American Bittern

Some birds, so very bird-like in appearance, become mixed up in the particulars of being a bird. Do the auriculars have a dark spot on the rear; is there a white median crown-stripe like in the grasshopper sparrow? Other birds, so very bird-like in sound, become mixed up in the minutiae of sounding like a bird. Was that a Cape May warbler singing or another bird in its flight call?

The American bittern, however, is a singular bird, rivaled in appearance only by the least bittern—whose descriptor eliminates it from competition—and unmatched with its weird and enchanting call.

Photo by Arlene Koziol

Looking like a great blue heron that has been squashed into a frame less than a meter tall, the American bittern can be recognized by its squat build, its long stocky neck, and its streaking brown colors along the body. The bird appears to be a shorter cousin of the great blue heron that spends more time in the weight room—squatting and leg pressing, with special attention paid to neck rolls.  

This is a bird rarely seen but more often heard. If seen, the bittern stands vertical and slightly sways with the breeze, becoming uniform with the marsh and cattail environs which it inhabits.

Hearing an American bittern is a special treat. It sounds like the beginning of some strange underwater symphony, a resonant and liquid noise that, to the uninitiated sounds more frog-like. These low frequency calls carry farther than higher pitched calls through dense marsh vegetation, thus enabling males and females to locate one another.

Their interesting and adaptable diet includes: fish, insects, crustaceans, amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals. The birds often sit rigidly still and slowly lower their bill until they suddenly strike the water, swallowing prey with a gulp.

Bitterns inhabit marshlands with cattails, reeds, and sedges. Nesting takes place in these dense marshy areas but can also occur on dry land in grasslands. Because of its crepuscular (active at twilight) and concealed habits, the American bittern is difficult to survey. Wisconsin's second Breeding Bird Atlas has few breeding confirmations, with the bird being uncommon throughout the state.

Photo by Arlene Koziol

At Faville Grove, American bitterns are occasionally seen or heard, and just this week I was lucky enough to see a bird on the Kettle Pond as it stalked awkwardly through arrowhead and sedges. For a split second I thought it could be a green heron, but the overwhelming quirkiness of the bird revealed it to be that odd marsh inhabitant, the American bittern. 

Written by Drew Harry, Faville Grove Sanctuary land steward

Ruddy Duck

Our friend and Goose Pond super-volunteer, JD Arnston, phoned us one evening in late August and reported that he just saw a female Ruddy with seven young about a third-grown on the east Goose Pond! Mark’s second favorite duck is the ruddy duck and we were lucky to see the brood a couple days later. We so enjoy seeing Wisconsin’s only stiff-tailed duck so much that we named one of our golden retrievers Ruddy.

Ruddy ducks are the only “stiff-tailed” duck to breed in North America and easy to identify. Male ruddy ducks have blackish caps that contrast with bright white cheeks. In summer, they have rich chestnut bodies with bright blue bills. In winter, they are dull gray-brown above and paler below with dull gray bills. Females and first-year males are brownish, somewhat like winter males but with a blurry stripe across the pale cheek patch.

USFWS Midwest

We have been trying to confirm ruddy ducks nesting at Goose Pond for the past four years for the second Breeding Bird Atlas. Ruddys probably nest here every year; however, Goose Pond is usually covered with a dense growth of arrowheads by mid-summer, making bird observations difficult. This year we estimated there were eight nesting ruddy pairs and a few more males. We thought this would be a good year to confirm nesting ruddy ducks if we could locate them in the two open water areas on Goose Pond.

Seeing and hearing the males' unusual courtship displays is quite an experience. To woo the female of their desire, males stick their tails straight up while striking their bills against their inflated necks, creating bubbles in the water as air is forced from their feathers. They punctuate the end of the display with a belch-like call. Courting males also lower their tails and run across the water, making popping sounds with their feet.

Dan Streiffert

Male ruddy ducks vying for the attention of one female. The vibrant blue of the bill and use of the stiff tail are unmistakeable. Video by johnfredeen

Sam Robbins in his 1991 Wisconsin Birdlife wrote that ruddy ducks are “Uncommon summer resident south, east, and west.” In 1973, DNR waterfowl biologists estimated the annual breeding population at 400, and within two years their summer numbers rose to 3,200. DNR biologist Jim March was quoted in the mid-1970s saying that “Horicon Marsh attracts the largest summer population each year with smaller numbers scattered over other prairie marshes between Goose Pond and Green Bay.” Ruddys are present at Goose Pond in spring migration, and while the average number of ruddys is typically more modest, on April 24, 2011 Paul Jakoubek reported 200 ruddys just on our humble prairie pothole. (On October 30, 2000, Tom Schultz reported 27,000 ruddy ducks at Lake Maria in Green Lake County!)

Ruddy ducks are a prairie pothole nesting species with 86 percent of the breeding population concentrated in the prairie pothole region of south-central Canada and north-central United States. They are a diving duck that feeds on aquatic invertebrates, especially midge larvae. They feed most actively at night, so you’ll often see ruddy ducks sleeping during the day, head tucked under a wing and tail cocked up.

These diving ducks lay big, white, pebbly-textured eggs—the largest of all duck eggs (2.5 inches long and 1.8 inches wide) relative to body size. Energetically expensive to produce, the eggs hatch into well-developed ducklings that require only a short period of care. 

The females have to be in excellent condition to lay eight eggs, an average clutch size laid in nests built over water in bulrush or cattails. This is one reason that they are the last duck to nest in Wisconsin. It is not unusual to see small ruddy ducklings in September. We remember one year seeing very small ruddy ducklings on October first!

A delightful little brood of ruddy fuzzballs follows mama on September 1, 2016 at DM and I, south of Goose Pond. Photo by Mark Martin

Breeding Bird Atlas II map; confirmed nesting is indicated in dark purple. Click here for interactive map.

In the first Breeding Bird Atlas from 1995 to 2000, ruddy ducks (mostly broods) were confirmed in 24 atlas blocks. In the current Breeding Bird Atlas, ruddys have been confirmed in 18 atlas blocks, including three in Columbia County: Goose Pond, Schoeneberg Marsh Waterfowl Production Area/Erstad Prairie, and at a restored 400-acre wetland north of Portage. Nesting observations are in the same area of the state as Robbins reported in 1991 – south, east and west.  Ruddy duck populations were stable across North America from 1966 to 2014, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey.

Ruddy ducks migrate in small groups of 5–15 individuals, usually at night. They follow several migratory corridors fanning to the southwest, south, and southeast from their northern breeding grounds. Note the two breeding areas in Wisconsin.

Range map by allaboutbirds.org

Hopefully you can visit Goose Pond this fall and see these fascinating ducks before they make their way on south.

By Mark Martin and Susan Foote-Martin, Goose Pond Sanctuary resident managers

Cover photo by David Mitchell

Data is from Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Great Egret

Photo by Arlene Koziol

There's an all white bird, flying towards a dead tree. A couple of its group have flown into the tree in front of me. Graceful in its white plumage soaring silently towards the tree, the bird looks out of place, but its relatives in the dead hickory look decorated and stately. They are the decoration, strung about the treeline like ornaments.

They are great egrets. This egret in flight glides toward the tree, picks its spot, flares its wings, and drills a tree branch. Knocked onto its back in mid-air, the bird rights itself and flies slowly in a circle around the nearby pond. I try to track the bird, see where it goes, but more egrets circle in from the west and I lose track. Most of the birds land successfully in the trees, though a few more drill branches. I count sixteen in all. Are they only looking for a place to spend the night?

Photo by Arlene Koziol

As it turns out, these birds stay for about a week, perched in trees and wading in the pond along Highway 89 here at Faville Grove Sanctuary. Some stragglers still remain. The sixteen pioneers on the first day turned into hundreds of egrets a few days later. A handful of great blue herons joined the stand. Herons are a bit larger, but the egrets steal the show this week. Cars stop along Highway 89 to spectate, pausing their commute, grocery run, and progress. How many times have these cars, these people, stopped, in awe of nature in their own backyards? This week they stopped where the egrets did. On the 89 pond, the stopped cars don't have much to see beside the stillness of the egrets. The white birds seem enough.

They are for me. Wading imperceptibly, one bird takes a stab into the water. Every ten seconds or so this recurs. The movement, however quick, doesn't affect the group's stillness.

Photo by Arlene Koziol

People have been trying to glean something from egrets for a long time. It started as hats. Egret plumage made great wear for woman's hats. Around the 1890's state Audubon societies started forming to protect birds from the feather trade. This represented one of the first explicit conservation movements. The hats were worn by women and became understood as womanhood. Wearing birds on your head meant you were progressive, upper middle class, but it also meant that someone had killed a bird to put on your head. Activists against feathered hats declared hats “unwomanly.” Their arguments considered the grace and beauty of the birds, their use on farms keeping down insects, but their most provocative argument at the time was that the birds being killed were mothers. In the case of snowy egrets in Florida, it was most useful to wait until the birds had a nest and then raid the nest since the adults wouldn't leave their young. Adults were killed, the young left to die in their nests. This imagery twisted the meaning of hat wearing from fashion to morality—women were embracing womanhood with hats, but in doing so they were killing mothers.

Of course, the women weren't doing the actual killing. The complicity of the middle men—sportsmen and shippers—was overlooked. Also overlooked was the ecology of the egret. Females were not the only birds dying. Egrets split time on the nest, and so half of the dead birds were male. The other arguments about the grace and the beauty of the birds don't necessarily hold up either. Egrets practice siblicide, where the larger chicks kill their younger siblings. They're also a bit awkward landing in trees, as I witnessed. Despite these discrepencies, the efforts of activists reversed the prospects of many birds, and egrets have been recovering since. It is estimated that more than 95% of the egret population in North America was killed in the 19th and early 20th century. The snowy egret became, and still is, part of the logo for the National Audubon Society.

audubon.org

You can find a lot of this history, and much more environmental history, in Jennifer Price's book Flight Maps. Price argues that the birds of the feather trade were unmoored from their ecology and the destruction of habitat and birds came about because economic forces separated connections to nature.

Where did the egrets at Faville Grove come from? Probably Horicon Marsh, or another rookery north of Faville Grove. With such numbers though, it's possible that the birds we witnessed this past week were from all over: the Mississippi River, Canada, Minnesota. Those sixteen great egrets the first day were perhaps a flight map for other migrating egrets this week. They found wetlands, stillness, frogs, and insects. We were happy to have them.

Written by Drew Harry, Faville Grove Sanctuary land steward

Common Gallinule

2018 has been designated “The Year of the Bird” by the National Audubon Society, National Geographic, BirdLife International, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Perhaps 2018 in Columbia County should be designated “The year of the Common Gallinule.”

This is a bird of multiple common names, and ornithologists have been rather indecisive about which to stick with. Drew Weber explains: "In the late 1800’s, the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) referred to this species as the ‘Florida gallinule’, but then in 1923 lumped it in with the Old World’s ‘common moorhen’. For some reason, even after the lump, the AOU kept the name as Florida gallinule for quite a few years, but then switched it over to ‘common gallinule’, and then finally in 1982, referred to it officially as the ‘common moorhen’." Then, in 2011 the AOU renamed it back to the common gallinule. However, many birders still like to call it the common moorhen. So, you pick.

Hey, nice legs! Photo by Ken Schneider

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology states “the common gallinule swims like a duck and walks atop floating vegetation like a rail with its long and slender toes. This boldly marked rail has a brilliant red shield over the bill and a white racing stripe down its side. It squawks and whinnies from thick cover in marshes and ponds from Canada to Chile, peeking in and out of vegetation.”  It is in the rail family and lives in the same wetland habitats as American coots, but is more secretive, living in dense vegetation.

Sam Robbins wrote in Wisconsin Birdlife – Population & Distribution – Past and Present that “the common moorhen, formerly called the common gallinule, was a fairly common summer resident in eastern Wisconsin with larger concentrations at Horicon and Green Bay.”  Common gallinules are more common in the southern states and are a treat for bird watchers to find in Wisconsin.  Usually they are heard and not seen.

Common gallanule ranges. Courtesy of AllAboutBirds.com

Their breeding range is interesting, geographically. They frequently breed in the Great Lakes region, but scarcely in the states south of the Great Lakes until the deep South. We're lucky to have them breed in our part of the state!

The first Breeding Bird Atlas from 1995–2000 reported common moorhens as confirmed in 28 atlas blocks including three in Columbia County. In the second Breeding Bird Atlas, common gallinules have been confirmed in 39 atlas blocks including 9 in Columbia County. Common gallinules have been confirmed mostly at larger wetland complexes including the Baraboo River and Schoeneberg Marsh Waterfowl Production Areas, Mud Lake, and Grassy Lake State Wildlife Areas, at a 400 acre wetland that is part of the Wetland Reserve Program, and at Goose Pond Sanctuary.

Brand Smith looking for gallinule nests. Note he is sitting in the front of the canoe, moving slowly to spot movement in the vegetation. Photo by Mark Martin

We are finding more common gallinules in the Atlas project in Columbia County thanks to Brand Smith, who likes to atlas by canoe. Brand has confirmed gallinules in seven blocks and has found five nests and five broods, more than anyone in the state the past four years. At one marsh he found 16 adults, two broods, and one nest. In the first Atlas only five nests were found.

Common gallinule nests are tricky to find! Photo by Brand Smith

Common moorhens or common gallinules have been on the Goose Pond Bird List for decades but were not common until this summer when Daryl Christensen reported five calling males in mid-June. Daryl’s colleague and member of the “Grebe Team”, Sumner Matteson, confirmed the first brood for Atlas II in July along the south edge of Goose Pond in a small area of open water visible from Prairie Lane.

Stop by Goose Pond this summer to see if you can catch a glimpse of these elusive birds. You'll know them by their bright red bill, long yellow legs, and charcoal-colored plumage.

By Mark Martinand Susan Foote-Martin, Goose Pond Sanctuary resident managers

Marsh Wren

Video/audio by brevardjay (YouTube)

Many visitors to Goose Pond this spring and summer were rewarded by hearing the rich harsh staccato with few pure musical notes of the marsh wrens around the edges of the pond. 

Sam Robbins wrote “In summer this is a “fun bird” to see and hear. You can stand near a cattail marsh before dawn, after dusk, or even in the middle of the night, and hear the delightful rattle of the “long-bill”. Once it is light, you can see considerable activity as the nervous birds move around.”

Marsh wrens, formerly called long-billed marsh wrens, can be confused with sedge wrens. The easiest way to separate the two is by knowing their preferred habitat. Marsh wrens live in deep or shallow cattail or river bulrush marshes while sedge wren nest in sedge meadows and wet to mesic prairies.

Photo by Mick Thompson

Most marsh wren nests are 2–5 feet above the ground and are dome-shaped, with strips of cattail, sedges (bulrush), and grasses woven together. The nest is oblong with a small hole at the top and an enclosed cup at the bottom. The nest is about 7 inches tall and 5 inches wide. Females line the active nests with strips of grass, sedge, cattail down, feathers, and rootlets. Clutches can range between 3-10 brown spotted eggs and the incubation/nesting period is 25 to 31 days long.

A marsh wren nest is well hidden in the cattails. Photo by Graham Steinhauer

Males migrate north before females and build a number of nests in preparation for their arrival. Once the females arrive, the male escorts the lady he is courting to his various nests, putting on quite a display of bowing, bobbing, and showing off his tail and his handiwork. The female selects a mate and she may build her own nest if his nests do not suit her. Together, they defend their nesting territory, and even destroy the eggs and nestlings of other marsh wrens and nesting birds. Males often mate with multiple females in the area (does he take these ladies on the same tour of his collection of nests that the previous female dismissed as inadequate?).

Our goal this year was to confirm marsh wrens nesting at Goose Pond. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources staff Daryl Christensen and Sumner Matteson found 10 males calling in mid-June while surveying for eared grebes, but unlike some other bird species (like eared grebes), marsh wrens cannot be confirmed by seeing the birds carry nesting material. A pair can build a number of “dummy” nests, and in fact, researchers have found that male marsh wrens may build up to 22 nests!

The first week in July, Goose Pond manager Mark Martin, land steward Graham Steinhauer, and interns Siena Muehlfeld, Tanner Pettit, and Henry Weidmeyer searched for marsh wrens on the north side of the pond. This was a new experience for the interns and they thought it would be easy to confirm nesting for the Breeding Bird Atlas project. It started out strong: six males were found calling in a two-acre area.

Henry, Tanner, and Graham search through river bulrush in knee-deep water on the north side of Goose Pond. The quest: marsh wren nests. Photo by Mark Martin

When the first of 12 nests was found the interns thought that the species was confirmed. Mark mentioned that marsh wrens build many nests, so a confirmed nest has to contain eggs or young. Since one cannot see into the nests, and Mark recommended they gently poke a finger through the entrance hole and see if eggs or young could be felt. At nest #10, Tanner found a nest with 3 eggs – a new confirmed species at Goose Pond! And those six singing marsh wrens? Tanner noted that “nests were always found near singing males.”

The federal breeding bird surveys conducted in the United States from 1966 to 2015 found an increase in marsh wren numbers by 130% and researcher estimated their population at 9.7 million, putting them in to the category of "low conservation concern." However, draining and filling wetlands and marshes could create problems for this species. Conservation Biologist Randy Hoffman said that the largest numbers of marsh wrens in North America is found at Horicon Marsh, which is also the largest cattail marsh in North America.

We are still on the look-out for marsh wren nests, as there's still time for nestlings to grow big and strong enough to make the fall migration to Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. On July 24, Daryl and Sumner checked on our wetland birds and found six males still calling and observed males carrying bulrush leaves to the arrowhead for constructing nests. Will we have another chance to gently poke our fingers into nests and find more eggs? Stay tuned to find out!

Written by Mark Martin and Susan Foote-Martin, Goose Pond Sanctuary resident managers, and Brenna Marsicek, director of communications

Cover photo by Arlene Koziol