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Talk about being at the right place at the right time. Pretty cool.One chilly spring morning, amateur bird photographer
Kathrin Swoboda captured shots of a red-winged
blackbird “forming smoke rings with his Spring song.”
Kathrin Swoboda PhotographyInteresting display where our precious little Great Lakes Piping Plover fits in and habitats with it “kissing cousins” around North America and beyond.As breeding season comes near an end, some of our Great Lakes piping plovers have already departed for their wintering grounds. Within a few weeks nearly all of them will have done so. While plovers from all three populations can be found across the whole of the winter range, did you know each population has a region where they predominately winter? This illustration by Megan Bishop for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology shows something of this phenomenon. Most Northern Great Plains breeders winter in Texas, Lousiana and northern Mexico. Many Atlantic breeders go to the Bahamas or Florida and a large percentage of our Great Lakes plovers winter in South Carolina and Georgia (though there are a significant number on the Gulf Coast of Florida as well).
Wildlife never ceases to amaze us. Even if these 56 are just a Merganser’s “Duckie day-care center” on water.
'Super mom' spotted on a Minnesota lake — with 56 ducklings in tow
mnn.com
(And that number has since grown to 76!)
Monthly Archives: January 2016
Local USFS Biologist and AVA Friend and Member Honored
Several members of AVA and a representative from Ducks Unlimited gathered on Jan. 7 to say farewell to U.S. Forest Service biologist Paul Thompson. Paul will be leaving the headquarters in Oscoda and transferring to the Cadillac field office. He … Continue reading
Local Predator Bird at a Hunt
Here are a couple of photos submitted by AVA member Patsy Mortimer. She stated that they are of: “A juvenile sharp-shinned hawk nabbed a mourning dove at our feeder in Hale Jan. 17.” Not all birds eat seeds, but all … Continue reading
Informational Meeting about the GBBC Feb 3 in Oscoda
One of the announcements made during the January AVA membership meeting was of an upcoming informational talk about the Great Backyard Bird Count. The meeting will be held on February 3rd in Oscoda at the Robert J. Parks Library on … Continue reading
AVA Meeting presentation – Tawas Pt. State Park Initiatives
Our AVA meeting hosted one of the rangers from Tawas Point State Park, Micah Jordan as speaker. He spoke to a number of infrastructure upgrades scheduled to begin at the Tawas State Dock in downtown east Tawas. This is a three … Continue reading
2016 is Centennial of the Migratory Bird Treaty
(Note: This information and photo are taken from the Jan. 7, 2016 MDNR news release. See the release on the DNR site for the complete story and further information.) The Michigan Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service … Continue reading