Winter Travelers

Rusty Blackbirds are one of the fastest declining species in North America. In the same family as orioles, red-winged blackbirds, and grackles, it has lost between 85 and 99 percent of its population over the last 40 years. This past weekend, we saw two pairs of Rusties in our neighborhood in St. Louis county. 

 One of the pairs (male on the left, female on the right.) Their buffy-colored eyebrow and the rusty ends of their feathers distinguish them from other small blackbirds.

Both pairs together.

Rusty Blackbirds typically forage in bottomland forests with standing water. They flip over leaves, looking for small arthropods. They arrived shortly after a rainstorm and after my dad had blown the leaves into piles, so the yard must have looked like a good place to eat. Traditionally, they winter in the bottomlands of the American South and breed in boreal forests in the Northeast U.S. and Canada. Both habitats have suffered serious damage in the past century.

They were following a group of European Starlings. Migratory birds, especially blackbirds and starlings, often form mixed flocks for protection from predators. There's also evidence that Rusties, which have smaller beaks than grackles, follow other blackbird species around and pick up the scraps from nuts that the larger birds have cracked open. 

It was truly special to see the Rusties so close to my home. It's a species that I have learned much about: my research adviser at Truman surveyed the birds in their wintering grounds and is an expert on their ecology. But their existence was somewhat theoretical until I saw them through my front door. It was fascinating to realize that they were only midway on their journey to Arkansas or Mississippi. Reflecting on how a small songbird carries itself thousands of miles every year is always a source of wonder for me.

Egrets at Columbia Bottoms

This morning, my mom and I drove to Columbia Bottom Conservation Area for the my last birding trip in the St. Louis region for a while. Just north of the city, stacks of shipping containers and freight warehouses transition in just a few miles to the broad floodplains of the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.  I had never been to the park before, and was impressed with the shorebird, wading bird, and duck diversity that the broad wet meadows and mudflats support. 

After spotting  a few Killdeer and Lesser Yellowlegs foraging in a roadside puddle, we were impressed with a flock of over 200 Great Egrets packed in the tall grasses of a marsh.

Neither of us had seen so many egrets in one place before. We set up a scope to get a closer look and see if any Snowy Egrets were tucked in among the others. (They would have black bills rather than orange.) We didn't see any Snowies, but there were at least two Great Blue Herons strutting around the edges of the flock. You can get a fairly high resolution picture by pressing a camera phone up to a spotting scope, though this picture isn't the best example.

We spooked a few Egrets as we drove by. 

Looking to the other side of the road, we saw a large lake lined with a seemingly endless flock of egrets, at least twice as large as the ones nearer to us. You can see them in the distance of this photo as a line of white on the far side of the lake.

We also found a flock of 150+ ducks beside a smaller group of egrets. In their duller non-breeding plumage, they gave us some trouble in identification, but seeing the band of white on the underside of their wings, dark eyestripe, and blotch of white behind the beak (the last two aren't so easy to see in this picture) allowed us to identify them as Blue-winged Teals. 

We followed the road until it took us to the Missisippi River. An Army Corps of Engineers pumping station had a large scale for reading the flood level. Strange to think that those heights are plausible; the bank in this photo is already 15 feet above the water level. 

Over the last two centuries, engineering projects in general have sought to contain rivers and eliminate floodplains so that they can be settled for homes and farming. The path of the Missouri through the plains used to change drastically year to year as snowmelt and spring rains sprung the river from its banks, reshaping its embankments each season. Millions of amphibians spawned in the huge wetlands created in the thaws, and amphibian predators like the egrets followed in the summer. At Columbia Bottom, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Missouri Department of Conservation have collaborated to restore and protect over 4000 acres of floodplain, allowing us to see a sizable glimpse of an ecosystem type that once stretched for hundreds of miles. 

Birds in Restored Campus Habitat

This fall, I have been conducting surveys at sites around Kirskville to study how birds use streamside vegetation (known as riparian zones) during fall migration. I designed the project because other students have led an effort to restore the native riparian vegetation to Truman's campus along a stream called Bear Creek. As preparation for eventual presentations of the project, I went out to get some pictures of late fall migrants foraging among the plants that have sprung up in the no-mow zone on either side of the creek on campus. 

A Red-winged Blackbird perching in a tree above the creek.

Zoomed out: so there was also an American Robin. That's less important, since the Red-winged Blackbird is primarily a wetland bird, while the Robin is more of a generalist. 

 These pictures are unfortunately a bit blurry, but they show a Red-winged Blackbird in the act of foraging on the seeds of Ambrosia trifida, otherwise known as Giant Ragweed (which I happen to be allergic to.)

A Dark-eyed Junco on a ragweed stem.  

  

A House Sparrow. Like the Robin, this is less convincing evidence of the quality of the restored habitat, since House Sparrows are urban birds, but it nonetheless shows a bird making use of the vegetation.

Two male blackbirds and a House Finch in the background.

Penobscot County Busride

You might think it strange that I haven’t yet written about my work on the vernal pool research project here. (After all, at right is what one of our vernal pools looks like.) However, as lucky as I am to have gotten this opportunity for biology field work, it is nonetheless work, and I’m therefore more inclined to talk and write about what I do on my free time.

And experiences in Ireland, New York, Boston, St. Petersburg, St. Louis, Chicago and now Maine have convinced me that boarding a public bus or light rail train car is one of the most rewarding things you can do with a free day or even with a free forty minutes.  So that is what I did with this Saturday: took the bus 20 minutes southwest to the city of Bangor. Perhaps from the outside buses might look like poorly lit mobile caves, but inside you find that the whole cabin is surrounded by wide windows, making you feel like you are on a large glass box. After paying less than a candy bar you are free to board. To an enthusiastic mind, the raised rear section of a bus recalls the quarterdeck of a sailing ship. You are then whirled off somewhere else without having to think about it, and are free to read or listen to music.

Or perhaps even talk to someone. In Galway, Ireland, the bus drivers I saw often had friends who would board for a stop or two just to cling on the front pole and exchange witticisms with them. “Are you a Galway man, at all?” an elderly man asked me on the train to Dublin, midway through his wife’s brief account of their family’s life history. She told him of course he isn’t, don’t you see his ball-cap? (I hadn’t picked up a Galwegian accent: I just think he couldn't hear very well.) Sure, I have heard some tedious speeches on the subways of large cities, but for the most part American public transit spaces are often ones of comradely traveler’s small talk, or at least a silence with a positive, and not a defensive, energy to it. Wal-Marts and lame polo shirts carry on their slow, steady arsenic poisoning of American culture, but buses remain. Even in Maine, buses are multiethnic and often multilingual. It is one of the few places left in this country where, while waiting out a long cargo train crossing, a stranger is unafraid of asking another if they’d be brave enough to save up money, get on a train and cross the country, and another stranger is unafraid to answer yeah, of course, why not?

The bus from University of Maine-Orono’s campus to Bangor roughly follows the Penobscot River downstream. Riders are treated to quick views of the river between houses on the banks, and of small mountain ridges in the distance. This is a good time to discuss how the people of New England are often spoiled utterly rotten. I have heard whale watching called “cheesy,” when I believe many of the people I grew up with in St. Louis will never see a whale.  I have heard Mainers talk with great complacency of the low property values here, how it is only good as retirement country—a cold Florida. And yet the number of houses—of apartment complexes and trailer lots—with rock-bottomed salmon rivers a hundred yards wide and more in their backyards is, to my Midwestern eyes, incredible! Cheesy whale watching, forsooth.

We stopped at the central bus depot in Bangor, which was, as I had hoped, right in the  historic downtown. Bangor, whose name comes from a city in Northern Ireland (though indirectly, through a city founder’s favorite hymn), is the third-largest city in Maine. The city plan is haphazard and gangling, not unlike the asymmetric street grids of medieval cities in Europe. It grew quickly as a port for the loggers of Maine in the 1800s, shipping Maine lumber to build New York and Boston. At one time it was an economically crucial city. But in more recent years, the usual outer ring of box stores and strip malls has expanded to serve a broad rural population that includes New Brunswick, Canada. As a result, the center has declined—antique stores are not good evidence for commercial bustle. Yet it still retains some of its vigor. I was deeply pleased to see tall brick buildings, old white-steepled churches, and a café devoted entirely to bagels. On a Thursday when I drove through on the way to a vernal pool, downtown had all the dense traffic a city-dweller could wish for.

I stopped in a café with an Italian name and bought a muffin and a double-shotted cappuccino. The barista took the order from the cashier with every appearance of great personal dislike for me, vanished behind the corvette-red espresso machine, and reappeared to hand over what instantly seemed to me the best cappuccino I had ever tasted, as coffee is apt to do. I sat outside, nominally reading a Jane Austen novel, but in fact watching large bright clouds passing over the sunlit brick buildings.

My wandering about town, up and down the canal, up and down Main Street, satisfied an appetite I have for urban landscapes that has not been fed by the small but adorable town of Orono. Having heard that some undergrads at U. Maine see Bangor, dear little Bangor, as “sketchy,” I was reminded of my hypothesis that somewhere along the line, many white suburban children learn the lesson that there is something inherently dangerous and untrustworthy to places where buildings are close together—even, God forbid, touching along their sides—unless the buildings happen to be in Europe. I don’t know how exactly I escaped this lesson, but I am grateful that I did. Their are few cities I've visited that I don't have affection for. I have a passion for roof gardens (at right) and the tiny, over-planted front lawns of Boston (usually no larger than a kitchen) that is disproportionate to their size.

The bagel shop on the left is closed
on Saturdays--what nonsense!

As I continued to explore, the town continued to cause Galway nostalgia—compact, with canals and a boardwalk. Not surprisingly, I ended up having lunch at an Irish pub which advertised traditional Irish music on Tuesday nights, which I am now determined to go and see. They had a very tasty open-faced Reuben and had a jumble of tables and a seat-yourself policy which prevented a solitary traveler from feeling awkward about his solitariness—another similarity with Ireland. Perhaps both areas are simply dependent on tourists.

The pub.

With only half an hour to go before catching the bus, I headed towards the long boardwalk along the Penobscot. There was a food truck with an entire brick pizza oven stuffed inside, an ice cream truck, and many picnicking families. While the Kenduskeag Stream through the center of Bangor is somewhat dirty (every city worth its salt has filthy rivers—the Liffey, the Chicago, the Hudson) the Penobscot beside Bangor is broad and blue, with a very tall bridge, high enough for ships to pass under, some way downstream. With a very limited knowledge of Maine geography, I wondered—was it possible to ride a bike to the ocean from here? I was about to take a picture of the bridge when a voice startled me from behind. My first reaction was defensive: a panhandler, I thought? Money for the bus? No, it turned out, he was asking if I wanted to be in the picture. First I automatically said no, that’s alright, but he offered again and I accepted. It didn’t end up being a particularly good picture of me, but the mere fact of his offering made me strangely happy as I walked back towards the bus depot. Travel makes us sensitive to the ordinary kindnesses of strangers.

First Days in Maine

I went into the field with the grad student I'm working with the morning after I arrived in Orono. This is Duck Pond, the first of the vernal pools we sampled from. This summer is about background research and preparing for future summers. We anchored light and temperature sensors to the pool floor and waded to put in depth sticks to track the depth of water over the season. We also attached Nalgene tubing such that we could take samples from different levels of the water column by drawing the water from shore. This is done to avoid disturbing the water and the sediment during sampling. Since the differences in nutrient concentrations are subtle, large primates wading in the pool would instantly change the chemistry of the water column. Eventually, we want to compare water samples taken at deep and shallow depths to see if there is stratification in the nutrient concentrations.

They may not look it, but these pools can get pretty deep. We use hip waders, which go up above the waist, and Duck Pond certainly reached to my hip. The next pool, Emerald Pond, was so deep it would have topped our waders, meaning that the grad student I'm working with had to quickly swim in clothes without waders to put in the depth sticks with the sampling tubing attached. (Waders become dangerous and awkward when full of water, as you might imagine.)

It is also relevant to mention that Duck Pond was 46 degrees F, and Emerald was 52 degrees. Not exactly ideal swimming conditions. For science!

Another view of Duck Pond. More about wading in hip waders: the water pressure flattens them against your legs, and the air in them gives them a buoyancy that makes your feet bounce upwards each time you step. The effect is a little like what I imagine moonwalking in a spacesuit would feel like.

The next field day is this coming Monday. Thursday and Friday were for paperwork, training, and preparing field equipment for Monday. I also had some time to wander around the University of Maine's campus after work. Here's the Library (foreground) and the Memorial Union.

Another view of the Memorial Union.

A house attached to the greenhouses. I've always liked the way universities sometimes re-purpose of old houses instead of tearing them down.

A statue in front of Nutting Hall, where our lab is, as well as the rest of the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology. Note that the little juniper behind the bears is trimmed to look like a miniature pine.

The entry hall of Nutting Hall. Very rustic and all that. The thing on the left appears to be a sideways wooden tree that spins. Your guess as to its purpose is as good as mine.

I found a path to campus through a field and some woods managed by the university. Beehives!

Buoys monitoring the water currents of inland Maine. Currently reporting significant evaporation.

Translation-- "WARNING: KICK-ASS SCIENCE INSIDE"

 There's large areas of undeveloped and low-developed land in Maine, and the apartment complex where I live has some trails. I'm a big fan of the birch tree forests here. Reminds me of Mother Russia.

The Penobscot River, on the bridge to downtown Orono. The University of Maine is actually on a large island in the Penobscot. Well, if you are picky about what you call an island, maybe you wouldn't call it an island, but certainly there's a river on both sides of it.

The town of Orono. At last I have reached the region where the jigsaw puzzles with vague origins in "Small-town America" come from. 

Sunset over the Penobscot.

Rhododendrons (right?) on campus after rain-showers. Truman purple! Looks like it's going to rain until Thursday of next week, including during our field sampling on Monday, so y'all have some rainy pictures of spring-fed vernal pools to look forward to. Have a good weekend!

Pictures: End of Spring & Beginning of Summer

While waiting at a bus station in Portland, Maine to go North to Orono, Maine, I thought I would post some pictures from recent adventures and arrival in Maine.

Spring was late this year, and 39 degrees F  in late April was the warmest temperature for our ornithology class's bird surveys at Big Creek Conservation Area, an oak-savannah restoration habitat near Kirksville.

Spring in St. Louis during Easter weekend.

Up early for a bird survey.

Bear Creek on Truman's campus, where I'm doing surveys of the bird community to study the effects of plantings along suburban stream edges.

Spring flowers on Truman's campus!

On Saturday morning after we were all free from our exams, some friends and I got up to see the sunrise at 1000 Hills State Park and eat muffins.

Barn Swallows on the shore.

We had been meaning to rent canoes here for a long time and finally found a morning to do it!

We paddled to a cove of the opposite shore and landed on a small shrubby island, which we believe to be the home of several endemic species of ticks (monographs currently in press.)

The opposite shore.

Finally, Maine: haven't seen much of it yet, but what I've seen so far has been promising. The grassy area in the middle of this picture from the plane is a salt marsh!

In an hour I'm taking a bus north to Bangor, and then it's a short drive to U-Maine's campus. Thanks for reading!