Butterfly Hunting at Crex Meadows

Crex Meadows in west central Wisconsin is a great place to go to find and photograph some unusual early season butterflies. Last year I went on a butterfly excursion with a local butterfly expert. I have been photographing butterflies for years but have concentrated more on my odes then on lepidoptera.

I had photographed butterflies at Crex before. This was primarily in the middle of summer when the fields are full of wild flowers and orange and black fritillaries and monarchs and yellow sulphurs are all over the place.Going out in early may with someone who knows where to look offered me an opportunity to photograph some species that I had not in the past. I had photographed Olympia marbled, first pic, in the past but it was my first time photographing any species of elfin butterfly. We found 3 different species of elfins that day, the most common was the eastern pine elfin which is pictured above, This year the cold weather pushed the dates of the butterfly trip back to the end of May and unfortunately I was not able to attend but I am hoping to get back out there next year.

Reflections of Crex Meadows

It has been a while since I have gotten outside to take some pics. My life has been going through a big change recently and that has left me with less time to go out and have fun. Right now life seems a bit cold and cloudy, very much like a Minnesota winter, but hopefully with time things will turn out warm and sunny like the day I took this photo out at Crex Meadows.

Wisconsin White-tailed Kite

 So today the weather was nice so I decided to take a half of a day off and head up to Crex Meadows in Wisconsin. Since it is mid August things were a bit slow. Except for a few warblers that I was able to pish out I was mostly just shooting butterflies. That was until I turned on to Murphys Road. As I began to drive down the road a large white bird flushed from a tree on the right side of the road. It flew north and landed in a tree on the opposite side of the road.

 My first thought was that it was a kite but since kites are very rare in this part of the country I figured that I just did not get a very good look at it. I knew that it was not an osprey but I thought that maybe it was a male northern harrier, which are light gray with black wingtips and white underside to their wings. So I slowly moved down the road, angling the car so that I could shoot out of the open passenger window. This time I recognized that the bird was indeed a white-tailed kite.

This is not the first time that I have photographed white-tailed kites, I have photographed them in California and Texas, but I had never heard of anyone spotting any in Minnesota or Wisconsin. This last photo was taken in Texas in 2010 and I included it so that you can see the field marking for these birds. When I got home I checked with the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology and found that there are only three records of white-tailed kites spotted in Wisconsin. The last record was back in September of 1989. So even though a few have been spotted over the years it has been over 20 years since anyone has reported one.

A Visit to Crex Meadows.

The weather this weekend was superb so on Sunday I decided to head up to Crex Meadows. Crex Meadows is located in western Wisconsin about an hour north of the Twin Cities. Crex is one of my favorite places to go shoot because it is not too far away and you never know what you might see.

On this visit raptors were the order of the day. Since Crex is not too far from the St Croix River it is not surprising to find raptors that stop by while migrating down the Mississippi flyway. I spotted several eagles in the park, both adult and immature. The coots seemed mighty nervous when one of these big predators would fly over head.

What was really exciting though, were all of the rough-legged hawks that I saw in the park. These birds nest up in the Arctic Tundra and winter through out much of the United States.

There are two different color forms of rough-legged hawk. There is the light form, as in the picture below, which is the type that I have seen most often in the past, and the dark form, as in the picture above. This weekend I saw numerous examples of both forms up at Crex, as well as some birds which appear to be a cross between the two.

What is really cool about these birds is the way that they hunt. They will often sit and hover in mid-air and then drop straight down on their prey. They probably have developed this style of hunting do to breeding in a tundra or taiga habitat where there are not many trees from which they can ambush their prey.

I did also find a dragonfly, well sort of. Even though it has got up into the sixties for the past several days we have had a few nights that have gone below freezing. So I will probably have to wait until next year to photograph some more real dragons.

Gray Skies over Crex

After a few very nice days things here have clouded up and it looks like we may get some rain or possibly even thunderstorms tomorrow. It is hard to complain though since the temps are up in the 70s which is 20 plus degrees above our normal high. So much for those snow storms this winter disproving global warming, or global climate change which is actually more appropriate. This cloudy day was taken at Crex Meadows last summer.

Crex Meadows Sky

I took this photograph out at Crex Meadows in Wisconsin last August. With all of the snow melted up here I am looking forward to everything greening up again.

Crex Meadows Fall Wildlife Festival

This weekend I headed up north of the Twin Cities for the Crex Meadows Fall Wildlife Festival. Unfortunately as you might be able to tell from the picture above the weather was not optimal for wildlife photography.

With the grey skies and the drizzle really messing up the photo opportunities I decided to check out the programs that they were having at the Visitors Center as part of the festival. The first program was on Wetlands and was led by Chris Cold from the Wisconsin DNR. Chris began with a PowerPoint presentation and ended the program with a few props he brought with, these included a couple of turtles and a fox snake.

The second program was on the state of the wolf in Wisconsin. This program was led by Bob Hanson, who works for Crex and has been studying the wolves who have a territory there. The program included a Power Point presentation, I was happy to find out that wolves are surviving and reproducing better then the Wisconsin DNR had expected, photos of wolves from remote trail cams that were set up by a volunteer, and a demonstration of the tracking equipment, they have collared the alpha male from the local pack.

After sitting inside for a couple of hours I decided to go out and see if I could find any wildlife that I could photograph. The sky had lightened up a little and the drizzle had stopped for a little bit but as you can see by the above photo it still was less then optimum conditions.

I did manage to find a few things to photograph though. There were still quite a few passerines around. Most of them were either sparrows, like white-throated sparrows, or yellow-rumped warblers. Yellow-rumps do not winter as far south as most warblers do so they are usually the first type of warblers that we see in the spring and the last type that migrate south in the fall.

Fall is also a good time to see a lot of raptors like the northern harrier. There are usually quite a few harriers that stop by and spend some time at Crex each fall. Crex is perfect habitat for the low flying hunting style of the harriers, with vast open spaces and plenty of rodents to eat.

However the big reason why most people visit Crex in the fall is to view the sandhill cranes. These large birds use Crex as a staging location for their fall migration. Currently there are reportedly thousands of cranes in the Crex area feeding in the fields during the day and roosting in the shallow waters at night. By roosting in the water these birds have some warning if a predator were to approach them in the dark of night.

Since there still was not enough light to get any great pictures I decided to head back to the Visitors Center and see what else was happening at the festival. I found Chris Cold outside with a couple of raptors that he brought with. On his glove he had a great horned owl that was an imprint bird. Imprinting is when a bird is raised by people when it is very small. During this time the young bird is learning behavior by observing its parent, however if it believes that its parent is a human that is caring for it then it will become confused and will not learn important lessons that it will need to live out in the wild.

Out on a ring perch Chris had a beautiful female red-tailed hawk. It was obvious that she was female because she was very large. This was a falconry bird that Chris has had for 18 years. She was quite well behaved at least until a couple of large barking dogs got a bit to close then she baited from the perch and ended up on the ground. As soon as the dogs were whisked away she calmed down and returned to her perch.

Despite the weather the festival was a lot of fun and I had a good time and so I showed my appreciation for the event and for the park itself by signing up as a lifetime member to The Friends of Crex.

Crex Meadows Road Trip

The second road trip that I took with the new car was to Crex Meadows. Crex is located about 90 miles north of the Twin Cities just over the border in Wisconsin. All together I ended up driving about 200 miles, this included driving around the park and ended up using a little bit over 4 gallons of gas.

While driving I try and keep an eye on the road, an eye on the dash, it turns green when I am driving more efficiently, and an eye out for wildlife. It's a good thing that I have four eyes that way I can also keep one closed to get some rest while I drive LOL. You never know what you might see while you drive like an American kestrel hanging out on the power lines. Fortunately I spotted this kestrel after I left the interstate so I could stop to take some pics. Usually kestrels are quick to fly away when you pull your car over but this little guy did not seem to mind me very much. If you look closely you can see that he has one foot tucked which is not something a bird will do if he is nervous or frightened.

Crex is named for the Crex Carpet Company which owned the land in the early 1900's. The Crex Carpet Co. harvested wiregrass from the areas marsh lands to create grass rugs. In 1933 the carpet company went bankrupt, later, in 1946, the state of Wisconsin bought the land and turned it into the Wildlife Management Area that it is today. The carpet camps are long gone but the marshes where the grasses where harvested from still exist and are now home to a lot of wildlife. One of the most noticeable wildlife that you can often find in the marshes of Crex during the warm months are the very large sandhill cranes. Sandhills can be found in Crex through out the spring and summer but the largest populations are seen in the fall when migrant birds use crex as a staging area for the fall migration.

Crex Meadows stands on what is sometimes referred to as the Northwest Wisconsin Pine Barrens. The barrens is a long narrow sand plain that was formed as the Wisconsin glacier retreated 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. As the glacier retreated north, glacial till was deposited in the area forming the sand prairies that make up the Barrens and much of Crex.

The sand prairies support the growth of many different prairie grasses and plants. Wild flowers like butterfly weed, black-eyed Susan, and blazing star help to add color to the prairie and attract butterflies like the pink edged sulphur, pictured above, and the Aphrodite fritillary, pictured above the sulphur.

As the Wisconsin Glacier receded it also created Glacial Lake Grantsburg over where Crex now stands. Over the years the lake drained away leaving shallow sedge marshes behind. Today there is approximately 6000 acres of open water with in the Wildlife Management Area. Most of this comes from the twenty-nine flowages which are managed by a series of dikes, pumps and transfer ditches. Besides the flowages there are also four natural lakes, numerous ponds and three streams which begin on the property.

These waterways are home to many different types of wildlife including fish, reptiles, mammals, and waterfowl. Some of the waterfowl are visitors who stop in the spring and the fall during migration to rest and to feed. Other waterfowl like the common loon and pied-billed grebe can be found all summer long. The common loon in the photo above is an immature that was born in the park and photographed on Phantom Lake. For more information about Crex Meadows check out their website here.

My World: Crex Meadows

Now that we are in May its time for me to start thinking about heading up to Crex Meadows.

Crex Meadows is a Wisconsin Wildlife Management Area that is located about an hour and a half north of home near the Minnesota and Wisconsin border.

I make a lot of trips up to Crex in the summer and fall. I usually begin going up in late May or early June because that is usually when the trumpeter swans are out with their new cygnets.

Crex is pretty large and has a good mixture of diverse habitats. They use a system of dams and dikes to help manage the water system which provides the park with numerous wetland areas.

These wetlands are home to a lot of different types of waterfowl through out the year. Besides the trumpeters that nest here I have also seen several types of grebe and geese, many types of ducks, like the canvasback pictured above, as well as members of the rail family, such as the American coot.

There is also quite a bit of field and prairie habitat. Much of the prairie land is managed by using controlled burns, either in late fall or in the spring, to allow new growth to take hold.
The fields are where you can usually find one of the largest birds in North America the sand hill crane. There is a small population of cranes that nest in Crex each summer. In Crex is used as a staging area for cranes as they migrate south for the winter.

During the spring and summer, and even into the fall, the fields of Crex become a pallet of color as the wild flowers bloom.

In the early summer the fields are usually a wash in purple as the wild lupine comes into bloom. These fragrant purple flowers attract many insects. They are also the host plant for the endangered Karner blue butterfly. The Karner blue have been spotted in the park but even though I have looked I have not spotted one at Crex. I have spotted many of its cousins though, like the silvery blue pictured above.

Even after the lupine is no longer in bloom their are still plenty of blooming wild flowers and colorful insect to photograph. This Olympia marbled caught my attention with the gold overlay look that it has on its wings.

With a lot of bugs around Crex is a smorgasbord for insect eating birds. Flycatchers, kingbirds, and warblers, like the yellow warbler above, are common place during the warm summer months.