A male house finch looks on. (Scot Stewart photo)

“The color of springtime is in the flowers; the color of winter is in the imagination.” — Terri Guillemets

This past week has provided many opportunities to imagine — warmer weather, green woods, dipping toes in a lake, morning rose blossoms covered in dew drops, Baltimore orioles, ruby-throated hummingbirds, and scarlet tanagers. There is no end to where the imagination can wander on days when the thermometer reads -11 or even colder!

Thank goodness for the woodpeckers and cardinals for the reds they have provided in what has rapidly become the season of browns, blacks, and whites. Blue jays and nuthatches have added some blues too. A trip down to the Dead or Chocolay River, or a few other open water sights can provide some metallic mallard heads and even a wood duck or two with their wide array of colors.

But beyond that there has been lots subtle January colors. The group of trumpeter swans wintering on the Dead River has continued, although finding the portions with open water have kept them on the move and in and out of the shallows just upstream from the river mouth where the large quantities are easiest to reach. Over at the St. Ignace Boardwalk in Mackinac County four tundra swans and a pair of mute swans were seen last Monday afternoon.

One snowy owl has also continued in Marquette, with sporadic sightings, mostly in the Lower Harbor this past weekend. The breakwalls are often good spots for them beyond the reach of crows, and close to open water where smaller ducks might be. There has a small uptick of snowy owls in the Rudyard area of the eastern Upper Peninsula where seven were seen this past Monday. As eBird filters keep other owl species from showing up in recent sightings reports, it is fair to consider some owl species are also making their way south around Lake Superior this winter. Laura Erickson’s blog this week noted a fair variety are appearing on the Minnesota side. Great gray, northern hawk, and boreal owls have been the highlights there this winter. A more southerly species, a red phase eastern screech owl was also there in October.

Her blog also reported a boreal owl was seen hunting (and catching) a shrew during the daytime, a move indicating the owl was working outside its safety frame and probably quite hungry. She noted most owls are crepuscular, meaning they are most active at dawn and dusk, when the activity of other birds is usually less. Once it gets lighter other birds, like chickadees and nuthatches, may find the owls and begin protesting their presence. Their agitated calls can attract blue jay and crows, birds capable of a much greater fuss and the ability to truly upset and even injure the owls.

Further, she noted the importance of maintaining a considerable distance from the owls for a number of reasons. If they are hunting – northern hawk owls are diurnal, meaning they hunt during the daylights, and as mentioned others may as well if necessary, the owls rely on sound to begin many hunting events, and have a difficult time with human sounds – talking, car doors, walking on snow, when listening for mice, voles, and shrews. Secondly, if they are disturbed, their flight away may attract that unwanted attention of other birds and lead to more stress. So those owls should be enjoyed from a distance.

The cold temperatures have added good amounts of value to many of the area’s bird feeders. During the warmer stretches, birds have had time to poke around in natural nooks for insects, spiders, and cached seeds stored in crevices. As the temperatures have dropped, many birds have turned to larger supplies of accessible food like suet and black-oil sunflower seeds to get the necessarily larger supplies of quick, high calorie foods needed to maintain their metabolic rates. Some woodpeckers, especially red-bellied and pileated, have been seen shooting back and forth from the shelter of large tree trunks to feeders, especially at dusk as they stock up for the night. Blue jays, chickadees, house finches, and American goldfinches have selected the seed at feeders in more sheltered spots when multiple feeders are available at feeding stations.

The cold temperatures have also drawn many larger birds back to landfills as they too look for more substantial quantities of accessible food. At the Dafter Dump in Chippewa County birders found another large crowd on Monday. Flocks of herring gulls and European starlings each numbered 100, along with 31 bald eagles and 101 common ravens. Last Saturday a birder visiting the Wood Island Landfill in Munising found 80 crows, 50 starlings, 50 ravens and 15 bald eagles.

Imaginations may be getting a few nudges as house finches and goldfinches show up. Over the past week some of the male house finches have begun sporting some brighter red plumage that just pops now in the bare branches. A male goldfinch was seen last Sunday with a distinctively bright yellow throat. With the limited colors of January these subtle changes truly stand out and give hope to the weeks ahead. Male northern cardinals will also continue to bright up the trees. They are a bit unusual among the songbirds as they only molt once a year on fall. Their bright red feathers appear with brownish tips. The “duller” ends help them blend into the branches of trees and shrubs during the winter months. But as spring approaches these tips wear off and make the full embrace of their brilliant red feathers apparent. So let those imaginations run wild!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Scot Stewart is naturalist at the MooseWood Nature Center, a writer and photographer.