Backyard Wilderness

I’ve been worried about a lack of birds in the park in April, but after checking back to past Aprils, I am not as worried. The Canada Geese pair has a nest in their usual spot on the east end of the island. Again this year some interloping geese were chased away by the resident pair.

The Mallards and Wood Ducks remain and two Pied-billed Grebes arrived on April 5 (sometimes joined by one to three more), but the Grebes have been gone for the last week of April.

So far I have not seen any of the six other kinds of ducks, Coots or Double-crested Cormorants that usually stop by during spring migration. I know they are all in the area, not even that far away (such as near the old Cedar Avenue bridge) but they are not coming to Powderhorn. The netting and fencing for the lake restoration project may be dissuading them, but when the project is completed, I expect the old regulars and some new species to visit the park.

At least one Great Blue Heron (I am pretty sure there were two one evening) and a Black-crowned Night Heron have returned. I have seen neither Green Herons nor Great Egrets at the park in April but this follows their timing of the last few years. They should show up in May. (“This just in!” or, “Breaking News!” as the TV stations would say. A Great Egret just flew over the park, but did not stop – 5:00 p.m., May 1.)

Not many small songbirds or warblers have arrived either, but this is normal. A lot of Robins and some Flickers were in the park early in the month but have not been seen much lately. Yellow-rumped Warblers were in evidence mid-month, then gone for a while. Now they are back.

Eastern Phoebes and White-breasted Nuthatches have been in the park off and on, and I finally saw a Brown Creeper while helping with Earth Day park cleanup. A woman who doesn’t even live in the neighborhood (but who certainly does know her birds) saw a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers overhead and a Sharp-shinned Hawk. As the group was eating the free food after the cleanup, I and other people saw a hawk flying above the park building. I thought it was a Cooper’s Hawk. It could have been the same bird.

As David Allen Sibley says in his definitive work, “The Sibley Guide to Birds,” “It is normally easy to classify a bird as an accipiter. Distinguishing one accipiter species from another, however, can be very difficult…Sightings of accipiters are often very distant or very brief, and many birds must go unidentified.” I have since seen the hawk in the park two more times and still think it is a Cooper’s. Another good observer saw a Peregrine Falcon on the southwest edge of the park. In Aprils past, I have seen Peregrines in my area (southeast of the park) but not this year.

On a positive note for April, I saw a Belted Kingfisher on the 29th. It has been over a year since I saw one in the park. I heard a splash and looked toward the west end of the island in time to see the Kingfisher coming out of the water with a fairly big fish. Apparently the fish was too big; the bird dropped it and flew to the mainland where it landed on a signpost.

Some non-bird sightings for April: The turtles have been out on nice days since April 8; large dragonflies, also on nice days, since April 14; and, a first for me, I saw a Muskrat on the island the last day of the month.

A couple of steps of the lake restoration project might get done early this month: New plantings on the island and alum treatment of the water to remove phosphorus and clear up the water.

Nothing much new in the backyard so far this season. The Robins are back and using the birdbath and finding worms. A Crow family has a nest nearby and uses the birdbath to soak items such as hot dogs, rice, bread and a cooked quarter chicken. I don’t know where they get the items, but they seem to have a good source. A goldfinch has been an occasional visitor at the tube feeder and the irregular lone junco was last seen on April 24.

On the last weekend in April, I went on the 28th annual Salt Lake-Madison-Marietta bird trip in far western Minnesota. The weather was warm (and windy as it often is there). Usually these have been fun but cold and nasty weekends. Last year there were 6 or 8 inches of heavy wet snow that Saturday afternoon and one birder went off the road on her way to the evening dinner. The entire event is filled with middle-American hospitality, from the morning breakfast and lunch at the American Legion post in Marietta to the evening dinner provided by the Sons (and Daughters) of Norway in Madison.

This year the group saw a total of 117 species of birds. The majority were waterfowl and prairie species rather than forest birds, because the area was generally a prairie and now an agricultural rather than hardwood or boreal forests as some regions of the state are or were. The highlight for my group was finally spotting the American Bittern we knew was in the area. Its head and long skinny neck peered above the tall grass like a stick along the roadside edge. Its brownish coloring and motionless stick-like pose is its way of not being detected. Suddenly, it flew up and across the road. It landed on the shore of Salt Lake, taking off in South Dakota and flying east towards Minnesota. This led to a discussion that evening about whether the bird landed in Minnesota and could be included in the tally for the day. The American Bittern was a “life-list” bird for many of the birders, even for many of the experienced ones. Last spring, one of these birds visited the island at Powderhorn for a few hours.

Comments and observations are always welcome. Send them to me, in care of the Southside Pride. Thank you.