Northerly Treks: Birding With Aunt Gretchen

At the cabin, Gretchen and I stayed up late on May 28th after we had dinner with Tabby.  We visited and visited, and had smores over a fire outside of the cabin.  It was a great time.  For May 29th, we had plans to go birding together.  A few years ago, my family, Gretchen and Larry, Tabby, and the Drury family (my Aunt Tracy and cousin Dylan) stayed at the cabin for a little over a week.  We worked very hard on a family project most of the trip to help my late grandmother, Pearl DeBardeleben (who very often talked to me about birding and enjoyed my stories during the first 5 years of my birding).  It was a lot of hard work everyday, but also everyday, we had fun.  We went out to lunch and dinner, we went canoeing down the Yellow River from a point near the cabin to wind up at the cabin, went hiking, went boat fishing, and more.  When the trip started, Gretchen wanted to go birding with me around the cabin one of the mornings.  Every morning was fun, as I had a few hours each morning to bird before we got really busy with work.  Gretchen and I didn't get a chance to bird on that trip, but we swore that one day we would make it happen.  And May 29th would be that day!  On that trip (which was in 2017), I really wanted to have time to explore some areas north of the cabin that contained denser conifer forest and bogs.  It was hard to do that on that trip, but Gretchen lent me her vehicle one of the afternoons for four hours.  I went straight to a spruce bog, and got my lifers of Blackburnian and Canada Warblers.  Gretchen was to thank, and that four hour jaunt was enough to satisfy my birding wants on that trip because it was not really a trip for birding.  For memory's fun, here's that lifer Blackburnian Warbler that emerged from the bog that I was birding at.  And it was the first time I got to access the northern boreal spruce-bog habitat in the spring and summer months-a special memory.

Blackburnian Warbler, Washburn County, Wisconsin, summer 2017.  County Road M near Stanberry.

On May 29th, I didn't set an alarm and Gretchen woke up before me.  I didn't have an exact plan in place as to where we would go, and I told Gretchen, "oh, I'll decide in the morning".  I wanted to pick a place that would have a lot of hiking, and some awesome scenery.  There were several spots that I was thinking about.  "So what's the plan", Gretchen asked.  I told her I was considering this place that sounded cool that I was reading about, about an hour away from the cabin, called Rock Lake State Natural Area near the town of Cable.  Gretchen knew about the area.  Something awesome about Gretchen is that she always has loads of energy.  It seems like she never gets tired and is always doing something fun or is working on a big project.

What interested me in Rock Lake was that not only was it pretty close to the cabin, but I read that it has a really good population of breeding Black-throated Blue Warblers.  For me, seeing more of this warbler was a big deal!  My only sighting of one was of a vagrant in Arizona that was spending time in someone's yard on private property.  Birders had to search for it on the road.  After a long search, I spied it on some Christmas lights in the person's yard.  The looks were very distant.  When I decided on Rock Lake, we had some breakfast.  While Gretchen was already ready to go, I was in rare form and wasn't quick to get around.  My lack of being my usual early self did have a pro to it, I looked outside the cabin and there was a small Black Bear walking around and in front of our vehicles.

I called Gretchen over and she came running, got her camera, and we both snapped pictures of a curious bear.  It stood and leaned up against some trees, and it even stood and leaned on Gretchen's vehicle!  Gretchen opened the door of the cabin, and the bear didn't exactly leave in a hurry.  He continued on a little further and continued to curiously explore the woods near the cabin.  It was a great way to start the day off for wildlife.

A video clip of the bear:

After a quick errand, we headed up to Rock Lake State Natural Area.  We got to the Rock Lake area at about 9:30 in the morning.  The entrance road to the State Natural Area was scenic, and was dominated by maples on hillsides along the road.  I could tell that the habitat was perfect for Black-throated Blue Warblers right away.  We drove in on the road for several miles, until the eBird hotspot location had us stop at a trailhead, one that would go to the namesake of the place, Rock Lake.  When we got out of the car, we were hit up by the true northwoods reality, Mosquitoes.  Clouds of them came and surrounded us.  Gretchen and I were spraying on our bug spray as best as we could and as fast as we could.  While the bug spray didn't keep the mosquitoes from surrounding us and landing on us, it did do an incredible job from keeping them from biting us.  During the first day, May 28th and first entry on Northerly Treks, I didn't mention mosquitoes or ticks, because they were hardly a factor.

This stop in the trip would be a good one for me to prepare in what the future days would be like in regards to preparing for mosquitoes.  We started hiking on the trail and realized that the flying pests were going to be annoying the entire time, but as long as they weren't biting us, the hike could still be done.  And the bugs weren't going to stop us, but they would make birding challenging.  I brought an extra pair of binoculars along for the trip, so Gretchen could have her own pair.

The trail started off by going through what was mainly deciduous forest, dominated by maples.  It didn't take long to hear several male Black-throated Blue Warblers singing.  Two of them were rather distant, but one of them was fairly close.  I spent some time trying to get a look at him.  The mosquitoes made things hard, and they were downright obnoxious, even though they weren't biting us.  Walking was the only defense against being annoyed.  After some endurance, I caught sight of a male Black-throated Blue Warbler.  It was awesome to catch a glimpse of him, but as quickly as he came, it was even quicker that he seemed to go deeper into the woods and sing his head off.  The loud and ringing songs of the Ovenbird filled the surroundings, and there were families of Least Flycatchers that were abound.  Their two-syllabled "che-bek" song was heard very often.  When I realized how challenging the Black-throated Blue Warblers were going to be, I decided that I didn't need to spend too much time on them, because there were other places where I could get them at on the trip.  As we hiked a little further on the trail, we came to the point where we could see Rock Lake.  At a junction, we continued onto another part of the trail.  As the first part of the trail was dominated by deciduous woodland, the next part of the trail was dominated by thick coniferous forest.  I heard a flycatcher sing in a way that was similar to Least Flycatcher, but it's song was a lower, not-so-defined but two syllable and more quickly released "tri-briek".  I listened to hear it again.  "Tri-briek!".  Right away I knew it was my second life bird of the trip, the Yellow-bellied Flycatcher.  An empidonax flycatcher closely related and similar to the Least Flycatcher.  After a quick search, we located the bird.

The Yellow-bellied Flycather is a part of the empid flycatcher genus, and this genus is one that can be very confusing for many birders.  While voice is the absolute best clue when it comes to identifying these flycatchers, careful study and notes of structure, bill length and color, primary projection length, eyering, head shape, wing and wingbar color, also provide clues to species identification.  Even though the identification was already nailed down on this bird, it's field marks still stood out.  Yellow-bellied Flycatcher has a big-headed look, a thin but usually complete eyering, a short bill with an entirely pale lower mandible, high contrast wingbars, rather long primary extensions past the tertials, and a short tail.  In eastern North America, the Yellow-bellied Flycatcher is the one empid that has a yellow throat.  Sometimes color can be hard in lighting, which is why voice and a handful of supporting identification trails are best when it comes to identifying empids.  The best habitat to find this species in are in boreal conifer forests such as bogs or the thick coniferous forest that we were in.  The Yellow-bellied Flycatcher also gave it's "tuur-ee" call that is distinctive also and sounds similar to an Eastern Wood-Pewee.  There were a few times that this new lifer of mine gave me some good views.

As the trail went on, the habitat diversity on the trail was impressive.  I've already mentioned the deciduous and coniferous forests, but there was also a small bog along the trail, and Rock Lake had open water to scan for waterbirds.  The place had a lot of birds making plenty of different calls, songs, and sounds.  A Ruffed Grouse was confirmed by hearing it's "drumming" of it's wings hoping to attract a mate.  The Grouse stands in one spot, starting to flaps it's wings slowly but the flaps increase and increase until the drumming is rapidly fast.  While we were in midst of thick woods that we couldn't just walk through, the sound of the grouse was nearby and vibrated through the rest of the forest.  Two Common Loons utilized Rock Lake.  A Pileated Woodpecker called loudly.  The song of the Veery was awesome, and then the song of the White-throated Sparrow (my first time on their breeding grounds), was even better.  Rock Lake was a haven for hearing warblers sing.  There were many warblers: Black-and-white, Nashville, American Redstart, Common Yellowthroat, Northern Parula, Blackburnian, Chestnut-sided, Palm, Pine, and Black-throated Green-you name it.  While the warblers were challenging to photograph during overcast conditions increasing, they were there!  Upon pishing, I also brought in a fun warbler that I was able to photograph, the striking Canada Warbler.

Canada Warblers are usually found within dense understory of mixed forests.  Their songs and calls are great indicators of their presence, and they usually come into pishing sounds very easily.  This one sure did!

I also managed to capture an Ovenbird's photo as we passed through a thick stretch of woods.

The mosquitoes ended up making our hike challenging due to their high annoyance levels, but we had a lot of fun at Rock Lake State Natural Area.

After Rock Lake, we still had time for a few more stops before we would pick up Gretchen's vehicle from a shop that was having a wheel on her trailer repaired.  I chose to go to the spruce bog where I went three years ago, the one I was able to go to when I saw my first Blackburnian Warbler.  I thought it would be really cool if I could show a Blackburnian to Gretchen, as of course as I mentioned earlier, she was responsible for me getting my first one.  This bog is located in the northern part of Washburn County, right along a paved road in a community called Stanberry.

When we started birding, we crossed paths with yet another Black Bear!  This Black Bear was much bigger than the first one we saw earlier in the day, and it was in the thickness of the spruce bog.  It caught sense of us, and moved away before we could get off any photographs.  Seeing two different bears in a day was awesome.  Right after the bear left, the song of a male Blackburnian Warbler sounded off above us.  It didn't take long for us to have looks at it.  I had Gretchen look up at it with the binoculars, and she really enjoyed it.  My enjoyment of it was high too, as I've said before that Blackburnian is my favorite warbler.  I snapped off some pictures, and it was a great way to end our birding day.

Back at the cabin Gretchen made dinner, and Tabby came over to join us.  There was another good meal, followed by a fire and more smores after.  We made up an awesome plan for the next day ahead of us.  It would involve kyacking and boat fishing as the main core activities, and I was looking forward to both.  Although I'd be on a kyack and a boat, I knew that there would have to be a few birding highlights too while on the water!  That story will be next on Northerly Treks.