What's Happening at the Beaver Pond

"Tippy" comes out to greet a visitor at her pond

Lately the beavers have been quite active at their main pond. They may or may not have new kits this season. I have an inkling that they do judging by the amount of food being brought back to the lodge. Kits don't typically come out of the lodge until they are at least a month old and so it's not unusual that we haven't seen them yet. The adults have started to come out in the afternoon again; this is something that they haven't done in several months. For the most part they've been working to maintain the ponds and canals and are generally keeping the habitat in order. The other wetland dependent species have been taking full advantage of the beavers' handiwork. Ducks and Geese have already nested and some young have recently hatched.

Greta, our log-time resident female Canada Goose, rearranges sticks around her nest

Greta notices one egg has rolled off and into the pond - She was able to retrieve it

Greta makes a splashy takeoff from the nest 

Greta and her mate Felix watch over their only gosling to hatch

The new gosling tries some greens for the first time

The other goose pair had 4 goslings

The very first Mallard ducklings hatched the same day as the goslings

The Wood duck is still sitting in her box - visited often by a male

When the Wood Duck female comes out of the box to feed, the male follows after her

A female Hooded Merganser showed interest in the Wood Duck's box. She may have even laid some eggs in there - thus allowing the Wood Duck to incubate them for her!

Recently there has been a mink hunting around the pond area

The mink is mostly searching the dam for small rodents, but they will take anything small enough to handle

Behind the beaver pond duck blind a Southern Red-backed Vole hides in a fold of old roofing material

Julia, the  beaver colony's Matriarch, patrols the pond - the Mink is no threat to beavers

One of the 2-year old beavers works on the main dam

Tippy takes apples from my hand just like she did when she was a small kit

A Green Heron walks across the dam

A male Mallard flies in and prepares to land at the main pond

In the dead trees above the pond several bird species are nesting - The Great Crested Flycatcher is our only flycatcher species that will nest in tress cavities 

A Hairy Woodpecker is still feeding nestlings in a dead tree over the pond

Migrant Songbirds at Work in the Woods and a Few Favorite Spring Wildflowers

Male Scarlet Tanager in the old woods

Migrant songbirds are still plentiful in our old woods. For more than a week now, I have been finding a great assortment of warblers, vireos, thrushes and other neotropical types. Some like the Scarlet Tanager will stay to breed while most others will continue north to the boreal forests of the Adirondacks and Canada. One of the reasons the migrants are lingering is the all-you-can-eat feast being provided by foliage-eating caterpillars. A quick examination of some freshly unfurled maple and beech leaves revealed many small green caterpillars - all methodically munching away. I'm afraid that most are larvae of the Winter Moth - an introduced species that is known to cause great damage to deciduous trees.  The songbirds are doing what they can for now to control them and hopefully, they be on the job for a while longer.

The Blue-headed Vireo looks like it's wearing a pair of white-rimmed spectacles 

A male Northern Parula Warbler inspects Beech leaf buds for caterpillars

Prairie Warblers are fairly unusual visitors in our neck of the woods

A juvenile Black & White Warbler looks for insects lurking on the bark of trees

Rose-breasted Grosbeaks have also been feasting on the emerging caterpillars

A female Wood Thrush was busy building a nest on a Hemlock bough

Female and male Bay-breasted Warblers look for caterpillars high up in the tree canopy

A Wood Thrush hunts for insects on the ground

Eastern Chipmunks are very common in the woods this spring - a result of last fall's bumper crop of seeds and nuts

Foam Flower came into full bloom this week

Jack-in-the-Pulpits are also found in the old woods

Sweet White Violets covered the ground in some woodland clearings

Songbird Fallout

 Black-throated Green Warbler was among 18 species of warblers at the preserve

What a difference a day makes. The woods were pretty quiet on this past Thursday. Some of the expected migrants from the south had been showing up, but only in a slow trickle. However, on Friday that changed radically and suddenly the woods were teeming with birds and resounding with their music. Warblers, thrushes, vireos, flycatchers - most of the birds fresh from the tropics, where diving through the tree tops and gleaning insects off newly emerging leaves.

A male Rose-breasted Grosbeak about to descend on a bird feeder

Wood Thrushes do most of their insect hunting on the forest floor

The Blue-winged Warbler is among those that will remain here to nest

The male Indigo Bunting visits a bird feeder

A Chestnut-sided Warbler issued harsh call notes from the tree tops

Brown Thrashers have been singing their hearts out at the forest edges

This Black-throated Blue Warbler took a sip from a Sapsucker's sap hole

I didn't get a good picture of it, but a male Black-throated Blue Warbler flew onto the trunk of a Hemlock Tree where a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker had drilled about 100 holes. The warbler put its beak right in one of the holes and took a drink, or grabbed an insect - it was hard to tell which. In the past I've seen hummingbirds and butterflies avail themselves of sapsucker holes, but not warblers.

About a half-dozen Scarlet Tanagers were singing from the tree tops

Yellow-rumped Warblers were the most commonly seen warbler species

A male Bay-breasted Warbler is seen and heard giving its short, high pitched song

Swainson's Thrush was among the freshly returned contingent of thrushes

Also in the woods, the White-breasted Nuthatches were seen house shopping. This was the cavity they selected

This tree cavity was already occupied by a family of Gray Squirrels

Thursday was the first day this season that the Red Eft was found in the forest

A pair of Eastern Kingbirds were seen picking off bees as they visited the pussy willow blossoms

Up From the Ground & Down From the Sky

Christmas Ferns are sending up fiddleheads

Things have been popping out of the ground at a pretty furious rate now. The Christmas Ferns have been producing new fronds which are slowly unfurling throughout the forest. Christmas ferns are evergreen and they retain their foliage from the previous growing season even as they push out new "fiddleheads". Spring ephemerals are also coming into their own, although some of the earliest ones to bloom show damage from a few inches of snow that fell about 2 weeks ago.

The best looking Sharp-lobed Hepatica I could find - others had been damaged

Bloodroot flowers were also spoiled by that April snowfall

Rafts of Spring Beauties cover large areas of the forest floor

Red Trillium was the first of the trilliums to bloom, but this year they are not so common

Dutchman's Breeches are also hard to come by this season

Toad Shade Trillium grows in our protected woodland gardens

Yesterday, we saw our first Rose-breasted Grosbeak for the season 

As spring progresses, the migrant birds continue to file in. Yellow-rumped Warblers have been at the beaver pond all week. It has been fairly chilly of late and since the pond remains a haven for insects even in cold weather, it tends to draw in their bird predators as well. Yesterday there were 3 Palm Warblers at the pond darting around after insects along with a large contingent of Ruby-crowned Kinglets. In the old woods - back at our twin gorges, a Louisiana Waterthrush was singing close to one of the streams. That species has been becoming increasingly uncommon in the region and generally in the northern portion of its range. We have plenty of his preferred habitat on hand at the nature preserve. My hope is that he remains with us and tries to lure in a mate.

The Yellow-rumped or "Myrtle" warbler at the beaver pond

The Palm Warbler nests in the far north woods and nowhere near any palms!

In his breeding plumage the Palm Warbler shows a bright Chestnut-cap

Caught in mid jump, the Ruby-crowned Kinglet is a bird that rarely ever sits still

The Louisiana Waterthrush sings its heart out right over the woodland stream 

This week a juvenile Golden Eagle flew over - the sighting was not unprecedented, but it was greatly appreciated.

A few Osprey have also been flying over just lately

Trout Lily or Dog-tooth Lily has begun to bloom

The Pine Warbler is another early arriving warbler species

Now this is how Bloodroot flowers are supposed to look!