Rowe Sanctuary

 

At the beginning of April I decided to take a short trip down to Nebraska to see the sandhill cranes. I had already been offered a job but since it took a while for the background check, drug test and all of the paper work to go through I decided it was the perfect time to head down to the Rowe Sanctuary. It had been many years since I last visited the sanctuary, I was still shooting film at the time, and typically the timing never seemed to work out. Either we were vacationing down south in late winter or we were heading to Yellowstone in May, either way it would be difficult to get away so close to another vacation. Since I was not starting work for another week I decided it would be a perfect time to go. 

The Rowe Sanctuary is an Audubon sanctuary located in central Nebraska. It consists of 1900 acres of river channel, wet meadows and agricultural land along the Platte River. It is named for Lillian Annette Rowe who financed teh initial purchase of 782 acres back in 1974 to help protect the habitat for migrating cranes.

 It is necessary to protect this part of the Platte River because it is the main resting spot for cranes migrating back north across the central flyway. Each year approximately 600,000 or more cranes stop at the Platte between mid February and mid April. This includes about 80% of the worlds population of lesser sandhill cranes. It also includes a good number of greater sandhill cranes and many other birds. The weekend I was there we saw a pair of endangered whooping cranes mixed in with the sandhills.

The reason why they stop at this location is because the Platte is a shallow river with many sandbars. During the day the cranes venture through the bordering fields eating any left over grains. Since cranes do not have feet that allow them to perch in trees they spend the night standing in the shallow water of the Platte. The shallow waters act as an alarm to let them know if an terrestrial predators may be around. Each morning the cranes rise up from the river giving visitors a spectacular show only to return each night for an encore.

Happy BirthDay

Today, April 22, is Earth Day. It's a special day where we show our appreciation for the natural world and are more aware of the things that we need to do to preserve it.On Earth Day 2007 I began the Ecobirder Blog. During the past six years there have been good times and bad times, there have been days where I could not wait to share pictures and posts and days where it took almost every thing that I had to write a post for the day. During all this time many of you have visited often and left comments and encouragements for which I would like to thank you. With out you this blog would not be here. It has become kind of a tradition to share pics from the calendars that I make each year on this special day. So keeping with tradion here are the pictures from the 2013 Ecobirder Calendar. 

Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO

Ferruginous pygmy owl San Miguelito Ranch, Tx

 Altamira oriole at Bentsen State Park, Tx

Sandhill crane colt Necedah NWR, Wi

Western grebe Bosque del Apache, NM

Cabbage white butterfly River Bend Nature Center, MN

Red-headed woodpeckers Necedah NWR, Wi.

Gold-fronted woodpecker  Santa Ana NWR, Texas.

 Pied-billed grebe Crex Meadows, Wi

Black Bear Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary, MN

 Gulf Fritillary Santa Ana NWR, Texas.

 Sandhill cranes Boque del Apache, MN

Northern Saw-whet owl Dodge Nature Center, MN

Thanks for a great year!

Sandhill Cranes at Sunset

The Sand-hill Crane by Mary Austin

 WHENEVER the days are cool and clear,

The sand-hill crane goes walking

Across the field by the flashing weir,

Slowly, solemnly stalking.

The little frogs in the tules hear,

And jump for their lives if he comes near;

The fishes scuttle away in fear

When the sand-hill crane goes walking.

The field folk know if he comes that way,

Slowly, solemnly stalking,

There is danger and death in the least delay,

When the sand-hill crane goes walking.

The chipmunks stop in the midst of play;

The gophers hide in their holes away;

And 'Hush, oh, hush!' the field-mice say,

When the sand-hill crane goes walking.

Golden Cranes

As the sandhill cranes returned to their roosting pool for the night the setting sun illuminated them making them appear as if they were made out of gold.

The Sand-hill Crane by Mary Austin

 

WHENEVER the days are cool and clear,
The sand-hill crane goes walking
Across the field by the flashing weir,
Slowly, solemnly stalking.
The little frogs in the tules hear,
And jump for their lives if he comes near;
The fishes scuttle away in fear
When the sand-hill crane goes walking.

The field folk know if he comes that way,
Slowly, solemnly stalking,
There is danger and death in the least delay,
When the sand-hill crane goes walking.
The chipmunks stop in the midst of play;
The gophers hide in their holes away;
And 'Hush, oh, hush!' the field-mice say,
When the sand-hill crane goes walking.

Sandhills at Sunset

Each fall the sandhill cranes gather together in a prelude to their fall migration south. Large numbers of cranes spend their days eating and building up energy in the fields that surround Crex Meadows in Wisconsin. As the sun begins to set they fly back to Crex, often in large waves of birds that remind me of pictures and movies that I have seen of bombing campaigns during WWII. They will spend the night with their toes immersed in the muddy bottoms of the shallow pools. The water serves as both an alarm and deterrent to predators that may try and sneak up on them in the night. When the sun rises the next morning the cranes will leave in waves again, like wheat, back into the fields to eat.

Necedah National Wildlife Refuge

With the Independence Day holiday last week I had a three day weekend so I decided to head over to central Wisconsin and shoot in the Necedah NWR for a couple of days. This was my first opportunity to get a look at the new visitors center and it is very impressive. Inside is a store, educational displays, offices, an info desk, small theatre and a nice sitting room complete with a fireplace. You can see from the picture above that much of the building is powered by renewable solar power.
One of the things that Necedah is famous for is their work with the endangered whooping crane. It is dangerous to have the majority of the remaining population of whoopers all in one area. Disease or natural disaster could destroy the entire population adding another extinct bird to the list. So the staff at Necedah has been working with a number of other organizations to set up a second migrating population. Unfortunately the only crane that I spotted over the weekend was a sandhill crane.
There were a lot of young birds that had recently fledged. I found a young kingbird perched on a branch overhanging a small stream. I watched for a while and was rewarded as one of the parents came down to feed the youngster a plump insect.
As I watched the kingbirds feeding four river otters appeared and began to play in the stream. So I switched subjects. I think that Michelle was kind of jealous because she really likes to watch otters.
Necedah has a variety of habitats to explore. Near the new Visitors Center they have built some trails into and over the wetlands. Raised boardwalks help give visitors a good look at wildlife with out getting their feet too wet.
I also took a hike on the new boardwalk that skits a boggy area. I was hoping to get a glance and a photo of a ringed boghaunter dragonfly. Necedah is in one of the few counties in Wisconsin where this member of the emerald family can be found, the only other place to find them in the Midwest is Michigan. It was a little late in the year for the boghaunter but I did find quite a few racket-tailed emeralds.
Also near the bog trail I found several bobolink. There were two pairs that squawked at me noisily as I walked down the trail. I wonder if they were nesting near the trail and I was getting to close to the nest.
One of the birds that I always like to photograph when I go to Necedah is the red-headed woodpecker. Although they are not endangered like the whooper are their population has been decreasing over the years. The problem that they are facing is habitat lose. Red-headed woodpeckers live in a habitat that has a lot of dead trees for nesting and caching food. They also require some space between the trees. This type of habitat has become scarce and the red-head population has declined as a result. Fortunately Necedah still has a lot of area that fits the bill and it is quite easy to see the red-heads flitting between the trees.
On my way out of the refuge I saw another youngster crossing the road. Mom was already in the woods on the side of the road but junior slowed down to take a look at the curios shiny creature on the road in front of him.

Yellowstone Part 2

With the weekend over the weather in Yellowstone began to change. We woke up Monday morning to cloudy skies but as we headed into the park some of the clouds began to break up allowing hints of blue skies to peak through.

We were hoping to see some more grizzly bears so we decided to head over to the area around Fishing Bridge and Yellowstone Lake. After checking on the bison carcass in the Yellowstone River where we had photographed the bear the day before and stopping for a bathroom break at the fishing bridge we headed out towards the east entrance to the park.
The east entrance was closed, because of the possibility of an avalanche, so we decided to hang out at Sedge Bay and see if any of the grizzlies that had been seen in the area would show up. We did not see any grizzly but while we waited we were treated to a little show by the marmots living in the rocks. There were also waterfowl down on the lake to photograph, most of which were Barrow's goldeneye.
After a while I got bored of waiting for grizzly so we went back to Fishing Bridge to eat some lunch and then headed around the northern loop of the park. When we got to Mammoth we stopped for a bit to photograph the wildlife in town. Michelle took a few pics of the resident elk herd while I focused more on photographing the mockingbirds and the mountain bluebird, pictured above.

We spent the remainder of the day out at the Tower Junction and Lamar Valley. We did see one grizzly, from quite a ways away, but mostly we photographed ungulates like bison, and their calves, bull elk and pronghorn antelope, and then headed through the park back to West Yellowstone where we were staying.The next morning the weather was even worse. Since we knew that it would be difficult to photograph in the weather we took our time getting going and hung around the hotel for a while. When we finally headed into the park we found that the weather was making it difficult to drive. In most places it was sleeting and raining but around the lake it was even worse with fog often obscuring the road.
We did find a few things to photograph, though the lighting did not make for the best pictures. This male American kestrel was perched on the side of the road near the lake eating some type of rodent in the snow. I guess he did not mind frozen food. We, on the other hand were looking for something warm to eat so we headed over to Fishing Bridge for some lunch.

At lunch we found out that a mother grizzly and cub, which had been spotted at Pelican Creek a few days earlier, had spent most of Monday out by the Lake Lodge just a few miles away from Fishing Bridge. So we decided to head over and look for her since we would have loved to get some shots of a tiny grizzly cub. We never were able to find her, but on our way back from Lake we spotted this beautiful coyote. This was one of several coyotes that we spotted on the trip but it was one of the most attractive coyotes that I have ever seen, with the light color and clean coat.
The bad weather continued on through out the day. It was the only day in the whole week were we did not really see the sun at any time. So we decided to head out of the park early and catch a nice dinner. On our way out we did spot this sandhill crane doing its best to stand up straight in the snow and the biting wind.