Site 13

Today I finally got around to checking out Site 13, where I'll be counting cranes a week from today.

It's important to check the sites first to get a feeling for the land, but also to be able to find them in the dark, since I have to be there by sunrise.  My old sites were always easy to find, but this time the directions took me from one highway to another highway to another highway to another highway to a lane.  In broad daylight, I found the place after several mistakes.  I will go back sometime next week to get it firm in my head.   In the dark, I won't be able to easily read road signs or the maps in my car, so I better know what I am doing.

I stopped in to chat with a couple of the local residents.  I'll be parked along their country road.  At 5:15 a.m. they would likely wonder what I was doing there.  This site hasn't been counted for some time, so none of them knew about the Midwest Crane Count.

I'll wear orange because next Saturday is the beginning of turkey season. I would prefer not being shot.

From my cursory glances around the site and the neighbors' comments, I doubt that I will see many cranes, but no matter.   An absence of birds is just as illuminating to researchers as dozens.  As for me, it's a rite of spring, this crane count.  And there's the magic of a sunrise over Wisconsin swamps, the sounds of the earth waking up.

Sounds insane to most people.  Maybe it's just me...and a few others.

Blooming Today

This is a late spring, much later than last year.  I know this because I keep bloom charts, carefully charting each species with colored markers.

On April 8, 2010, the following flowers were in bloom: chinodoxia , crocuses, tulips, hyacinth, daffodils, periwinkle, scilla, Virginia bluebells, pansies, puschkinia, anemone, lungwort, dwarf iris, and grape hyacinth. The back yard was awash in color. The smell of hyacinth wafted down the block.  By this time last year, the snowdrops were done blooming.

This year, with a late March blizzard, early April is much different.  The only blooms so far are snowdrops, crocuses,  dwarf iris, and just a few periwinkle.  The garden will eventually catch up.  The hyacinths and daffodils are in bloom, and one solitary scilla is in bud.  I hope to have flowers to take to church on Sunday.

The sturgeon guard is likely to be later as well.  Last year, we were called in three days before what was supposed to be the start of the spawn.  This year, with snow still melting and running into the rivers and streams, we wonder if we will be guarding on the 17th as planned.

I can't rush Mother Nature, but I am pushing her a bit, by raking leaves out of the flower beds, exposing the plants to the sun.  I urge Gary to rototill the vegetable garden so I can get the pea and onions in.  I planted seeds in flats and tenderly water them each day.  

By mid-June the garden will be gorgeous....just in time for me to leave for the West Coast.

Spring Clearing

I'm not a fan of grass which requires weed killers, fertilizer and water.  Lawns feed nothing and cause harm to the environment...and are a lot of trouble.  Water, feed, cut and do it all over again.....and again....and again.   

When I moved to this house over twenty-five years ago, I began putting in flower and vegetable beds, one or two a year.  I think there are 41 at this point.  All I have is a grassy path between flowerbeds, with a small square of lawn at the front of the house to placate my conventional neighbors.  

My gardening requires about a month of hard work in the spring, right at the time I want to be outside anyhow.  Most of the flowers are perennials, so there isn't a lot of planting, just a bit of pruning and transplanting.  Raking, hoeing, planting, and carting things around gets me into shape for the summer.

Once I finish the work, around mid-May, there isn't much left to do.  The gardens take care of themselves and the occasional push of the reel mower (I don't like motors much either) along the paths is all that's left to do.  We sit on the deck watching neighbors mowing as we look over the flowering bounty. 

Once a week, I cut a bouquet for the church.  The choir chooses someone in the congregation who needs a lift to take the flowers home.  They return the vases and so it goes all summer.  When I am gone, I designate someone to take over the "floral ministry".

There's nothing left to do until fall when I sweep the leaves over the flowers to keep them happy over the winter.  

Right now, snowdrops, crocuses, periwinkle, and scilla are in bloom.  Hyacinths and daffodils are in bud and will be in bloom in three or four days.  By next week, there will be swaths of flowers to delight the children coming from  school.  I always arrange to be there then to keep them from pulling tulips out of the ground, bulbs and all.  Instead, I cut bouquets for them, too.  That way we're all happy.

On Monday, I began spring clearing.  Spring cleaning?  Not in my day planner.  Sorry.

Election News

Wisconsin voters had their say yesterday and they said it loudly.  The incumbent candidate for state supreme court justice should have won easily, but he lost by just over 200 votes because somewhere along the line he made a comment that he would be a good ally for our very unpopular governor.   

There will be a recount, of course, but the message has been sent forth.  We Wisconsinites don't take any guff from our officials. 

Here in Outagamie County, Tom Nelson won his race for county executive.  Tom is one of my favorite politicians, friendly, intelligent and hard working. His style reminds me of William Proxmire, one of our great senators.  I foresee a brilliant future for Tom, only 32.

Tom appreciates libraries, so there was a sigh of relief from the librarians, who know he will give them a much better break than his opponent would have.  The state officials have been talking of ending all support for inter library loans, something I use all the time.  

Why do some politicians try to balance budgets by putting burdens on the backs of the people who educate us? Surely there is a better way. 

Another Change

This afternoon I had a call from the librarian in Salt Lake City who told me that the branches were participating in another program on the day I would have been there so they would have to cancel.

I was delighted because that gives me another day at the Bear Creek Migratory Bird Refuge that I wrote about yesterday.  

It also keeps me out of a big city.  I actually prefer small towns, the kind of place where I can stick my head out the car window and yell, "Where's the library?" and everyone knows.  No one way streets that lead me farther and farther away from my destination.  Little mom and pop restaurants where I can find out the local gossip and flavor.  Trails that take me out into the wilderness.

Salt Lake City is no doubt a great city, with historic buildings and shopping,  but I know I will enjoy the birds that Terry Tempest Williams describes in her book Refuge.  I guess I will pass on the Mormon Tabernacle this trip.

The Refuge

Tim Meier recommended I read Refuge: an Unnatural History of Family and Place, by Terry Tempest Williams.  He said her writing reminds him of mine  and I am flattered if it is so. I got the book through interlibrary loan but will look for my own copy at the Appleton library book sale in May.

The book is about Mormonism, fallout from the atomic bomb tests of the 1950s, cancer, the rising and falling of the Great Salt Lake, and the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.  I am enchanted with the author's writing, but more than that, I am very curious about the Refuge, on the northeast part of the Lake.  At the back of the book there's a list of birds associated with the Great Salt Lake.  I've seen most of the birds on the list at one time or another, but there are others I've never seen.

So it is imperative that I take along a good pair of binoculars and my copy of Sibley's Birds of North America.  I'll look around the used bookstores when I get to Salt Lake City to see if I can find more books on birding the area.

I figure on camping at Anderson Cove in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, only a short drive to the refuge.  Funny how a trip falls together.

Sandhill Cranes

Yesterday I attended the planning session at Mosquito Hill Nature Center for the annual Midwest Crane Count.  It was a refresher course for me because I used to do the count every spring.

Two years ago, cataracts caught up with me.  Counters have to be on site at 5:15 a.m. and that meant driving through county roads in the dark, often in rain or fog, racing to get in place before the cranes woke up.  With cataracts, I found driving at night next to impossible, even with advance exploring of the site, even if I went to the same place year after year and knew it well.

The cataracts were removed that spring, and I thought I would be back with the counters in 2010, but no, I injured my knee that winter and was hobbling around with a brace and a cane.

This year, the eyes are fine and the knee tolerable.   On April 16, I'll be at site no. 13 in the Town of Deer Creek, north of New London.  I've never seen that site before though I've been to the Deer Creek natural area to the east.  Prior to this count, I was twice lucky enough to sit in the cold at site 19, a beautiful swamp filled with songs, honking and crane calls.  That is considered the prize spot and is usually taken by the director at Mosquito Hill.

Most often, I was at Carpenter Road near Shiocton, but that site had so many cranes it was getting beyond the capabilities of one solitary counter.  Most of the count is done by identifying unison and guard calls. The guard call is easy, but the important call is the unison call, because the male and female sound it together, and that indicates a mating pair. It is almost a waltz beat, with the male making one noise, immediately followed by a chortled two beat female call.

I had to know by sound the direction and distances of the cranes and what their status was, while marking it all down on a clipboard, with a small flashlight gripped between my teeth.  With regret, I turned that site over to someone else. The new one is supposed to have a smaller population, but it hasn't been counted for years, so we'll see.

The annual count has been done since 1976, begun by a single farmer with an interest in cranes, and has now spread to all the Wisconsin counties and five Midwest states.  It is directed by the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin, which also has been instrumental in bringing the whooping cranes back from the brink of extinction and is now working with environmentalists in other countries to save other crane species.  

The sandhill cranes and I may be alone in the dark on the morning of April 16, but we are part of a network of concerned citizens, doing our best to preserve these magnificent birds for the next generations.