A greater yellowleg looks on. (Scot Stewart photo)

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” — Albert Einstein

Autumn, warm weather, bird migration, blooming flowers, and singing frogs are all winding down as the season dwindles with the daily dose of sunshine. There may a dab less incentive to wander out each day in search of the wonders of the season, but for those who persist, there have been wonderful rewards.

Finding great marvels of the Upper Peninsula has taken longer to find and has at time been revealed in places not known this fall for the treasures now revealed, but the travels many have taken have yielded great finds.

This time of year, many birders scan the open fields across the entire U.P. looking for snow and Ross’s geese. As both species are usually all white, except for their wingtips, they stand out as long as there is no snow. The searches have been fairly successful with at least one seen again in Marquette with a flock of Canada geese. A cackling goose was also seen nearby. This has been in an area around the Tourist Park and the Kaufman athletic fields off HawleySt./Co. Rd. 550. Another snow goose has been observed in the Munising area.

Birders in Harvey were also able to find a great bird in an open field just off U.S. 41 on Cherry Creek Road. A western cattle egret was seen for several days starting last Friday, foraging in the field. Cattle egrets are nearly all white this time of year but have tinges of cinnamon breeding season coloring on their crowns and shoulder areas. There are two species, with the western species found in parts of Europe, southwestern Asia, and most of Africa except extreme desert areas. The eastern species is found in eastern Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Cattle egrets are really interesting residents in the Americas. They somehow made it across the Atlantic Ocean probably from Africa and landed in South America in 1877. They slowly spread across the entire continent except part of the Amazon and parts of the Andes Mountains. Eventually they worked its way northward through Central American and became established in the U.S. in 1941. Cattle egrets began nesting in the southern U.S. in 1953. Although they have been seen in northern parts of North America including Alaska, and nesting occasionally in the Upper Midwest, they are most common in the southern tier of the Lower 48. Like some of the other unusual southern resident birds wandering into the U.P., most western cattle egrets find their way here in the fall, possibly directed here by faulty internal navigation. Munising has seen several there in recent years and another was seen on one of the golf courses in Marquette eight years ago, in 2016.

A very late greater yellowlegs was discovered alongside Ivars pond east of Chatham last Wednesday. Most yellowlegs are south of the U.P. by the end of September, so this is a surprise observation. There are two yellowlegs species seen during spring and fall migrations here, usually along pond or lake edges. They are distinguished by the length of their bills and general overall size. Lesser yellowlegs are between 9 and 10.5 inches long, and greater yellowlegs 11.5 to 13 inches long. Both have loud, often three-note alarm calls when disturbed.

Many of the newly arrived migrants continue to show up across the U.P. – northern shrikes, rough-legged hawks, a few buffleheads, snow buntings, horned grebes, and many more long-tailed ducks and common goldeneyes. The Lower Harbor in Marquette has had small but steady numbers of both grebes and ducks. Other species with late sightings include rusty blackbirds and robins.

Christmas Bird Count plans are currently in the works for several U.P. areas. Begun in 1900 as a response to Christmas season hunting contests, the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, CBC, is in its 125th year. Started in 1900 by Frank Chapman, it was a response to the annual “side hunt” contests held to see which group could kill the largest number of birds each New Years. That first year 27 participants counted 90 different species of birds in the U.S. Since then, the counts have been held every year and have provided a baseline of data to show how many species have coped, over the past century.

The data is of course marked with differing numbers of counters each year, coverage of slightly different areas, and varying weather conditions, so the data has lots of statical variations, but still provides plenty of information on the trends of bird populations and the changes in the ranges of various bird species. The value of this vast wealth of data can be due in part to the incredible number of areas where counts are conducted and the huge number of hours put into many of the counts to rack up the numbers and species of birds seen each year.

Usually around a dozen counts are held annually in the Upper Peninsula, and all offer opportunities to explore different areas of the U.P. with veteran birders and seek out the birds currently in the area during the third week of December through the time near the New Years Day. Over the years the weather conditions for the counts in the U.P. have changed quite a bit from blizzards and really cold weather to rain and milder conditions with temperatures in the 40o’s in the U.P. The changing climate has definitely altered the make-up of commonly seen species on many of the counts in the U.P. Find a count https://www.audubon.org/community-science/christmas-bird-count/join-christmas-bird-count and keep looking for the great birds in the area.

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