A burrowing owl looks on. (Scot Stewart photo)

“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.” — Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

October has seemed almost out of place after the Upper Peninsula’s September. It was as if a switch was flipped or someone just turned down the thermostat, and the weather returned to “seasonable” temperatures. Now, just bring on some rain to prevent everything from drying out completely. Even the rocks around Presque Isle Park are showing bathtub rings left from higher lake levels. The lake level on Sept. 27 was 601.74 inches, .23 inches below its August level and about two inches below its average for this time of year.

The dry conditions have made for challenging conditions for wildlife across the area. Many wetlands, like the mitigations ponds on Presque Isle, are down to mud in spots and close to it in others. Tree leaves and some fruits, like mountain ash berries are drying up.

The mention of mountain ash berries is a great lead to several notes about winter species in Marquette. The first is the release of this year’s Winter Finch Forecast 2024-2025 https://finchnetwork.org/winter-finch-forecast-2024-25 this past week in Canada. Based on information collected this fall on conifer cone, mountain ash fruit, birch catkins, and ash seed production primarily in Ontario, ornithologists put together a look at how winter birds in Ontario and adjacent states might react and move to reach most productive areas to find food during the coming winter.

This is the 26th annual forecast and over the years has been a steady, accurate summary of tree conditions across the area and a good tool for predicting where winter birds like redpolls, purple finches, pine siskins, red and white-winged crossbills, pine and evening grosbeaks, and a few non-finch species, bohemian waxwings, blue jays, and red-breasted nuthatches can be found in the coming months.

For the Upper Peninsula, it looks like a weaker crop of mountain ash fruits in western Ontario may result in a bigger population of pine grosbeaks reaching the area and to settle in on remaining mountain ash and the usually good crop of crab apples in towns like Marquette. Similarly, bohemian waxwings have a good chance to return to the Upper Peninsula again this winter for the same foods.

Spruce budworm outbreaks in western Ontario and around Lake Superior drew good numbers of evening grosbeaks to the area this summer and some may remain looking for ash and maple seeds and eventually head to platform feeders with black-oil sunflower seeds this winter. While last winter they were somewhat scarce at some traditional stops used recently, the past few years a number of feeder stations in the U.P. saw good numbers, so it could be another good year for them to return.

Crossbills and pine siskins look to stay closer to Ontario this winter as foods look more promising up north so their sightings may be more limited here in the U.P. Birch seed production was somewhat spotty this summer so there is a chance some redpolls may dip down into the Lower 48.

A number of bird species identifications and names were changed this summer by the American Ornithological Society. Genetic research at the University of Colorado Boulder in redpolls for more into this past year https://www.colorado.edu/today/2024/07/18/redpoll-finch-saga-how-two-bird-species-just-became-one – examined the genomes of both hoary and common redpolls. For a number of years studies have attempted to determine if the two species, which are sometimes difficult to tell apart, were in fact the same species. In the most recent research, the DNA of both species was virtually the same except for a part of one chromosome responsible for bill shape and plumage color, where the segments were switched for the two. Researchers dubbed this a supergene and that the two were the same species.

The result led the AOS to deem this genetic difference small enough to reclassify the two species, and one other, the lesser redpoll from Eurasia, all the same species, now named simply redpolls. Lumpings like this always disappoint birders, because they eliminate one of the birds (or two) from their life list. To see more changes, some being very technical, go to AOS’s 65th Supplement of the Checklist of North American Birds, https://academic.oup.com/auk/article/141/3/ukae019/7716004?login=false for much more information on redpolls and many other birds.

This past weekend a really great bird stopped off at Whitefish Point for a few days. A burrowing owl, visited the tip of the point and provided many birders with a great look at one owl almost never seen in Michigan. This small owl lives in southern Florida and the southwestern U.S. It has the most unique lifestyle, nesting and roosting undergrown in old prairie dog and ground squirrel burrows. The last report of its presence was late last Monday night. While no certain explanation of its presence has been given, its arrival could possibly linked to Hurricane Helene. Many tropical storms are linked to the arrival of vagrant birds far from their normal range. Fall often brings a variety of vagrants to different parts of the country, with no certain explanation for their presence. Faulty internal navigation system, unusual patterns in the jet stream, random travels all many contribute to birds that wander off course.

Other new sightings at Whitefish Point signal the beginning of the next wave of migrants. Horned larks and American pipits, often are seen at about the same time during migration and are sometimes seen together in open fields, foraging for insects and seeds. A snow goose, long-tailed ducks and flocks of red-breasted mergansers also passed through. October’s here.

Scot Stewart is naturalist at the MooseWood Nature Center, a writer and photographer.