harry

Marsh Wren

The marsh wren is histrionic, bouncing from one cattail to another, calling out with its trill and rattling voice.  

Photo by Arlene Koziol

Photo by Arlene Koziol

A whirring vector of motion and sound, the marsh wren frenetically builds anywhere from 5 to 22 nests per year.  The male is tasked with building these nests, showing the female around each cattail-down lined nest.  However, the female often builds the nest that will become occupied.  She steals materials from nearby nesting marsh wrens further along in the nest cycle. 

Expending such energy to construct nests likely has the benefit of deception.  Marsh wrens will destroy the eggs of other marsh wrens and red-winged blackbirds, and the blackbirds will return the favor.  These dummy nests serve as decoys for predators, structure for fledgling young, and mark the male’s territory.   

The marsh wren loves marshes. The first Breeding Bird Atlas in Wisconsin found 79% of marsh wren records in open lowland marsh. An excellent place to find the marsh wren this summer is at the Snake Marsh at Faville Grove Sanctuary. The intern crew has discovered numerous nests throughout the Snake Marsh, seeing up-close the wren-crafted nests and wren wrought chattering. 

By Drew Harry, Faville Grove Land Steward

Merlin

Life through a spotting scope can be twisted. Your non-spotting eye blurs from being closed or disoriented from its disconnect with your other eye. At a previous job on Long Island, Wisconsin, I used the spotting scope to track individual Piping Plovers on a sandy spit extending into Lake Superior.

American Pipit

American Pipit

The American Pipit is a ground-dwelling bird, breeding on the arctic tundra, migrating through the greater part of North America, and wintering along coastal flatlands of the entire southern United States and Mexico. Impressive in its drabness, the bird's thin bill, long legs, and long wagging tail are distinctive.

The American Crow

The American Crow

American Crows, known for their abundance from farm fields to urban areas, might surprise some with their intelligence. In fact, the birds of their genus Corvus are some of the smartest in the animal kingdom. It's easy to anthropomorphize crows and make them more or less align with our values. But crows objectively score close to primates on cognition tests.