Field Note: A Migrator Morning at Watershed Ridge – with an Exciting Finale!

Some spring days have a special kind of magic, don’t they? Especially in May when the trees dance with small tender leaves, the air is cool, the sun is warm – and the birds of summer arrive in all their mating finery. Wednesday, May 17 was one of those days. (Birding friends, Aaron Carroll and Joan and Bob Bonin shared their photos with me for this blog. Thanks to them all!)

Text and some photos by Cam Mannino

Our Oakland Township Wednesday Birding Group gathered in the parking lot, but Aaron Carroll had arrived early and walked the trails through the eastern fields. In the hedgerow between them, he’d spotted a pair of male Northern Flickers (Colaptes auratus) jousting among the greenery. (Gender ID is easy with this species. Males have black “mustaches.” Females don’t.) In the first photo below, one bird has its beak straight up in the air, the very pose that author Donald Stokes (Stokes Guide to Bird Behavior, Vol. 1) describes for both male and female flickers when skirmishing over territory or potential mates in spring. Stokes adds that this position is usually followed by a chase, which seems to be what’s happening in Aaron’s second photo. Good job of catching the action, Aaron!

Two male Northern Flickers probably competing over territory or a mate. The left bird is striking a standard competition pose with the beak upward and the right bird appears to be watching and calling. Photo by Aaron Carroll.
The dominance battle between the two male flickers continues with a chase. Photo by Aaron Carroll

Once the whole group arrived, we took the northern path from the parking lot, crossed through an opening in the hedgerow and cut through the pathless forest full of dappled light. We emerged at the top of a large meadow and waded through soft grass where it sloped down toward a large marsh. At its edge, we could see and hear multiple Song Sparrows (Melospiza melodia) whisking about singly and in pairs at the edge near the water. The males serenaded their lady friends and fended off the competition with songs they’d learned from nearby adult males when they were mere fledglings. I couldn’t record their songs while in the birding group, but here’s a Song Sparrow I saw and recorded at Watershed Ridge in 2018, just to refresh your memory. (Click red arrow for sound.)

Song Sparrows darted and danced from limb to limb, singing and calling to each other from the bushes at the marsh edge.

Two small gray birds flitted about within the branches of a gnarly old tree at the edge of the marsh. Binoculars raised, we identified them as Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers. Then suddenly we recognized their elegant, cup-shaped nest nearby. According to Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website, it’s built in flexible layers of bark strips, stems and grasses outside and softer materials inside like downy plant fibers and feathers, then decorated with lichen. And imagine this! These little birds use spider or caterpillar silk to hold it on the branch and bind it all together, which, some sources say, allows for some flexibility as the baby birds grow. Clever little artist/engineers, these tiny birds. I love Aaron Carroll’s sequence of photos below. He saw both adults taking turns on the nest, which Cornell reports as a gnatcatcher trait! Nice cooperation!

We used a handy rock for crossing a small stream beyond the marsh to explore the field and pond beyond. I enjoy cresting the small slope beyond the stream to see the small wetland below because it often hosts water birds. And sure enough, three different migrators had dropped in for a visit. A Great Egret (Ardea alba) flew up from the shore, while down below, a Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) scuttled about the muddy edges and a Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes) foraged beneath the surface with its long beak.

The Great Egret soared above the park. According to Cornell University’s Ornithology site, they “fly slowly but powerfully: with just 2 wingbeats per second, their cruising speed is about 25 mph.” It probably flew to us from Florida, the West Indies or Central America. Photo by Aaron Carroll.
Can you spot the Killdeer? It blends in beautifully with its surroundings. They nest in a shallow scrape on the ground so camouflage is important! They generally spend the winter in the Gulf or the Atlantic coast. Photo by Aaron Carroll.
The Lesser Yellowlegs left its wintering grounds in Texas and is on its way to breed in Canada. It thrusts its long beak into the water to snag beetles, snails, flies and any stage of dragonfly. Jazzy wading legs, eh? Photo by Joan Z. Bonin.

A Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) chattered in the thicket at the edge of the meadow. It never made an appearance for fellow birders, Ralph and Andrea Wampler and I. But if you’d like to hear a bit of Catbird conversation, here’s one from Bear Creek a few years ago.

The Big Finish!

From the meadow, we crossed back over the creek and headed up into the trees. Suddenly the people at the front of the group turned to the rest of us, gesturing with their index fingers to their lips and whispering, “ssshhh…!” We gathered quietly. About four feet off the trail, a very focused female Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) drilled furiously at a short stump. We all froze. We couldn’t quite believe our luck at being so close to such an impressive bird. As you’ll see in Aaron Carroll’s video below, she was making the wood chips fly as she drilled for insects in the rotting bark. And she went on drilling for several minutes, apparently oblivious to the presence of the birding group! All of us stood in amazement.

A female Pileated Woodpecker ignored our sizable group of birders as she drilled into a short stump just off the trail. She must have been either very hungry or determined to feed her young, as well as unimpressed with binoculars, clicking cameras and all of us! Video by Aaron Carroll

Finally the Pileated raised her bright red crest and flew farther into the trees. Perhaps she was annoyed at not finding the insects she sought or maybe she suddenly realized she was being watched by a group of rapt birders! We all stood there for a few seconds in disbelief after she departed and then we started exclaiming. “Amazing!” “Boy, I’m glad I was here!” “What a sight that was!” “Well that may be my most incredible bird sighting ever…” We felt a bit dazed but very pleased with the morning’s events as we started up the trail again. But it turned out that nature had one more treat in store for us.

The up-and-down ripple of paired notes of the Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea) reached us from the canopy. Ben led the way and there he was – the male Bunting which Cornell ornithologists describe so beautifully as looking “like a scrap of sky with wings.” This male’s dark wings may have carried him from the Caribbean, Central America or as far away as the northwestern tip of South America. We can hope that he’s arrived to nest and breed at Watershed Ridge Park. We’d be honored to host him.

I wonder if the male Indigo Bunting we saw on May 17 is the same one that sang here all spring last year? In any case, he’s a welcome sight among the greenery. Photo by Aaron Carroll

Lest You Believe That’s All We Saw….!

The birds above are just a few of the 35 species we saw and/or heard that spring morning. They’re the ones that posed nicely for my photographer friends! So here are a few of the other migrators we saw or heard that morning in photos my friends and I have taken on other days. And this slideshow doesn’t even include the “regulars,” like the cardinals, various woodpeckers, the tufted titmice and such that we see on almost every walk but which delight us with their presence too!

You Don’t Have to Be a “Birder” to Enjoy Our Birding Walks

Wednesday Morning Birders at Draper Twin Lake Park

I’m NOT your classic “birder.” I don’t keep a “life list” of birds that I’ve seen. I recognize maybe 10 bird songs from memory. I only travel relatively short distances to go to occasional bird festivals or “hotspots.” We keep feeders in our yard and dedicate a bookshelf to bird identification/ behavior books. I’ve monitored bird boxes and have Cornell Ornithology’s Merlin app on my cell phone to help me identify birds and their calls. So I guess that makes me a bird enthusiast rather than a serious “birder.”

And I just love the Wednesday Bird Walks. This congenial collection of bird fanciers has become a community for me. Our group is a mixture of men and women from late teens to late seventies with a variety of gifts to share. Younger ones bring their energy, enthusiasm, good ears, and sharp eyes, as well as info and insights they’ve gleaned recently in academic settings. Some of us older ones bring years of accumulated bird knowledge and experience. Some can accurately describe almost any plumage pattern or carry a symphony of bird songs in their heads.

Dedicated bird enthusiasts on a rainy morning at Watershed Ridge Par

We walk at a relaxed pace. Once someone spots a bird, we gather, craning our necks, peering upward through our binoculars, trying to find the bird’s location. “See those two bushes with white flowers? Look about 30 feet up at 3:00,” (which means about halfway up the tree on the right side. ) “It’s at the tip of that bare limb…Oops, it just went down in the grass – but wait. Bluebirds often come right back up.” “I’m hearing a Brown Thrasher but I can’t see it yet.” And so on.

Birder walkers discovering warblers at Watershed Ridge Park

Like me, most bird walkers just enjoy the company of birders as much as we enjoy birds. We share personal stories, laugh, commiserate, chat along the way. We’re silent when we need to be. We mute our phones and look at them only for info or the occasional bird call. We come because we like the people and we love seeing birds, hearing their songs and hanging out together for a couple of hours surrounded by nature. And our stewardship staff reports our weekly discoveries to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s citizen science website, eBird.org. That also allows our stewardship staff to keep a record of bird species in our parks each week over many years.

You’re welcome to join us if any of that sounds appealing. Just bring your curiosity and good will. Wear comfy clothes, sturdy shoes and bring binoculars, or our Stewardship Manager Ben VanderWeide will happily loan you a pair on the spot. The summer schedule is listed here . If you’re interested but unable to hike with us for any reason, I’m glad you’re joining us here at Natural Areas Notebook!

After all, on some delightful spring morning, YOU might get lucky and find yourself up close and personal with a glorious drama queen like the one below!

Field Note: Rx for Restoration? Fire??? Yes, Indeed!

Some of the fire crew gathered under the Big Oak during a pause in this spring’s burn. Note that the crew kept the fire from singeing the oak’s trunk, though it’s fire-adapted like all oaks. It was done out of deference to all the changes the Big Oak has experienced this year. Photo by Ben VanderWeide.
Text and some photos by Cam
Mannino

Eight years ago, when I first heard about prescribed burns, I thought “What? That’s pretty counter intuitive. Why would anyone apply fire to help plants?” Luckily, I learned about these restorative burns from Dr. Ben VanderWeide, our township stewardship manager; he had the answers.

After recent highly successful prescribed burns at Bear Creek Nature Park, I thought it might be time to discuss this seemingly strange process once more.

[Please Note: Due to an absurd mistake on my part, nearly all my photos of this spring’s Bear Creek burn were lost. I heartily thank volunteers Bob Schrader and John Reed as well as Grant VanderLaan and Ben for sharing their photos for this blog. My apologies to the fire crew for messing up big time!]

The History of Fire in our Prairies

For thousands of years, rolling prairies and oak savannas, dotted with native wildflowers and widely spaced oaks, carpeted our area of southeast Michigan. Lightning strikes periodically set the trees and fields ablaze, creating large wildfires. The Anishinaabek people that lived here also made regular use of fire, clearing land for crops and attracting game with the tender new plants that rise after a fire.

An oak with minimal competition at Charles Ilsley Park in spring. This landscape of rolling prairies and big oaks is similar to the landscapes of the past in Oakland Township.

As a result, our native plants became fire-adapted. They “learned to live with” fire and even benefit from it. Trees like the oak in the photo above developed thick bark, especially at the base. Some like jack pines (Pinus banksiana) even require fire to trigger their pine cones to release seeds. For others the chemicals in smoke, the heat of the fire itself, or removing accumulated thatch cues dormant seeds to germinate.

Fire Becomes an Ally in Restoration

Today, while renewing our native plants, fire also discourages or even eliminates many aggressive non-native, non-productive plants that invaded our fields, forests, and remnant prairies after agriculture ended. Their leaves and fruits are either toxic or drastically less nutritious for our native birds, native insects and their caterpillars. Fire acts as an ally in restoration by knocking back these plants that didn’t evolve with fire and therefore never adapted to it. Other invasive plants like crown vetch, Phragmites, invasive bittersweet, and swallow-wort respond positively to fire, so burning is often paired with other management techniques if these plants are found in area to be burned. Our native plants can then provide the nourishing, healthy food on which our wildlife depends.

Planning the Prescribed Burn

As Stewardship Manager, Ben plans the burns long ahead of time, choosing areas with good potential for restoration, especially ones with invasive and/or non-native vegetation. If the burn will encompass flat or gently sloped land, Ben often uses his staff plus trained volunteers to set and manage the fire. (Look for our annual training day each February if you’re interested!) He hires licensed contractors to conduct burns that involve large areas, forests with lots of dead wood, or steep hills which present more challenges. [Please note that any prescribed burn should only be done by trained personnel! Detailed knowledge and experience are required for a safe burn.]

Volunteer fire crew preparing to burn, March 2016.

Volunteers meet with Ben and the stewardship crew before the fire to review his burn plan in detail. The Parks and Recreation Commission provides our local crew with hard hats, fire-resistant clothing and face shields, as well as walkie-talkies so that crew members can communicate with one another during the burn. All members are trained to acknowledge instructions given to them by the crew leaders and to report any changes in their location or fire behavior during the burn. Once the neighbors have been notified, prescribed fires occur on days with the right wind speed, wind direction, and humidity. A fire weather forecast also gives the crew clues about how well the smoke will rise and disperse. Before the burn begins, the crew removes logs and large fallen branches near the edge of the burn unit and/or douses them with water from backpack canisters that can be refilled from a large tank carried in the crew’s truck .

Ben monitors the wind before and during the burn to prevent the smoke as much as possible from carrying into nearby neighborhoods. The natural areas stewardship staff creates or checks “burn breaks” around the perimeter of the “burn unit” days, weeks, or months before the burn day. A burn break can be pond, stream, or other naturally occurring feature, or it might be a trail, road, parking lot or other human-constructed thing that doesn’t have fuel for the fire to burn across. Burn breaks are also created around bird nest boxes, utility poles, or other fire-sensitive objects inside the burn unit.

Igniting and Monitoring the Fire

The crew first ignites the fire on the downwind side of the burn unit, creating a slow “back burn” that creeps against the wind into the burn unit. Fire slips in droplets from the tip of a drip torch as crew members walk slowly around the edges of the unit, carefully starting the fire. The crew allows the fire to create a wide burned area on the downwind side before moving around to the edges, or “flanks.”

The crew lights a back burn on the downwind side of a burn unit to create a safe, wide burned area.

As the crew spreads the fire around the flanks, it slowly spreads inward toward the center of the burn unit.

North of Bear Creek’s Center Pond, volunteer Vinnie Morganti spreads fire with a drip torch while Grant Vander Laan monitors with a water backpack. Photo by Bob Schrader.
Fire moving to the center of the slope from two directions near the Bear Creek Nature Park lookout point. Photo by John Reed.

The fire burns around and under trees and shrubs. Most larger trees have thick bark that easily protects them from a quickly passing fire. Many small trees and shrubs are top-killed by fire, but most resprout vigorously afterward. In fact sumacs, willows, and some other native shrubs grow better if they are occasionally pruned back by fire. In my photos below, fire burned right under a fire-adapted small oak during the second burn and when it passed on, the little oak and its spring leaf buds showed no damage. If small oaks are top killed by fire, they resprout vigorously from their huge roots.

While the basic tools of prescribed burns are water tanks and drip torches, some crew members carry tools like a flat-backed fire rake or a fire flapper to separate burning embers or rub sparks or embers into the ground. Once the fire dies down, these tools and the water tanks are used to put out any smoldering material during “mop up.”

Wondering about the Impact on Wildlife?

I worried about this, too! But having witnessed many burns at this point, I’ve learned that once the smoke starts, creatures move quickly out of the burn units. The fire crews never burn a whole park in one day, so there are always unburnt areas in the park where moles, snakes, mice and insects can find refuge quickly. In fact, the crew tries to work the fire upwind so that rabbits, squirrels and other creatures smell the smoke sooner and have time to escape to other areas in the park or beyond.

Some animals and insects retreat to underground nests, like the ants. Remember that our native insects have been dealing with fire for thousands of years and react quickly to smoke. Our pollinators and their caterpillars will benefit greatly in future weeks from the increased population of nutritious native plants created by the longer growing season and the natural fertilizer as the nutrients in the dead plant material are returned to the soil. Many native plants flower more vigorously after a burn, creating a bountiful buffet for our pollinators.

Of course, I’ve also seen a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) and an American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) high in the trees calmly ignoring the smoke blowing across their eyes as they watch carefully for possible prey.

Ben checked one of the burned fields at Bear Creek a few days after the March 21 burn this spring, and found American Robins, Red-winged Blackbirds, and others enjoying the easy food options on the Western Slope. Here’s his video of what he heard as he looked across the blackened field! Quite a chorus! The nearby unburned fields were much quieter.

A chorus of excited birds after the first burn at Bear Creek Nature Park this spring. Video by Ben VanderWeide.

Smaller birds and other animals benefit by foraging in the burn unit after the fire is out. The morning after the first burn, I came back to find American Robins (Turdis migratorious) all over the fields, snatching up worms or insects and a few Dark-eyed Juncos (Junco hyemalis) busily pecking their way around the blackened areas.

Sowing Native Seed After A Burn

After the second burn at Bear Creek Nature Park this year, Ben sent this assessment to volunteers and staff:

“The burn jump-started the next phase of our restoration work in these burn units! Today [March 31, 2023] between breaks in the rain, we will spread a locally-collected native seed mix on the burned areas to help increase the native plant diversity. It usually takes 3-5 years for plants growing from seed to establish and become noticeable, so you won’t see the results of this seeding for a while. You will see the response from naturally occurring native plants, and from native plant seed that we spread years ago! Look for more growth and flowering from our native wildflowers and prairie grasses this summer!”

More from Ben: “In a few weeks you’ll start to see green growth emerging in the burn units. Early season burns often take a bit longer to green up compared to areas burned in April or early May. Later this spring and early summer we’ll scan through the burn units to look for invasive plants like crown vetch, teasel, and swallow-wort. Later summer or early fall the stewardship crew plans to scan through the burn units to spot treat invasive shrubs that were top-killed by the fire. Next spring we hope to repeat the burn, seed, and invasives monitoring sequence. This process has produced good results as an alternative prairie restoration technique for old field/pasture in Wisconsin (check out this webinar for more info – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvMy–MMM2c), so we’re trying it in the fields at Bear Creek Nature Park.”

Ben was so right about the greening up process. Here’s the Western Slope after the March 21 burn and what it looked like about a month later on April 22.

Fire’s Big Payoff

As Ben says above, planting native seeds means a 3-5 year wait for the full bloom to appear while the plants grow deep roots. But if conditions are right, the result can be just amazing and well worth the wait!

Here’s one example that I cherish. In April of 2014, Ben burned the Eastern Prairie at Charles Isley Park. I didn’t get there in time to get a photo that year, but on the left below is a burn photo there from another year. After the 2014 burn and other work to prepare the field, Ben planted native wildflower and grass seed in fall 2015. And look at what a glorious show we had by 2018!

Of course every park, every habitat is different, so we can’t quite expect such a magnificent bloom every time. And the flowers calm down and thin out a bit over time as they sort out their competition and wait for another fire. But I think this 2014 to 2018 transformation is what made me a convert to prescribed fire.

Sometimes I find an even bigger thrill simply seeing a native plant emerge whose seeds were waiting in the soil for years, or small, stunted plants that persisted for years under invasive shrubs. Freed of thatch and invasive shrubs, warmed, fertilized, showered with rain, they finally emerge again into the sunlight. And I love that renewal. Here are just a few wildflowers from different parks that have staged a comeback after prescribed burn and other restoration efforts over recent years.

The Inspiring Persistence of Nature

Native trees, shrubs and wildflowers are an inspiration for me. They’re tough, seasoned survivors, having lived here for thousands of years while coping with Michigan’s changeable weather and rocky, glacier-scraped soil. Native Wood Poppies (Stylophorum diphyllum) in our backdoor garden, some buried unceremoniously under huge piles of dirt by utility workers shortly after planting, just came back and kept on blooming. When our native Clematis (Clematis occidentalis) arrived from the grower looking like a bent, possibly dead stick, I planted it anyway. It bloomed with lavender blossoms during June last year. Insects skeletonized the leaves of our Zigzag Goldenrods(Solidago flexicaulis) its first year, but they leafed out and bloomed a year later.

Once native plants establish their deep roots, they take care of themselves and their needs are few. They can thrive in poor soil, tolerate drought, fight off predatory insects with their own chemicals and insist on survival without frequent watering or fertilizer. And as you can see in our parks, they can even thrive after fire, for heaven’s sake!

It’s a sad fact that native plants face a host of challenges caused by us, the brilliant but heedless species, Homo sapiens. Invasive trees, shrubs, grasses and flowers from afar were transported or purchased here by you, I and our forebears. When they escape from our yards into natural areas, they transform our fields and woodlands into dense thickets of a few non-native species. Our native habitat relies on pollinators for survival, but their numbers continue to plummet because we unwittingly chose, and in most cases continue to choose, pretty non-native plants whose leaves malnourish or kill caterpillars, the next generation of insects. And of course few of us have seriously reduced our reliance on fossil fuels which create the newly extreme and erratic climate that wreaks havoc on the complex relationships that sustained nature in a healthy, finely tuned ecosystem for millennia.

But now we know, right? And here in Oakland Township, we’re doing our best to provide native plants with a new lease on life. First, we preserve open areas and then we work to restore them to health. So when Ben and the stewardship crew ignite their drip torches, I’m delighted. We’re taking nature’s side, trying to restore native habitats in our parks and for many of us, in our yards and gardens. That’s the side I want to be on – and I’m betting you do, too. I mean, it makes so much sense! After all, nature can survive without us, but we definitely cannot survive without nature! So let’s just do what we can with what we know now. Let’s see how much progress we can make in our little green corner of the world before we leave it to the next generation.

False sunflower and bee balm flowering at the Paint Creek Heritage Area – Wet Prairie the summer after a 2016 burn.

Migration Miracles: How Migrating Birds Find Their Way to Us … and Survive the Journey

Sandhill Crane in flight over Stony Creek Ravine Nature Park.

They’re coming our way. And others are bidding us farewell. The spring bird migration is under way and will really gain steam in early May. Are you curious about how many birds flew through the night over Oakland County yesterday? Here’s a great tool from Cornell University’s Ornithology Lab that can give you a data-based estimate! (Thanks to birding friend Vinnie Morganti for the link!)

The Dark-eyed Juncos (Junco hyemalis) and Tree Sparrows (Spizelloides arborea), who nest in colder climates, are beginning to depart from the hedgerows and from under our feeders as they wing their way to their northern breeding grounds. Bufflehead dabbling ducks (Bucephala albeola) showed up on Cranberry Lake in mid-March as they made their way through Michigan to their nesting grounds that extend from Ontario to Canada’s Northwest Territories. And of course, the hoarse, ancient cries of the Sandhill Cranes (Antigone canadensis) now draw our eyes skyward. (Click on photos below to enlarge.)

Text and photos by Cam Mannino & friends

I’m always impressed by the ability of birds to survive the ordeal of migration, successfully navigating their way twice each year across the country and sometimes far beyond. This spring a lot of questions bubbled up in my winter-weary mind.

How does the tiny hummingbird beat its wings thousands of times on its way to Central America without expiring from exhaustion? How do fledglings find their way when they travel without adults, which happens more often than not? How do birds flying nonstop over oceans eat and sleep? And what’s up with birds using the earth’s magnetic field to navigate? I sure can’t perceive the earth’s magnetic field!

Recently, while doing some spring cleaning, I came across an article that I’d saved which gave me some possible explanations and some resources to go further. (See references below.) So I wanted to share with you the astounding and somewhat bizarre adaptations that allow our avian neighbors to successfully make such arduous journeys.

First, a big Thank-You! My photographer friends, Paul Birtwhistle and Bob and Joan Bonin have again generously shared some of their wonderful photos for this blog. My heartfelt thanks to all three!

So How Did This Whole Migration Pattern Get Started, Anyway?

Doesn’t semi-annual migration seem a bit extreme? I mean, why don’t birds just stay in warm regions all year ’round happily eating and breeding? (I’m glad they don’t, though!) The Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes two theories: the Northern Home theory that northern bird ancestors moved south little by little as ice ages advanced, or the Southern Home theory that southern bird ancestors followed the ice north as it retreated. According to a recent University of Michigan study of the evolutionary lineage of 800 species of North American song birds, the Northern Home theory seems more likely. (Very cool detail about this subject at this link! Click on the words “Evolution of Bird Migration” at the top left.)

Birds have continued to migrate for eons because of the basics: food and breeding opportunities. Temperate zones like Michigan are very buggy places. Our inland wetlands and shorelines produce a glorious abundance of insects and their caterpillars each spring and summer. Just look at the meal this Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) found in one of our parks! Quite a haul!

So when daylight lingers in spring or shrinks in autumn, birds notice the change and start feeling restless. Even captive birds in scientific studies evidence migration restlessness, which is known among researchers by the German name zugunruhe. As the season approaches, they eat more and later into the evening. Their sleep decreases by as much as two-thirds in some species. (Sounds familiar somehow. Maybe human “snow birds” are experiencing zugunruhe?)

The other big draw is mating, of course. Favorite stopovers bring together migrating birds of the same species, which means a more diverse choice of mates. Let’s hear it for diversifying the gene pool!

And then there’s the “housing market”; early birds enjoy a greater selection of the preferred, sometimes scarce, nest sites.

A year ’round resident, the Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus), claims one of the high-demand cavity nesting sites in a branch of the Big Oak near the Center Pond at Bear Creek Nature Park. Photo by Paul Birtwhistle.

OK, So How Do Birds Prepare for Migration?

It’s tough to generalize about bird migration. Consider that some travel long distances, like the Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) who flaps its tiny wings to reach Central America, or the Magnolia Warbler (Setophaga magnolia) who sets off for the Caribbean. Others travel short distances, like Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis) and American Robins (Turdus migratorius) who simply move just far enough in winter to find open water and more food.

Many songbirds, like the Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus), make their way at night to avoid migrating predators like the Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii), which migrates in daylight. Also, according to the Audubon Society, “Free of daytime thermals [rising warm air], the atmosphere [at night] is more stable, making it easier to maintain a steady course, especially for smaller birds such as warblers that might fly as slowly as 15 miles per hour.”

Some migrators fly in single species flocks, like the Snow Buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis) that arrive in the fall from the Arctic to spend winters in Michigan. Their plumage is whiter in the snowy north to camouflage them while breeding. During their winter visit here, their plumage includes more brown, making them less visible in fallow farm fields and open prairie. Others, like the Greater (Tringa melanoleuca) and Lesser Yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes) make their way north in mixed flocks during spring migration.

Snow Buntings travel here together from their Arctic breeding grounds in the fall. Photo by Joan Z. Bonin.
Many shore and water birds travel in mixed flocks, like these Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs at Stony Creek Ravine Nature Park. The loss and fragmentation of wetlands around the world are causing a severe drop in the numbers of shorebirds. Photo by Joan Z. Bonin.

According to Scott Weidensaul, author of A World on Wings: the Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, even if huge numbers of birds are aloft together, a migrating songbird flying at night, “does not fly in cohesive, coordinated flocks; each is migrating on it own.” House Wrens (Troglodytes aedon) and Red-eyed Vireos (Vireo olivaceus), for example are lone nighttime migrators.

Given all that that diversity, here’s what I’ve gleaned so far about how birds prepare.

They Fatten Up Big Time!

A large flock of Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) here in Oakland Township building up their fat stores for migration.

Birds really lard up for migration. Experienced naturalist and local bird bander, Allen Chartier, checks the weight of each bird he bands and gently blows the breast feathers aside to actually see the fat layer. He told me in a helpful email that our Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds, which normally weigh about 3 grams during breeding season can weigh more than 5 grams as they leave Michigan. They need to keep bulking up along the way and amazingly can double their normal weight in about a week just before heading across the Gulf of Mexico in the autumn or the Yucatan in the spring.

Blackpoll Warblers (Setophaga striata) transit across our state twice a year and Allen says they, “… undergo a long water crossing, sometimes from the mid-Atlantic coast down to Venezuela, non-stop. Normally they weigh 10-11 grams, but can put on enough fat to more than double their weight for these multi-day flights.” He reports that “in the Great Lakes, I have had Blackpoll Warblers that weigh more than 20 grams.” Fat is clearly the essential fuel for bird migration!

The Blackpoll Warbler can fly over the Atlantic for 3 days nonstop on its way to its wintering grounds.

As author Scott Weidensaul points out, “By any typical measure, a migratory bird ready for travel ought to head to the ER, not the skies.” But he says, unlike seriously overweight humans, fattened-up migrators are not plagued by increased risk of hypertension, heart disease, diabetes or stroke. Weidensaul says that “Researchers hope that insights from avian physiology may help may help unlock new treatments and preventive approaches in people.” I hope so too!

They “Grow or Jettison their Internal Organs on an As-needed Basis!”

The quote above from Scott Weidensaul’s book just blew me away. The internal organs of birds actually shrink and expand for migration? Yes! “Internal flexibility is actually common among migrants … a thrush or catbird, feeding on the dogwood berries in a corner of the backyard, has undergone a late summer expansion of its intestines to squeeze every calorie from lipid-rich fruit.”

This digestive tract of this Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) feeding in September 2019 at Bear Creek Nature Park would have extended as the the fall began in order to get as much polyunsaturated fat as possible from the pulp or seeds within the berries it’s eating!

Migrating birds, which need to travel non-stop over oceans or deserts for long distances, shrink their digestive organs since they’re expendable when they can’t stop to feed. But their hearts, lungs and pectoral muscles grow larger, and do so without exercise! On arrival, the digestive organs make a comeback that allows them to start feeding again. Imagine! Transforming organs!

The little Chestnut-sided Warbler (Setophaga pensylvanica) below, photographed by Paul Birtwhistle in Costa Rica, may not have needed such drastic transformation for its nonstop trip across the Gulf of Mexico. I couldn’t find a definitive answer to that but it definitely burned a lot of fat! According to Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s subscription website, Birds of the World, a Chestnut-sided Warbler in non-breeding plumage could have weighed 10 -12 grams when it left the U.S. coast. But these birds are recorded as weighing only about 8 grams when they reach Central America, having lost most or all of their stored fat on their nonstop flights across the Gulf of Mexico.

This Chestnut-sided Warbler in Costa Rica probably lost a lot of weight flying over the Gulf of Mexico to Costa Rica. I’d say a soothing bath was called for! It will probably take a more leisurely trip around the edge of the Gulf on its way to us this spring. Photo by Paul Birtwhistle.

Weidensaul also reports that both male and female birds shrink their sexual organs for fall migration. Anything to make flying lighter and easier, I guess! Allen Chartier wrote, “Ever since humans began preparing “study skins” for museums, more than 200 years ago, it was discovered that during the non-breeding season the gonads of birds shrink in size, to maybe 10% of the size that they are in the breeding season. It was figured, eventually, that this was to reduce weight for migration, and allow for more body fat to be laid on for migratory flights.” Their gonads are ballooning right now, which is why we are beginning to hear that robust morning chorus in the spring!

Once They Start Moving, How in the World Do They Navigate?

A flock of migrating Tundra Swans (Cygnus columbianus) called to each other as they flew over Cranberry Lake Park. Photo by Bob Bonin.

In her lively and well-researched New Yorker article, “Where the Wild Things Go: How Animals Navigate the World,” (April 5, 2021), Kathryn Schulz wrote: “A bird that migrates over long distances must maintain its trajectory by day and by night, in every kind of weather, often with no landmarks in sight. If its travels take more than a few days, it must compensate for the fact that virtually everything it could use to stay oriented will change, from the elevation of the sun to the length of the day and the constellations overhead at night. Most bewildering of all, it must know where it is going — even the first time, when it has never been there before – and it must know where that destination lies compared with its current position.” Wow.

Like humans with our much more limited ability to orient and navigate, birds use a variety of basic navigation strategies, and different species may use a combination of them. Kathryn Schulz lists as strategies: sight, sound or even scent cues, landmarks (mountain ridges, coastlines), compass orientation or vector navigation (stringing together multiple orientations (e.g. south and then southwest for a precise distance) or dead reckoning (calculating based on bearing, speed and time elapsed from a previous location). But she points out, “… to have a sense of direction, a given species might also need to have other faculties, something like a compass, something like a map, a decent memory, the ability to keep track of time, and an information-rich awareness of its environment.” And Weidensaul adds to the list: the patterns of stars around Polaris (the North Star) and the movement of “bands of polarized light that are invisible to us but easily seen by birds.” Wow, again! All that in one small skull!

According to Weidensaul, “Migratory birds grow fresh neurons before autumn migration” and scientists have correlated longer migrations with more neuron growth, presumably as an aid to navigation. The neurons also increase according to whether birds travel individually or in flocks. Warblers which generally fly alone show increases in the hippocampus which processes spatial information and memory. Birds in large migrating flocks see most of the increase in regions of the brain that may be more important for noticing and understanding the actions of other birds.

Researchers believe that a bird’s general destination may be defined by instinct, especially in young birds, many of whom make their first trip alone or with other juveniles. But learning clearly occurs during their first flight with or without adults and plays its part in perfecting the best route from then on.

But what I wanted to know was, how do some migrating birds create and use a mental map of the earth’s magnetic field? I kept finding references to their ability to do so, but no one told me how! Well, Weidensaul had an answer which he says “most experts accept.”

This little Wilson’s Warbler could have navigated from Central America to Tawas City, Michigan using a starlight map of the earth’s magnetic field in its retina! What a feat!

Imagine the little Wilson’s Warbler (Cardellina pusilla) in the photo above glancing upward at the stars as it flies through the night from Central America to where I saw it in Tawas City, Michigan. As I understand it, photons of the stars’ blue light hit specialized cells in the bird’s retina containing molecules of a protein called cryptochrome. (Love the Superman sound of that!) Those molecules react by thrusting one of their electrons into a neighboring molecule and the two become connected (“entangled” in scientific jargon) and magnetic. (That’s the quantum mechanics part which is a bit beyond me.) As light continues to stream in, multiples of these paired molecules build a map of the magnetic field within the bird’s eye. Scientists think the map may appear as a “dim shape or smudge — visible as the bird moves its head, but not opaque enough to interfere with normal vision — that shifts with the bird’s position relative to the ground and to the inclination of the magnetic field lines arcing out of the planet” (Weidensaul). Evidently, birds can orient themselves within that map to help find their way to their destination. Many of us humans have a tough time reading a road map!

If my brief summary leaves you with more questions than answers, you’re in good company. Even scientists don’t completely understand how cryptochrome works its magic and some disagree with the whole theory. But at least that little map in the eye created by starlight and quantum mechanics satisfies my curiosity for now. If you’d like a somewhat what more detailed description, I recommend Chapter Two of Weidensaul’s book, A World on the Wing.

Eating and Sleeping,: How Do They Survive Along the Way?

Eating Strategies

Eating on migrations varies according to what and how a bird eats. Most migrating birds depend on trusted stopover sites for food and rest. Allen Chartier wrote that “Migrating warblers, sparrows, and thrushes migrate at night, and put on fat to fly 200+ miles each night…” to their next stop. Eastern Kingbirds (Tyrannus tyrannus) and Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica) migrate to Michigan from deep in South America during daylight hours, in order to gobble up flying insects while on the wing as well as at known rest stops.

Amazingly, some birds in other regions of the world fly nonstop for multiple days and nights without eating at all! Weidensaul describes the Bar-tailed Godwit’s “7,200-mile nonstop flight each autumn from western Alaska to New Zealand, a journey that takes them eight or nine days of uninterrupted flight — the longest nonstop migration known.” They are an impressive example of “jettisoning” organs and living on fat. I’m really glad I’m not a godwit – but I am impressed by them!

The amazing Bar-tailed Godwit who jettisons its digestive organs and lives on stored fat for its 7200 mile migration. Photo taken in Australia by an iNaturalist.org photographer who uses the name fubberpish (CC BY-NC)

Drinking in Flight

Birds don’t sweat but they do lose moisture through breathing and excreting. That may account for so many birds migrating at night when the air is cooler and more humid, according to Weidensaul. Of course they look for freshwater wetlands as a basic source of drinking water. But on long ocean or other nonstop flights, for instance, research shows that they can still maintain a healthy amount of moisture by extracting water from their beefed-up muscles and organs while in flight.

Sleeping on the Wing

Most migrating birds do their journeys in stages, resting during the day or night depending on when they travel. Weidensaul reports that “For migratory songbirds, like White-throated Sparrows and Hermit Thrushes (Catharus guttatus,) the onset of migration seasons … decreases the amount of time they sleep by two-thirds, even in captivity, and well before they start migration. They may compensate by taking micronaps during the day.”

Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) have evolved to use unihemispheric sleep, a condition in which only half the brain sleeps at a time and one eye stays open. Neils Rattenborg directs sleep research at Germany’s Max Planck Institute and his team’s work centers around birds. According to an article from the Max Planck Society, Rattenborg documented that “in a group of sleeping ducks, those [Mallards] sitting at the edge kept their outwardly directed eye open and the corresponding brain hemisphere remained awake. The birds can thereby rest a part of their brain while keeping an eye out for potential predators.” I’m on the lookout for that phenomenon!

Paul Birtwhistle caught this lovely male Mallard feeding. But researchers have learned that while in flocks, Mallards can have unihemispheric sleeping, with one eye open and one half of the brain awake while the other half sleeps!

By outfitting birds Great Frigatebirds (Fregata minor) near the Galapagos Islands with tiny transmitters, Rattenborg also discovered something even more important about sleep. It seems these large birds take repeated unihemispheric naps averaging about 12 seconds long while foraging at sea for six days or more. Sometimes these birds’ entire brains slept while slowly gliding up or down in thermals! Talk about power napping, eh?

A Great Frigatebird hunting off the Galapagos islands naps while in flight! Photo by spinomaly (CC BY-NC) at iNaturalist.org.

What Can We Humans Do to Make Life Easier for Migrating Birds?

Clearly, we’ve created big challenges for migrating birds, despite their amazing adaptations over the eons. So here are just a few of those difficulties and how we might help our beautiful migrating neighbors.

  1. Light Pollution: Birds need a clear view of the night sky even more than we do. (Don’t you miss seeing a sky filled with stars?) So we can turn off outside lights (at home and in workplaces), make the light bulbs yellow or red instead of white, or install shades on outdoor lights that direct the light downward. Inside, we can close curtains or shades where a light is near a window in the evening during migration season. It all helps.
  2. Reflective glass like picture windows: Birds that crash into windows may fly off but they often do so with concussions. Check out this link for options for preventing bird strikes.
  3. Cats: Keep our beloved felines indoors. To quote Cornell Lab of Ornithology on this subject, “These are non-native predators that, even using conservative estimates, kill 1.3–4 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals each year in the U.S. alone. Exhausted migratory birds and fledglings are particularly at risk.
  4. Habitat Loss: Restore natural areas and plant native plants at home. Birds count on finding the adult insects, caterpillars, and seeds that make up their diet when they arrive at a stopover or their final destination. If that land is covered by concrete or invaded by non-native plants that don’t provide the nutrition or cover they need, birds suffer along with the rest of the creatures in that habitat.
  5. Climate Change: Actively, drastically and quickly reduce our use of fossil fuels. Climate disruption effects migratory birds in so many ways. But here are at least two important ones. It causes more severe weather events which vulnerable migrators must negotiate over long distances. Also, insects and plants initiate hatching or blooming by ground temperature; as the ground warms earlier, overwintering insects hatch earlier, plants mature more quickly. Birds, however, initiate migration by the position of the sun and the length of daylight. As a result, tired migrators may arrive in the spring unable to find the insects, nectar or pollen on which they depend. Want evidence? Look here!

Birds Do It, Bees Do It, Even Whales in the Seas Do It … Let’s Do It. Let’s Start to Adapt…

A sky full of Broadwinged Hawks (Buteo platypterus) at the Hawkfest in 2018 at Holiday Beach near Windsor, Ontario.

Obviously, we humans need to adapt just like the migrators have – but a lot faster! We don’t have thousands of years for evolution to re-engineer our bodies and nature itself to cope with the new climate we’re creating with fossil fuels. No miracles of transforming digestive systems, cryptochrome maps in our eyes or unihemispheric sleep are on our immediate horizon. Nature already gave us our adaptive tools – our brains and our will. We already know much of what is needed; the trick is, do we find the collective will as a species to do it in time? The changes we need to make are significant, but not insurmountable. Nature is already warning us with tornadoes, floods, droughts, melting glaciers. It’s insisting “You can do this! Use the adaptation tools between your ears that you were blessed with and save us all!” I certainly hope more humans heed that desperate call – and soon!

Main Sources:

  • A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul, W.W. Norton and Company, New York 2021
  • Where the Wild Things Go: How Animals Navigate the World,” by Kathryn Schulz, published April 5, 2021 in the New Yorker magazine
  • Birds of the World, a subscription-only website from Cornel Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University in collaboration with the American Ornithological Society.
  • “The Evolution of Bird Migration, “Adapted from the Handbook of Bird Biology, Third Edition, on Cornell University’s website “All About Birds”‘
  • Snoozing between the skies and earth” a posting on the website of the Max Planck Society.

Field Note: Ta-Da!!! The Big Oak Stands Free!

The Big Oak at Bear Creek Nature Park after the stewardship crew removed the trees growing beneath its canopy.

Once again, as in its younger years, the big white oak (Quercus alba) near the Center Pond at Bear Creek Nature Park is drenched with sunlight, its roots able to reach more water and benefit from more nutrients. As I explained in a February blog , this winter Dr. Ben VanderWeide and his stewardship crew worked to remove the many smaller trees that had grown up inside the oak’s canopy, causing the lower limbs to weaken and die. A few trees had to be left for now, because they lean toward the viewing platform and will require a frozen pond and careful work to remove at a future date. It took weeks of felling, sawing logs into manageable sizes, chipping branches and hauling it all away to get to this point. But look at it now!

Next summer, the Big Oak will gather in more of the sun’s rays, increasing the strength and health of a tree that may have hundreds more years to live. This magnificent specimen will remove and store even more carbon and breathe out more oxygen. It can host more species of caterpillars high in its greenery in the summer and beneath its leaf litter in the fall and winter, feeding the birds, their young and many other creatures. More birds may find homes on or within it giant limbs. And we humans can more easily appreciate its grandeur on our Bear Creek hikes.

Text and photos by Cam Mannino

So let’s take a minute for a couple of cyber-toasts, shall we? “Long Life to the Big Oak!” And “Cheers for Our Stewardship Crew!” for its care of this glorious, landmark tree!

Stewardship “Spring Training Season”: Prepare for Nest Peeking and Pool Dipping!

Text and photos
by Cam Mannino

Is winter gray beginning to get to you? Despite our state’s many charms, late winter blahs can be a quintessential element of living in Michigan. So if you can’t browse one more seed catalog, have exhausted the good stuff on all those streaming channels, cleaned out enough drawers and almost reached the end of your winter reading list, I’ve got a couple of recommendations to juice things up a bit!

For the last several years, I’ve become a citizen scientist through opportunities provided by two great stewardship training programs at Oakland Township’s Parks and Recreation Commission. March is the month to prepare for some spring wildlife explorations that provide important data for scientists studying our wild neighbors. Let me take a few minutes to “show and tell” about the enjoyment and discovery I’ve experienced being a local citizen scientist.

“Spring Training” Schedule

  • Vernal Pool Patrol Training: Wednesday evenings in March, and local field training on April 6. Michigan Natural Features Inventory (MNFI) offers an online 3-part Vernal Pool Patrol training program on Wednesday evenings in March for folks interested in exploring vernal pools. Learn more and register here: https://vernal-pool-patrol-mnfi.hub.arcgis.com/. Vernal Pool Patrol volunteers MUST attend these three online sessions at home before joining in our local in-person field training event on April 6.
  • NestWatch Training, 2:00 to 3:30 pm on March 23 at the Paint Creek Cider Mill. Become a citizen scientist and make a difference!  Learn how to safely and properly monitor bird nests, both in nest boxes and other nest types. By monitoring a nearby nest, you can help scientists study the biology of North America’s birds and how it might be changing over time. Register online at oaklandtownship.recdesk.com.

Dipping into the Mystery of Vernal Pools

Volunteers monitoring a vernal pool in the early spring

If you’ve lived here very long, I’m sure you’ve noticed vernal pools – those small woodland pools that fill from snowmelt and rain in the spring and then dry up and disappear during the summer. But it never occurred to me, and maybe not to you either, that special creatures were living in there! It turns out that these shallow temporary wetlands teem with life for just a brief time each year. A quickly drying body of water is perfect for many wetland species that want to avoid having their young eaten by the fish or birds that frequent streams or larger ponds and lakes. So these species mate and lay their eggs in vernal pools and the young develop very quickly to reach adulthood before the water disappears. Let me introduce you to a few.

Some of the Curious Inhabitants of Vernal Pools

Bet you never believed you’d see wild shrimp wriggling sideways in a Michigan pond. But tiny ones, called Fairy Shrimp (Order Anostraca), thrive and reproduce in vernal pools each spring. I couldn’t believe my eyes the first time I saw one of these wee shrimp as I emptied my net into the clear collection box! I even to got to see one carrying its eggs in a sack! (See right photo below. Click on photos to enlarge.)

How about finding Fingernail Clams (Pisidium moitessierianum) which are smaller than your baby fingernail? Or a chunky, bumbling Water Beetle (order Coleoptera) rowing its way around your collection box? Maybe the thin, developing nymph of a damselfly?

A developing Damselfly (suborder Zygoptera, order Ondonata). Could those be proto-wings at the back end?

Or how about coming across the egg sack of a Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum)? During one monitoring event, Dr. Ben Vanderweide, our township Stewardship Manager, gently lifted a stick loaded with them. The tiny salamanders hatch in the pools and then scramble up on the soil to hide under logs and fallen bark as they grow.

And then there are the tiny amphibians who fill our ears with frog choruses each spring while mating – the Wood Frog (Lithobates sylvaticus) or the Spring Peeper ((Pseudacris crucifer). Their eggs hatch in the shallow water to be counted with other inhabitants of the vernal pool.

March Training for Vernal Pool Monitoring

Vernal pools are fragile habitats so it’s essential to learn how to treat them and their inhabitants safely and carefully. Training is required and very important! The Michigan Natural Features Inventory (MNFI) offers an online 3-part Vernal Pool Patrol training program from 6 – 8 pm on March 15, 22, and 29 for folks interested in exploring vernal pools. Learn more and register for the online here: https://vernal-pool-patrol-mnfi.hub.arcgis.com/.

Our township Stewardship Manager, Dr. Ben VanderWeide requires vernal pool monitoring volunteers to attend these three online sessions at home before joining in our local in-person field training event on April 6. On that day, Ben will provide the clear collection boxes of various sizes and nets. All you need to do is take the MNFI training and then pull on some knee-high boots and join us! You’ll be learning about a whole new world! And believe me, it’s like being a kid again to wade around in shallow water dipping and discovering what’s under the surface. The data we collect each year help MNFI and the Michigan Vernal Pool Partnership protect these very special, fragile habitats. If you can’t attend our field training day, other opportunities will be offered around the state, so check the Vernal Pool Patrol website in March as those dates become available.

After you complete the online “classroom” training and field training day, you’ll be ready to monitor vernal pools independently. We can help you find vernal pools in our parks to monitor, or you can visit pools in other parks (with permission of course) or on own property. Every bit of data helps!

Or Maybe You’re a Bird Lover; How About Getting Trained as a Nest Box Monitor?

I took this short training session a few years ago. After I spent a few summer months in our parks watching and recording the growth of baby Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis), Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) and House Wrens (Troglodytes aedon), I just had to set up a nest box at home. And now we are gifted with a nesting pair each summer. I’ll be participating this summer in our parks as a substitute for vacationing monitors. Maybe this slideshow of what I’ve enjoyed in this program will whet your appetite!

We check our nest boxes twice each week so we can accurately report first egg laid, first egg hatched and fledge date. Then we submit our data to Cornell University’s NestWatch program which tracks the nesting success of birds all over the country. Cornell provides instruction on how to monitor nests without disturbing the birds; it’s available online whenever it’s convenient for you. On March 23 from 2-3:30 PM at the Paint Creek Cider Mill, Grant VanderLaan, our township stewardship specialist review these NestWatch monitoring protocols and explain how nest box monitoring works in our township parks.

Here’s some of what I’ve enjoyed seeing during the years I’ve monitored nest boxes both in the parks and at home. Baby birds couldn’t be more endearing and the dedication of the adults in caring for them is truly impressive. It’s exciting to see new life emerge and grow each spring and to watch the population of beautiful native birds increasing in our parks and natural areas as we provide safe, monitored nest boxes for their young.

Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis): A Source of Happiness, Indeed!

Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) Also Raise Families in Our Nest Boxes

And the Ebullient House Wrens (Troglodytes aedon) Do as Well

So I hope that I’ve convinced you to consider taking part in Stewardship Spring Training. As a citizen scientist, you’ll experience nature in a very personal and meaningful way. Dipping tiny creatures from a shady pool or peeking into a nest box full of life are great ways to get closer to the natural world in a very tangible and meaningful way. So if you want to better understand and support wildlife, here are a couple of fun ways to do that – and really make a difference!