Warbling Vireo

The Warbling Vireo is a small songbird, grayish on top and whitish on its bottom. But the vireo is more often—or more easily—heard than seen.  It’s a  rising call that birder Pete Dunne called “a happy drunk making a conversational point at a party.”  The warbling vireo has a tight migration schedule according to the Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas.  The first males typically arrive by May 10, while most birds depart mid-August to mid-September. Living in the foliage of deciduous trees during the growing season can make it tough to see warbling vireos. 

Another sign of the warbling vireo, besides its distinctive call, is its nest, which looks like a smaller Baltimore Oriole nest.  Within this nest, female vireos have been known to eject the eggs of parasitic Brown-headed Cowbirds. 

Warbling Vireos forage for caterpillars, pupae, and moths amidst the tops of deciduous trees.   Now is a good time to catch them foraging for plump caterpillars in Buddy’s Black Oak Savanna at Faville Grove. In fall, vireos enjoy native berries like elderberry and poison oak, raspberries and blackberries. 

The breeding population in Wisconsin and throughout much of eastern North America is stable, or increasing slightly.  With such a tight migration schedule, it could be interesting to monitor the phenology of the vireo as our changing climate potentially causes shifts in the leaf-out dates of deciduous forests across North America. 

Photo by Eric Begin, Flickr Creative Commons

Mallard

Mallards are an easily recognized duck and the most abundant breeding duck in Wisconsin and at Goose Pond. The Department of Natural Resources estimated the 2014 statewide spring population at 159,000 individuals.

In early May, 45 pairs of mallards were found on a waterfowl pair count at Goose Pond compared to an average 35 pairs. On a beautiful summer evening in early June, eight mallard broods were observed on the pond. Waterfowl biologists believe that 15-20% of the females have to be successful in hatching a nest to maintain the mallard population.  Populations can increase with higher nest success rates and this year we would not be surprised to have at least 15 mallard broods on the pond.

The abundant restored prairies and ideal brood habitat help increase in the local mallard population.  Goose Pond is mostly covered with arrowhead, a plant that provides excellent cover and feeding conditions for broods.  By mid-June the dense arrowhead cover prevents a good count of waterfowl broods.

Mallards are a target species in Wisconsin and are partly responsible for the US Fish and Wildlife Service providing millions of dollars of “duck stamp” money to Wisconsin to acquire national wildlife refuges like Horicon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge and waterfowl production areas like Schoeneberg Marsh Waterfowl Production Area adjacent to Madison Audubon Society’s Erstad Prairie.   The North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) also has provided millions of dollars to Wisconsin and hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire wetland habitat and associated uplands at Goose Pond Sanctuary.

The Federal Migratory Bird Conservation and Hunting Stamp (Duck Stamp) sells for $25 and they will go on sale July 1 at US post offices across the nation. This year, the stamp features a pair of ruddy ducks. Since 1934, $671 million has been raised nationwide for conservation purposes, with $6.78 million coming to Wisconsin. Duck Stamps are required to hunt waterfowl, but bird watchers are encouraged to purchase duck stamps to help raise money for the protection of waterfowl habitat. At Goose Pond, we purchase duck stamps as a way to support the public lands that we bird watch on! 

Photo by USFWS Mountain-Prairie, Flickr Creative Commons

Little Gull

Thanks to Nolan Pope and Steve Theissen a little gull was added to the Goose Pond bird checklist on May 27th. Little gulls are the smallest gulls in the world. Two days earlier Cynthia Bridge spotted a little gull, probably the same one, on May 25th west of Deforest at the Highway V Waterfowl Production Area. Little gulls are 10-12 inches long and have a 2 to 2.6 foot wingspan.

Many people were rewarded with sightings of the little gull at Goose Pond. The bird was probably a one-year-old bird and was not in breeding plumage. From a distance, one might first think the bird could have been a tern.

The gull liked to sit on the muddy edge of the east pond and then fly over the bird watchers and feed on the west pond. This gull’s main diet is insects and it flies along and plucks food from the surface water.

The Eurasian species was first found in Wisconsin in 1938 in Racine County. Little Gulls first nested in North America (Ontario) in 1962 with the only successful nest in Wisconsin found in Manitowoc County in 1975.  Since then no other nests have been reported.  

The little gull is sighted most years in Wisconsin along Lake Michigan or Lake Superior. Until the sighting in May there have only been eight records of little gulls in counties outside of the counties along the great lakes.

Ornithologists are not sure if the small population of little gulls is self sustaining or is supplemented by stray birds from Europe. A little gull chick banded in Sweden was found dead on the road in Pennsylvania in its first summer.   

When the gull was sighted, Mark thought of Sam Robbins, who liked to say: “The shortest distance between two points in southern Wisconsin goes past Goose Pond.”

Orchard Oriole

The orchard oriole is North America's smallest oriole, with a short bill and tail. Its chestnut body flashes through old-fields, hedgerows, suburb margins, and orchards in Wisconsin. It is possible that these habitat edges serve as surrogate for the pre-settlement savanna habitat common in southern Wisconsin.

Orchard Orioles were found to have their optimal abundance in oak savannas, one of the most imperiled ecosystems in Wisconsin. Regardless, orchard orioles are seeing increasing numbers in Wisconsin, with populations increasing almost 10% each year from 1966 to 2002, according to the Breeding Bird Atlas.

Orchard orioles belong to the genus Icterus, meaning jaundice. The origin of "icterus" comes from the eighteenth century and referred to seeing a yellow bird, which reportedly cured jaundice.

You can find orchard orioles in Faville Grove's Charles Savanna, just down Prairie Lane. Just don't count on your sighting to cure jaundice.

Photo by Kelly Colgan Azar, Flickr Creative Commons

White-Throated Sparrow

This past summer as I watched over the plovers on Lake Superior, I heard a bird calling every day, all day, everywhere.  Its song was something like “DOOOO DEEEE, do-de do-de do-de do-de do” with long “O’s”.
 

Music without lyrics.  Perhaps in the absence of voice is the beauty of the unkown, like in opera.  Top 40 radio hits you over the head like a red-winged blackbird defending its nest, no subtlety. 

I couldn’t find this bird.  It woke me in the morning, made pancakes with me at dawn, exclaiming “DUMMYYY it’s burnt, it’s burnt, it’s burnt, it’s burnt.”  The bird followed me as I walked along the dunes of Long Island; it put me to sleep at night and occasionally pierced the silence of those laughably early mornings and those sparkling Superior skies.

Of course, it wasn’t one bird’s call, though I imagined it as one bird, flitting through the forest following me around, lonely—a projection of myself.  I tried to find the “DOOOO DEEE,” as I began calling it, without luck.  It was unknown and mysterious.  I called back, and the bird would return with its call, though I couldn’t be sure was returning my call. 

So slow and melancholy, the call began, the first two syllables deeply felt, while the next verses were quick and playful in a folksy, nostalgic way.

There was no Google search to answer this question.  Of all the billions of bits of information I could Google, this was not one. 

A friend told me it was a white-throated sparrow.  Sibley told me that the call goes “Old-Sam-Peabody-Peabody.” I laughed.  I told myself that I now “knew” the bird.  The mystery vanished.  I felt I lost a companion.

But had the mystery vanished?  I think not.  For three months, I observed the inner workings of piping plover life, read all of the research on piping plover behavior, but I was far from knowing the plovers.  Checking the white-throated sparrow off a list meant nothing.  “The whistler of the North” does not sing to be greedily reduced to a checkmark, it sings for itself.  To know a bird is to know the landscape where it lives, and to know a landscape is to know yourself.  If anything, there were more mysteries and questions than before.

It’s important to remember during the hysteria of spring migrations and birdathons that these birds are more than checkmarks; they’re something to behold.  The Canada Geese, Red-winged Blackbirds, and Killdeer may be dismissed as givens on any checklist, but they are here, living, thriving. 

On Saturday Faville Grove will be hosting a number of talented birders, not including myself, for the Great Wisconsin Birdathon. According to ebird data, White-throated Sparrows passed through about a week ago, but maybe we’ll catch a straggler.  If we do, my checklist will be ready, and I’m betting I’ll have more checks than Goose Pond.

Photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren, Flickr Creative Commons.