways function as 'rivers' of bird movement, but not just for waterfowl or large birds. It is possible today to watch migrations of songbirds along flyway routes at large and fine scale. We are learning that these rivers of bird movement can occur thousands of feet above the ground at night or through the canopy of forests and thickets of undergrowth - sometimes at ground level! Birds will go to where there are abundant resources and tracking their movements with new ways of seeing allow us to realize how important conservation of critical contiguous wetlands, river systems, prairies, and forests really are.  

I visited Aldo Leopold's beloved shack on the Wisconsin River during our conference week and engaged in a great log-bench circle discussion of Leopold's record keeping of birds he saw throughout the seasons. His log books have become valuable records of the phenology of the area. This is something we can all do - just look out the window and record what we see when we see it. It takes no high technology but when it is saved and shared with others our simple day-to-day observations can contribute to much broader studies of change. I always recommend beginning birders sign up for a free Cornell Ebird account and begin keeping their data electronically because no matter how inconsequential you may think it is, amassed as it is by Cornell with thousands of other birders lists and observations, scientists can discover important trends and adaptations to change that small sets of data wouldn't necessarily demonstrate. 

Flyways are always changing. What appears on a map as an established route of migration can actually shift and undulate with seasonal events, drought or storm tracks, and available habitat - habitat that itself can change over the years. Destroying wetlands to convert to cornfields may divert waterfowl to other areas but may attract numbers of grain eaters like large flocks of snow and Canada geese. Reclaiming land to restore as wetlands can establish new resting areas for endangered or threatened species of birds. Better yet, restoring wetland complexes and surrounding watershed landscapes ensures that a flyway has everything all migrating birds need for multiple rest stops along the way.

Great Egret.

Notes: 

Necedah National Wildlife Refuge -  http://www.fws.gov/refuge/necedah/
Horicon National Wildlife Refuge -  http://www.fws.gov/refuge/horicon/ 
Wisconsin DNR Horicon Marsh - http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/lands/wildlifeareas/horicon/

And why haven't you signed up for an Ebird account yet? http://ebird.org/content/ebird/

ME: Trip Log July 25: The Great Orono Bog, ME - Walking on Water

Between Hog Island and Mount Desert Island on my two week stay in Maine, I spent a full day out on the Orono Bog just northwest of the City of Bangor. I love bogs and fens, due in part to my former assignment as park manager at Brighton State Park in Vermont. The University of Maine and the Orono Land Trust work in partnership to make this massive raised bog accessible to everyone and I was lucky to meet the director Jim Bird on duty there this morning.

An overcast day with storms predicted for the afternoon made this visit a wonderful study in muted colors.

The bog is traversed by a twisting and turning mile-long boardwalk that makes the experience of bog-hopping less bouncy and wet, but the walkway wobbles and pitches giving the hiker the sense of walking on water - which they are. Altitude is everything and even just a few inches of hummock or mound can decide which  types of plants can grow where. Many of the hummocks are grown-over stumps from when the peatland was logged. Grey birch, a pioneer tree/shrub of the hummocks, is slowly being replaced by black spruce and I could spot the skeletal remains of the once-dominant but miniature forest among the tamarack and evergreens.

Pitching and tilted, the boardwalk threads a dry path through the peatlands.

The bog is a remnant wetland from when the great ice sheets were withdrawing far to the north. Maine was completely covered in ice 15,000 years ago but the bogs, kettle ponds, lakes, and eskers are plentiful reminders of just how recent this event was! A well-raised bog like the Orono is built of several feet of sphagnum moss that has grown here for thousands of years and it rises in the middle giving the center about a foot of elevation and beautiful multi-colored moss lawns. The bog surface can support the weight of a deer or a few people carefully making their way across, but in thin areas it is easy to break through. The center of the bog sits over fifteen feet of submerged peat and four to eight feet of water hidden below.

Jim Bird, Director of the Orono Bog Boardwalk.

All kinds of mysteries surround bogs, including ghost stories and creepy tales, but the fact is that anything breaking through the peat surface and drowning below is well preserved. Several 'bog men' have been found in the great peatlands of Scotland and Northern Europe as well as many ice-age animals here in North America. The acidic water and lack of oxygen preserves tissue perfectly - even tatoo patterns on humans -  and I wondered if I might not be walking over a long extinct mammoth or its human hunter? At any rate, the bog fully supported a large snowshoe hare as he raced down a well-worn path in the moss and leatherleaf below one of the observation platforms. Too fast for my camera.

Pete Tipper, traveling birder from Ontario. 

I met a summer traveler at one of the viewing platforms - Pete Tipper from Ontario. He is touring the Eastern States for the summer and had a list of birding hotspots he wanted to visit in his 1984 camper van. I shared some of my favorite places in the Mid-Atlantic with him (Bombay Hook and Prime Hook in DE as well as the Lower Susquehanna River Hills in PA- of course!). We chatted for some time about the sites I'll have to see in his neck of the woods. We both found the Orono Bog using the excellent Maine Birding Trails website and pdf.

Fireweed.

I circled back around the long boardwalk again - my second mile for the morning and ran into John Green, Massachusetts Audubon naturalist and free lance wildlife photographer. He was on an organized trip for Mass Audubon and was enjoying photographing the fringed orchid in blossom around the moat rim of the bog.

John Green, Jr., Massachusetts Audubon naturalist.

We started chatting about our summer adventures and I mentioned I'd just come off of Hog Island. Well, his eyes lit up and he started telling stories - a little teary eyed - about how the Hog Island experience changed his life. He was even invited to teach there, which he did for two semesters, the first African American instructor to serve there. From his time in the Army in Alaska to his years as a teaching naturalist near Philadelphia, he is a natural educator in every sense of the word.

Black Spruce.

The hummocks, some of them only inches higher than the surrounding moss lawn, were where all the action was. Birds, dragonflies, snowshoe hare, red squirrels, and even a shrew occupied a larger hummock that I spent a good half hour watching. The black spruce, though diminutive in size, was most likely decades old. The mineral poor waters and slow rate of nutrient release from the dead plants around the trees resulted in very slow growth.  John pointed out that a three foot high black spruce may be well over fifty years old!

Measuring the water below the moss lawn.

As I was looping around for a third time (I really can't get enough of bogs!) a large family with strollers and several teenagers came barreling down the boardwalk. Although there is one sign at the entrance to the natural area that warns against running, jogging, or jumping on the pathway this group clearly didn't see it. It goes without saying that the floating sections of the boardwalk began to sway and buckle, nearly pitching the family off into the bog! The ripples (more like shock waves) of their grand entrance were felt all the way around - causing one concerned birder far ahead of me and John to holler back "Knock it off!" I noticed the hummock trees were swaying just as we were, leaning left and right as the waves of water passed unseen underneath.

Layering black spruce on a hummock.

The sphagnum moss as it grows upward helps to blanket the lower branches of the black spruce and cause it to layer into the peat below, creating whorls of new trees around the parent. Almost all of the hummocks had tiny forests encircling the main tree, including tamarack and some maples closer to the main woods edge.

Tamarack or Larch.

The tamarack or larch lent a yellowy green cast to the hummock forests. Come fall when the deciduous trees drop their leaves for the winter, so too will the tamarack, one of the only coniferous trees besides bald cypress to do so. The yellows of the tamarack were offset by the bright red sphagnum and brilliant pitcher plants that filled the moss lawns between the hummocks.  These insect-catching plants were everywhere in great abundance and added more mystery to the bog. I could hear a deep buzzing of some trapped bee or fly caught in the neck of the 'pitcher' of one plant.

Red Sphagnum and Pitcher Plant.

Sneaking around in the densest of hummocky growth were Lincoln's Sparrows. It's been awhile since I've heard their songs so I quietly played some calls on my phone (Cornell's Merlin app - it's free) and even though the human family passing my spot didn't hear the songs, a nearby Lincoln's Sparrow did and immediately topped a black spruce to give me a check-over.

Lincoln's Sparrow.

I don't think it's right to lure birds with taped calls, so I quickly put the phone away - but was treated to a full five minute display of songs, calls, chucks and chips, and nervous sparrow energy as the bird tried to figure out where this mysterious interloper had gone!

Common Whitetail Dragonfly (female).

Bogs are dynamic ecosystems despite their great age. They represent the end of life for a glacial pond or lake that gradually filled in with mosses and plant matter to completely close over the open water. The moss covered depression receives all of its water from snow melt or rain. Because of the extreme acidity of its waters, bogs are home to those plants and animals that can tolerate the extreme conditions. Leatherleaf, cranberry, carnivorous sundew and pitcher plant, Labrador tea, and many species of moss.

Hermit Thrush.

The forest that surrounds a bog is equally unique. It often contains a circular moat that grows thick with wetland trees like red maple, birch, and dense understory shrubs. The wet forest floor contains hummocks as well, but these sprout bunchberry, wildflowers and lichens. On my several trips around the bog I re-entered the woods to the dozens of hermit thrushes singing their emphereal songs behind curtains of Old Man's Beard, an aboreal, wispy grey lichen. Short summers and very cold temperatures the rest of the year make for a challenging environment, but there are many animal and bird species that thrive here.

Fringed Orchid.

By noon (and my third and last time around) the boardwalk was crowded with people. I went back to the lodge and kiosk at the start and spoke to Jim about the project and partnership to protect and promote the bog. He's been at this for a long time and wishes he had more volunteers to come out and walk the path, speak to people about protecting the resource, and to help with maintenance projects.

Moss Lawn over a deep pool of water.

The University of Maine provides lots of help and conducts plenty of research in the area, but Jim would like to see more of the public get involved. He worried about vandalism, poaching (deer and bear), and unintentional damage to the bog plants by curious visitors. "We need a more engaged pubic, a more knowledgeable public," he said. The Orono Land Trust and the University of Maine do offer guided walks, bird outings, and school field trips. But Jim wants to see more people taking a vested interest in the bog project.

Pitcher Plant flower high above Black Spruce mat.

"Bogs are not unusual in the state," Jim explained, "But the Orono has the distinction of being vast and beautiful and very accessible to a nearby city. The potential for creating advocates for northern ecosystem preservation is immense here, but it is not a case of build it and they will come. There's a lot of work that goes into creating a 'bog fan base' and then building long-term stewardship for this and other ecological treasures that define the northern landscape."


Notes:

Be sure to check out the excellent fly-over film made via drone - it's an embedded link on the UMaine website for the bog walk: 
http://umaine.edu/oronobogwalk/

Learn more about the Orono Land Trust, an important partner for conservation land acquisition and easements.  http://oronolandtrust.org/

The Maine Birding Trail: http://www.mainebirdingtrail.com/

ME: July 20 - 25 Trip Log: Part I - Hog Island Audubon Camp and the Outdoor Teaching Tradition

In the tradition of the Maine "Great Camps", Audubon's Hog Island continues to inspire and drive environmental and natural resources education for teachers from all over the world. I finally had my chance to join a summer session - one of my life-long dreams - certainly as a naturalist and natural history educator, but also as a conservation historian. This great camp experience did not disappoint and made me love all the more the impressive tradition of teaching that came from the nature study era of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Pog, a treasured family moose, travels with me to Hog Island. Scott gives him a lift!

I have to state up front - I am a lover all things north in natural history, so you know I was as giddy as a little kid to step on to the Snowgoose, the big charter boat that ferries campers and guests to the camp and out to the bird islands of Muscongus Bay. My love for pelagic birding and riding aboard big boats is hard to hide and I always take the 'spotters stance' with binoculars in hand no matter how short or long the ride is. It was a short hop to the island but I saw black guillemot ('gillies'), common loon, double crested cormorant, and common eider right off! Yes - it feels like home before ever stepping off the Snowgoose!

Black Guillemot chick losing her down for adult jet black plumage

I tried to maintain a conservation historian's eye-view of the experience from the moment I walked up the dock ramp past the great shingled teaching lab and staff housing building The Queen Mary, to the gathering commons at The Bridge. How many great teachers and renowned birders have walked up the plank path to The Bridge? Rachel Carson, Roger Tory Peterson, Peter Dunn, Allen Cruickshank, and just a week ago, Scott Weidensaul (conservation author and founder of Project SNOWstorm). I thought about how many incredible naturalists and writers who've walked up that ramp are/were from Pennsylvania. I was right proud!

Hog Island, Maine.

Before I knew it, over 60 people had gathered on the island and were setting up their rooms with new roomies and instant friends. I will say something about the Great Camp tradition - you cannot help but make instant friends when abiding by dearly-held rules for family style meals and changing tables at every gathering (though I did try to position myself close to the windows at two particular tables whenever possible - I cannot stop birding...). My roomate Jen from Norfolk, Virginia, and I instantly hit it off and by the end of the week my face hurt from laughing so much!

Field sessions are an important part of learning the science of natural history.

 

Educators from all over the nation were split into four working cohorts to learn the natural history of the island and we were soon familiar with the grand old plank-built hall The Fish House where much information was shared, songs were sung, and deep thinking was thought about. I enjoyed sharing my PhD work in conservation history with many teachers, and two teachers in particular, Deb and Frankie, really were drawn to socio-ecological complex systems analysis and Buzz Hollings' infamous Figure Eight. A fellow PhD student Fanny and I talked up our field work incessantly and became each cheerleaders for the other as we work this year to finish our programs. She's doing some amazing work with finch song in Central Park, New York, bringing her love of music and music history to ornithology - a true transdisciplinarian.

Natural history illustration is a critical part of how we collect and understand ecological systems. Sherry York, instructor.

Although the Hog Island experience is now often associated with heading out on the Snowgoose to see seals and puffins, the tradition of the Audubon naturalists camp for teachers often goes undetected by those unfamiliar with the long history of nature and science education through the Audubon Society. In the late 1800s the Nature Study Movement arose in response to a growing interest conservation efforts and the realization that more people were city dwellers than from the country - a trend that has continued as America's demographic is certainly more urban/suburban than rural. Progressive educators and conservationists  Cornell's Anna Botsford Comstock and Liberty Hyde Bailey, and the American Museum of Natural History's Louis Agassiz and Wilbur Jackson launched a series of summer camps for teachers in 1895 with the hope that inspired teachers would bring nature study to their students. The idea  borrowed the Great Camp style of communal living and combined it with field sessions for natural history, science education, and conservation education - a recipe that continues to serve educator's camps very well all across the nation each summer. 

Naturalist and Keystone College (PA) professor Dr. Jerry Skinner

I've been teaching natural history for a long time, especially that of the northern woods, bogs, and coasts, and I was impressed with the suite of teachers we had for this session. Tradition is a big deal at Hog Island, and though most of the visiting teachers to Educator's Camp were unaware, I was totally tuned in to how our instructors utilized the hands-on and experiential approaches to outdoor education which were critical to the success of nature study movement under Comstock, Bailey, Agassiz, and Jackson.

Craig Newburger, excellent field educator and long-time Hog Island instructor teaches at Germantown School, PA.

The legacy of early nature educators who taught experiential methods to thousands classroom teachers who, in turn brought nature study back to their own students, influenced and inspired many of our most revered conservationists of mid-century including Rachel Carson, Olaus Murie, Aldo Leopold, and Roger Tory Peterson - among hundreds of other well-known names in the natural sciences. I wondered how many teens and educators who attend the summer sessions out here have gone on to be scientists in conservation work? 

A fellow natural resources educator popping out of Port Hole - our shingle sided great camp lodge for the week.

The 330 acre island off the shores of Bremen , Maine, was gifted to the Audubon Society in 1936 by Millicent Todd Bingham, who inherited the island from her mother, Mabel Loomis Todd, writer, editor, and biographer to Emily Dickinson. Since then the Audubon Society has maintained the island for its historic great camp charm and function with all emphasis on bird conservation and environmental education. The buildings are historic and the original camp of the Todds, including Mabel's writing cabin, still stand on the island. Artists and writers-in-residence can apply to stay in the Bingham camp. This year, one of my instructors, Sherry York from Colorado, will be spending a blissful month at the Bingham cottage to work on her printmaking.

Juanita and Ruth - carrying on the Great Camp tradition in important ways.

Critical to this effort has been the work of volunteers, especially with the backing of Friends of Hog Island (FOHI) and literally hundreds of people who donate their time and money to keeping the spirit of this Audubon camp alive and well. You can't help but feel like family as FOHI volunteers serve wonderful meals, attend to the workings on the lodges, and walk along with you on a late afternoon bird hike. I revived a little of the great camp spirit myself when I decided to make my Project Puffin (2015) book my 'autograph book.' I asked Ruth Woodall and Juanita Roushdy to be the first signers, though Ruth was so busy in the registrar's office I had to wait till supper to track her down! I had Juanita right at the check-out in the camp bookstore as I was buying the book, so she was naturally the first. (She got a little teary-eyed!)

My new hiking buddy Pachell - we can't wait to meet up in the NJ Pine Barrens for some day hikes.

Here's a nice video (featuring several of our instructors I was unable to capture in my own pics) that gives a great introduction to the experience at Hog Island:

I'll follow up with a few more posts about the actual conservation work and history of the Muscongus Bay region, but for now I wanted to get the education post in first. The instructors were excellent and the content an context of the camp truly was life changing for many of the teachers who came from everywhere. Great emphasis was placed on teacher diversity and I applaud the Audubon Society for sending so many teachers of color to this camp. We need to work harder to include the voices and experiences of ALL environmental educators and their students and I am impressed with Audubon's efforts to make the Hog Island Educators Week available to them.

A proper Eastern Egg Rock send-off from our cohort ashore Hog Island.

Before I close out this post I want to thank the Maryland Ornithological Society, and in particular my friend Dr. Dennis Kirkwood (MOS) for sponsoring my trip and my organization the Maryland Agricultural Education Foundation (MAEF) for allowing me the time to attend. Though I have many stops along the way as I continue my northern summer naturalist's expedition, this was a most excellent way to come home to New England!

More posts to follow for this week on bird conservation and the Atlantic coastal environment, but in the meantime check out the sites below.

Notes:

Friends of Hog Island - this should be your first stop! Support FOHI!

http://fohi.org/

Scott Weidensaul, author and founder of Project SNOWstorm - http://www.scottweidensaul.com

Instructor bios at Hog Island for this year can be seen here:

http://hogisland.audubon.org/instructors-and-guest-speakers

Hog Island Audubon Camp main site:

http://hogisland.audubon.org/

PA: Chestnut Grove Natural Area, Lancaster Co. - Walking with Liberty Hyde Bailey

A thick fog laid low in the Susquehanna River Valley as I crossed the Norman Wood Bridge into Lancaster County. I really had my doubts that I'd find the new prairie very photogenic in such poor light.  But as I drove north along the winding River Road towards the fog lifted high enough to cast the river hills in a glowing kind of light that makes colors pop.

Just the right number of informative signs without being intrusive. Thanks, LCSWMA!

Chestnut Grove is a stunning piece of community landscape restoration that adds invaluable habitat to the twenty mile long river hills natural area corridor of the Lower Susquehanna River Valley.The river hills undulate up and down like frozen ocean waves from stream valley troughs to high crested bluffs. The area is filled with beautiful trails, tons of history, and some of the most picturesque farmland in the country. These high plateaus of meadow and grasslands are considered some of the most endangered habitat in the Commonwealth and many conservancy groups and private landowners are working together to bring them back. This happened to be a great partnership project, a win-win for everyone and every open lands creature involved.

Undulating hills of color and life.

I've written about the importance of native grassland habitat before: protected serpentine barrens, restored meadowlands,  conserved and managed oak savannah, short grass and long grass prairie. Wherever  I am in my research travels I always make a point to find the grasslands that are unique to that place. These are transitional environments but by no means temporary. They expand and contract over time. Whether by the hand of man or by the climate of a region, grassland habitat has been around since the age of Big Reptiles. When conditions become wetter or when people and animals  move on, thousands of years of open lands can become forested pretty quickly. The reverse can happen too. When grasslands fail to hold soil, through natural or man made reasons, they can become deserts. Here on a high bluff over the Susquehanna, this area had once been forested then cleared for farming and cultivated, quarried for soil, and most recently, restored to something that may have been here thousands of years ago. People have had a hand in all of this for a very long time!

So many bees! Bumble bees especially!

In big time, measured by tens of thousands of years, eons, grasslands are those transitional blips that come and go according to drought cycles, the opening and closing of forests, and in the aftermath of ice ages. Mountains on the other hand, like rivers, come and stay a while before they change course or erode away. But all time being relative, grassland species adapt to their transitory environments and therefore can become rare when conditions change or species must change along with them. The key to understanding grasslands is that they are a process and not a product of systems much more complex than we can imagine. Grasslands are change.

Most grasslands and meadow habitat have animal controls that prevent the invasion of shrubs and trees. Out west enormous herds of bison that were estimated to have contained millions of animals kept the oaks from invading. Then came the sodbusters and bison hunters in the mid and late 1800s. The rest is history, as they say. Here in the East, after the cold marshy grasslands of post-glacial times gave way to warmer and drier environments, our main grassland animal control was the elk and the eastern wood bison. Vast herds of elk migrated south in the fall from their summering grounds in the Appalachian valleys a hundred miles or more to the north. Here they lounged, grazing  all the way to the Chesapeake. As they do today in north central PA, elk nibbled away at shrubs, twigs, and juicy saplings creating their own meadow environment. But by 1700 most of Pennsylvania's original elk herds were hunted to extinction.

As people became more numerous and more settled on the plateaus above the river (there are many Susquehannock 'town sites' in this area - look for the historic markers), they began to have a deliberate effect on the grasslands. Controlled burning helped subdue more invasive plants and favored the plants preferred by big game. The added bonus of abundant berry and heath balds, encouraged by fire, sweetened the diets of man and bear. And the chestnut groves, large hummocks of great mast producing trees, for which this place takes its name, provided tons of oily nuts for man, beast, and bird. This was the land of the passenger pigeon.  I wish I'd been around to see their massive flocks streaming down the river valley.

Eastern grasslands  were most likely an open park mix of meadow, grassland, and chestnut groves. This type of habitat is described in many early settler and explorer journals. But after colonial settlement and the wholesale destruction of forest and shortgrass/prairie meadow to be replaced with farming - a process that took far less longer than a glacial retreat or even a decadal drought. And so went the Susquehannock, the bear, the elk, the berry balds, and later, the chestnut. It all happened in a geological blink of an eye. Which makes the restoration of this astoundingly beautiful place not only a great story, but a tale of irony.

Just over the hill are two huge wind turbines that mark the site of an active landfill - a big landfill that is perched crazily atop the scenic cliff-skirted Turkey Hill. The big landfill can be seen from high above and when I fly back to Baltimore from points north I watch for it from thousands of feet up. It's not pretty sitting out there on one of the most recognizable mountainous features of the river valley, though from the river you'd never know there was a landfill up there. Most folks know the turbines, however, as marking the site of the landfill's neighbor, the Turkey Hill Dairy, maker of delicious ice cream and ice tea - though I'm not sure how they get ice tea from a cow...

The wind turbines actually mark the site of the LCSWMA Turkey Point Wind Project at the  Frey Farm Landfill and it's very impressive!  The beginnings of the project were way back in 2010-2011 when the landfill required extra dirt to cover the refuse pits. So the county bought the farm next door and began to dig out the top of the hill, with the idea that the various pits and scrape pits would one day serve as wetlands. The idea for the restoration was hatched among several industry and conservation partners. Five years later, in way less than a geological blink of an eye - more like a twitch - we have this! 

The meadows and grasslands are interlaced with foot paths that share the way with horses, deer, and children. I counted the different species that had passed through the muddy hollows the day before and counted seven kinds of mammal, four kinds of birds, and what think was a nice slither of snake. There is a gravel path loop that encircles two wetland ponds and a deliciously fragrant wooded wet meadow. Butterflies swarmed in the gravel sucking mineral water that had pooled there after the evening showers. For a long way I walked with butterflies floating around my head as if I was in a could of wings. It was magical.

A healthy prairie meadow includes predators as well as prey. I watched a five foot long blacksnake sniff out a bird's nest in the high grass. Blackbirds and mockingbirds plunged down at it and screamed as the snake crossed my path and entered what I suspect was a nesting area. Not long after this a kestrel fledgling rocketed over the trail. I found a pile of feathers in that place on my return.I wondered if the snake alarm attracted the kestrel that figured out he couldn't miss in a crowd of screaming birds. Kestrel boxes are posted throughout the natural area on tall poles. This is a species of concern in Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, LCSWMA, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, and PA Audubon are all working together to help provide nesting boxes across the region.

It seemed every box had a bird peeping out.

I counted twenty next boxes along my walk of about three miles. Bluebirds, wren, kestrels, tree swallows, chickadees, sparrows, and curious (though I don't think nesting) red-bellied woodpecker were using the boxes. Two deer-fence impoundments attracted a variety of perching birds in and on the wide mesh of fence. I caught a quick glimpse of a dicksissel that two birders had been searching for all morning. I almost didn't want to tell them as we met again on another loop, they looked so exasperated! I pointed to the corner of the large fenced-in area where I'd spotted the small black-bib and yellow chested bird.  I told them it was lucky that I even happened to have looked up at the fence when I did as I was so absorbed with the hundreds of bees on cone flower, black-eyed susan, bee balm, and thistles.

As I walked I got to thinking about Cornell professor and horticulturalist Liberty Hyde Bailey, an early twentieth century agriculturalist and writer who headed up the Country Life Commission under Theodore Roosevelt. I had a copy of Holy Earth in my backpack. I wanted to stop somewhere along the trail to rest and read a few pages.  I'm dealing with another round of lyme that makes me tire very quickly. Thank goodness I caught it early and am taking antibiotics but I knew that three miles would probably be exhausting (not my usual ten or fifteen) so why not bring along an old friend? 

Widow Skimmer, female.

The Country Life Commission was formed in response to a massive emptying out of the rural population of the Northeast in the decades after the Civil War leading up to World War One. There were many factors for this including displacement caused by new agricultural technologies that replaced workers and plummeting land and crop prices that forced many farmers into poverty. Many farmers, their families, and farm laborers fled to the cities in search of jobs, often competing with waves of immigrants fleeing Europe. As a result entire landscapes were abandoned particularly in New England and New York. This exodus concerned many people including Bailey and TR. Bailey was appointed chief of the Country Life Commission to investigate why. A huge rural survey was conducted, interviewing over 10,000 rural residents.

A beautiful man made pond is rewilding nicely - dragonflies and barn swallows abound!

The survey revealed that in addition to the stalled agricultural economy,  people no longer felt needed by or connected to a landscape that no longer supported them. They had to survive, feed their families, live in security, they said, but were not willing to wait out the slow motion disaster that affected them and their land. The survey was written into a Congressional Report and presented in Washington, D.C. by Bailey. Moved to act upon the rural crisis (compare this to today's congress) legislators released a large funding package directed at reforming rural economies, improving rural schools and agricultural training programs, and implementing conservation education that would help repair the damage done to the land by overworked, desperate farmers who wrecked their farms trying to squeeze any kind of living from them.  Bailey was inspired to write Holy Earth after his work with the Country Life Commission because he felt that missing from the reforms approved by Congress was the element of personal and communal responsibility, instilling a moral obligation to protect the gifts of the land that Creation endowed us with.

Widow Skimmer, male.

I found a nice place to rest near an overlook hundreds of feet over the water. The breeze was strong enough to keep biting flies away and I pulled out my old Therm-o-Rest seat and tucked in the book.

If moral strength comes from good and sufficient scenery, so does the preservation of it become a moral duty. It is much more than a civic obligation. But the resources of the earth must be available to man for his use and this necessarily means a modification of the original scenery. Some pieces and kinds of scenery are above all economic use and should be kept wholly in the natural state. Much of it may yield to modification if he takes good care to preserve its essential features.Unfortunately, the engineer seems not often to be rained in the vales of scenery and he is likely to despoil a landscape or at least to leave it raw and unfinished. 

Tiger Swallowtail on Monardia (Bee Balm)

We know it is not right that any family should be doomed to the occupancy of a very few dreary rooms and deathly closets in the depths of great cities, seeing that all children are born to the natural sky and to the wind and to the earth. We do not yet see the way to allow them to have what is naturally theirs, but we shall learn how. 

Cabbage White congregation on mineral damp.

To every bird, the air is good; and a man knows it is good if he is worth being a man. To every fish the water is good. To every beast its food is good, and its time of sleep is good. the creatures experience that life is good. Every man knows in his heart that there is goodness and wholeness in the rain, in the wind, the soil, the sea, in the glory of sunrise,  and in the sustenance we derive from the planet. When we grasp the significance of this situation, we shall forever supplant the religion of fear with the religion of consent.  

Red Admiral.

I think I dozed a little because when I looked up  Holy Earth was on the ground. Hmmm. Lyme naps. You must take them when they come! I wasn't concerned about ticks or other biting things, however, as I'd sprayed my clothing well the night before and kept pants and shirt sealed in a large vacuum-sealed bag to let the Deet permeate. It's a temporary fix I learned from a hiking friend. Too bad I didn't think to do this when I was up north in NH two weeks ago! Darned deer ticks! At least I caught this round, my fourth, early and went immediately on antibiotics. But the nap was sooo nice with the breeze coming up from the river. And the sound of insects - so lovely. "...there is goodness and wholeness in the rain, in the wind, the soil..."

Monarch on Coneflower. 

The grasslands shushed behind me. The prairie buzzed and hummed in front of me. Below me the wind rushed up through the steep forest. I could have stayed another hour, but the sky was darkening with an incoming storm. I continued on the path down to a remote pond, circled another deer-fenced impoundment and watched a family of orchard orioles travel along the edge of woods. Newly fledged orioles shivered and begged following their parents. "To every beast, food is good."

Song Sparrow in the deer fence.

Thinking about the many partners, public and private, corporate and individual, that are working together to make these kinds of projects possible gives me a lot of hope. Last week I wrote about partnerships in forest conservation, but this week is a little different. From a tired old farm field, to a borrow pit for the local landfill, to this beautiful eastern grassland prairie- all would have been a dream a generation ago. The most progressive and responsible corporate partners today, however, are not only eager to engage in the process but willing to invest the financial capital to create the ecological capital.

Serenade of the Song Sparrow.

I finished my three mile loop back at the newly installed gravel parking lot in time to hear a young kestrel kek-kek-king from the top of a willow tree in the wet meadow. I think Liberty Hyde Bailey had he been along with me today would have been very happy with what he had seen - and very appreciative of all the hard work, years of planning and labor that went into this newly wild place.  I pulled Holy Earth from my backpack and was ready to toss it on the front seat of the car when I quickly just popped it open and read wherever my eyes fell on the page - you know the trick,  instant spontaneous wisdom, like from a fortune cookie? 

There is no excellence without labor.

You cannot dream oneself into either usefulness or happiness. 

Notes:

The Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority (LCSWMA) is a remarkable and generous partner in the county's conservation scene. Check out their great blog and enjoy scrolling through all the good work they've contributed towards keeping Lancaster County natural history alive and well!
http://www.lcswma.org/blog/archives.cfm/date/2015/6

Bailey, Liberty Hyde. The Holy Earth. (New York, Charles Scribner's and Sons, 1916).
You can free the entire book online at Google Books!