Only one (r)egret
I woke up on Monday morning, (I wouldn’t be typing this if I hadn’t) still thinking of the previous day’s hike and the turkey at my doorstep. I went through my usually routine of several cups of coffee while I catch up with people on Facebook, and read the news. Monday is a big news day for me, as the outdoor section appears in the Sunday press, but I seldom read it on Sunday, rather I read it online on Monday mornings. (There will be nature pictures later in this post, I promise)
I want Howard Meyerson’s job! He’s the editor of the outdoor page for the local paper, the Grand Rapids Press, and has been for decades. I’m not sure why. One of the reasons I read the outdoor section online is that I get the feed from many of the other papers in Michigan that are owned by the same conglomerate that owns the Grand Rapids Press. I get more useful outdoor news from the Kalamazoo Gazette, the Muskegon Chronicle, and the other papers than I do from the Grand Rapids Press. I better stop now, I could do an entire post on why I would be better at his job than Howard is, in fact, I may just do that, but not today.
The only reason I brought the subject up in the first place was that I read a one paragraph blurb about Cranefest. The blurb made it sound as though it was an event aimed at children, but it mentioned a bird sanctuary where the event was going to be held. Bird sanctuaries are places I like to hang out, so I looked up the one mentioned online, and I was somewhat stunned.
I drive truck for a living, and as part of my run every night, I take I 69 south from Lansing to I 94 near Battle Creek. There are a number of swamps, marshes, wetlands, small lakes and ponds in the area where the two highways intersect. As I have been driving by, I have noticed them, and the waterfowl that make their homes there. I have thought of driving there to see if I could get close to any of the wetlands. Well, it turns out that the sanctuary mentioned in the blurb contains one of the marshes I have been eyeing from the highway, how cool is that?
Further checking told me Cranefest isn’t just for kids, it is an event put on by the Michigan Audubon Society, and it sounds like a pretty big deal. The sanctuary where some of the events take place is the Bernard W. Baker Sanctuary.
Here’s a description of the sanctuary from the Audubon’s website….
Baker Sanctuary is North America’s first bird sanctuary dedicated to the preservation of a crane species, the Sandhill Crane. At 898 acres and the second largest of Michigan Audubon’s sanctuaries, it is a refuge for nesting and migrating Sandhill Cranes. The area is dominated by the 200-acre Big Marsh Lake, a restored wetland flooding. More than 200 species of birds and dozens of species of mammals have been recorded here. There are two groomed trails in the sanctuary.
If you follow the link above, you can see more about the place, and download a map.
I used to be a member of the Audubon Society, but as in the case of many conservation groups like the Nature Conservancy, they alienated me by making all their sanctuaries and nature preserves off-limits to the general public, and the membership. It seems these groups get too big or something, but they all seem to get to the point where they tell you to send them money, and they’ll tell you about the places they preserve, but you aren’t allowed there. If you send them enough money, they may even say thank you, and send you a crappy photograph of the places your money paid for.
I know, there are some places that are too environmentally sensitive to let the general public roam free on, but they should be the exceptions, not the rule.
I was glad to hear that the Baker Sanctuary is open to the public. I marked it on my GPS unit, and I’m sure I’ll make it there, if not this fall, then early next spring at the latest.
By the way, I am trying something in this post to make links to more information more visible. I like WordPress, but I wish I could make links stand out more for people looking for information.
As I was checking out Cranefest and the Baker Sanctuary online, a small thunderstorm rolled through the area, delaying my walk for the day. No, no turkey showed up this morning, clucking at me to get with it. Instead, I spotted a great egret at the first pond I came to.
Great egret
Of course it was on the wrong side of the pond as far as getting good, well lit, close shots. There was another guy walking on the side of the pond closer to the egret, and I watched, hoping the egret wouldn’t fly off. It watched the other walker, and stayed behind the grass, but didn’t fly away. So I took off to circle the pond, hoping the egret would still be there when I got around the pond.
Great egret
It was still there, and it had just caught a fish, which you can just make out in the egret’s beak. It swallowed the fish…
Great egret
…saw me, and took to flight.
Great egret in flight
Luckily, I was using my Nikon, so I got some great flight photos.
Great egret in flight
Great egret in flight
Even if I was leading it too much. I thought that it would keep going, but it turned at the other end of the pond and came in for a landing.
Great egret in flight
Egret flight 101 cleared for landing…
Great egret in flight
Landing gear down…
Great egret landing
ready for touchdown…
Great egret landing
You can see the muddy water from the storm run-off from the earlier thunderstorm entering the pond, creating the line in the water where the muddy water met the pond’s water. Now the egret was on the other side of the pond again, so I went back, trying to stay out of its sight.
Great egret
I could tell it was wary of my presence, a flock of ducks was also there in the pond, I was hoping they would distract the egret.
Great egret and mallards
No such luck.
Great egret in flight
Off it went.
Great egret in flight
And it didn’t stop on the other side of the pond this time.
Great egret in flight
I knew that I should have moved slower, and been more cautious in my approach! I could tell I was pressing the egret more than it wanted to be pressed. I was in a hurry to get back to my apartment and continue working on yesterday’s post. That is never a good idea, you can’t hurry critters.
My regret is that I didn’t take the time to let the egret get used to my being nearby. But I also find it a coincidence that I found information about a cool bird sanctuary where I will probably see many other egrets, cranes and herons to photograph on the same day as this egret stopped off here at the pond. I see herons there regularly, but this was the first egret, I hope it isn’t the last.
A turkey stopped by my place on Sunday
No, not one of my relatives, a real turkey. I had finished my pot of coffee in the morning, but still wasn’t motivated to do much of anything. I’m not sure why, my allergies were acting up some, but not bad, and fortunately, I don’t have them as bad as some people I know. I was debating not doing anything other than some errands I had to run, I wasn’t even going to go for a walk around the complex. I was catching up with other people’s blogs, when I heard a turkey clucking like crazy, but not from the woods side of my apartment where I normally hear and see them, it was out front. I went to the spare bedroom that has a window that I can look out towards the parking lot, and there was a turkey standing right at the entrance to my apartment. I thought about shooting a picture of it, but changed my mind. But, the turkey just stood there clucking away, so I had no choice. I grabbed my Nikon and shot this really bad picture through the dirty bedroom window.
A Turkey waiting for me to come out to play
Before you give me grief over how bad that photo is, I live in a third floor apartment, and I’m not going to risk my neck hanging out the window to wash the outside of it. I keep the inside clean, the outside is some one else’s problem.
Anyway, the turkey stood there looking at the entrance to the building I live in, and it would rattle of a series of clucks every once in a while, as if it were wondering why I hadn’t come out for my daily walk, when I’ll often stalk the turkeys around here.
This is getting seriously weird. Earlier this summer I commented in a post about how much I like dragonflies and posted a few photos of them. Not long after that, I had dragonflies buzzing up to me, then landing on the nearest object to me they could find, sometimes landing on me. When I did the post of It’s been a good week, the icky stuff, I even made the comment that it seemed like they had read my blog and that they were hamming it up for the camera since then.
So in the post about hunting deer with a camera, I mentioned that turkeys are difficult to get close to, but that I love the challenge of trying while I am out on my daily walks, and now a turkey shows up at my door as if waiting for me when I didn’t go out for my walk at my usual time.
No, I don’t seriously believe that critters read and react to my blog. My friends say that it’s karma, that since I consider critters to be my friends, the critters sense that, and behave differently around me than they do around other people. I can sort of buy that one.
The turkey did motivate me to get off my butt, run the errands I had to run, then go to Saugatuck Dunes State Park for a hike in the woods, and along the Lake Michigan shoreline. I chose Saugatuck because I haven’t been there in months, and because I knew that the trees wouldn’t be as far along as far as changing color. The warmer waters of Lake Michigan retard the onset of the fall foliage near the shoreline of the lake.
I know, it’s fall, the trees are supposed to be changing color, and I am supposed to be photographing the bright fall foliage. However, I’m not ready for fall yet, and I truly miss the color green over the long Michigan winters.
On the trail at Saugatuck State Park
There’s not too many places I enjoy more than under the green canopy of a hardwood forest.
Hardwood forest canopy
It had rained just before I arrived at the park, there were a few breaks in the clouds from time to time, but short and fleeting. I hiked the south trail hoping to spot a few migrating birds, but there were few of them active at all. I don’t know if it was because of the rain, or if I just hit a lull in the number of birds present. It was a very pleasant hike, even if I didn’t see many birds. Taking the south trail meant it was about three miles to the Lake Michigan shore.
Dune grasses and dunes along Lake Michigan
It must have been an exceptional year for grass growth along the lake, because it was almost as tall as I am in many places.
Dune grasses
I thought that maybe there would be a great sunset to photograph if the clouds broke up a little, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen. The clouds seemed to be getting thicker overhead as I walked north along the beach.
The Lake Michigan beach at Saugatuck State Park
The dark object in the middle of the picture turned out to be a sawed off tree, and it made a convenient place to sit, rest, and contemplate the day. I was sitting on the log, looking out over the lake towards Wisconsin, when I noticed that the sky right along the horizon was beginning to turn a little pink, as if there would be a good sunset.
Lake Michigan sunset
What followed was awesome!
Lake Michigan sunset
I walked up the first small rise in the dunes, then watched as the clouds were churned by winds moving in different directions, as the fading sun painted the clouds in colors I’ve never seen before.
Lake Michigan sunset
It was just in a narrow band above the horizon, but there were four or five different layers of clouds, all moving different directions.
Lake Michigan sunset
The entire scene was changing every few minutes.
Lake Michigan sunset
So I stood there shooting every few minutes trying to capture what I was seeing.
Lake Michigan sunset
Lake Michigan sunset
Just when I thought it was over, the clouds would move more, and a new display would appear.
Lake Michigan sunset
Lake Michigan sunset
I shot almost 100 pictures of the sunset, I won’t bore you with all of them. By then, it was getting dark, and I still had two miles to go to get back to my vehicle, so I thought it best if I get started.
On the way back, I played with a couple of whitetail does, but couldn’t get any good shots of them. It was too dark unless I could have used the flash, but they wouldn’t let me get close enough to them for that. It was still fun trying though.
I really need to find that turkey and thank it for showing up at my door Sunday morning, and convincing me not to sit around the apartment all day. The hike was great, the sunset, fantastic!
A day in the life
No, not really, I wouldn’t bore all of you with the mundane details of my daily life. This is really about two days anyway.
Yesterday, as always, I went for a walk around the apartment complex where I live. We’ve been under what in weather terms is known as a cut-off low pressure system all this week. That means most of the time it has looked liked this outside.
Cloudy skies
Which I don’t really mind, this is Michigan, if you don’t like cloudy skies, you move elsewhere. It does make for crappy photography most of the time though. Every once in a while, a hole in the clouds would open…
Hole in the clouds
…and I could shoot some good pictures. Usually I bring my compact Canon Powershot with me when I go for my daily hikes, and I leave the big, clunky Nikon at home.
Oh, and that reminds me, I do this wrong. Looking at other blogs, the photographers always post what equipment they used, and the exposure settings they used when taking the pictures. I hope the other photographers aren’t offended when I ask, why? I can sort of understand stating what equipment they use, since that may help others decide on what equipment they should purchase. But as fast as new models of cameras are introduced since the advent of digital photography, a two-year old model is probably no longer available. For the life of me, I don’t understand the reason for posting the exposure settings though. Even standing completely still and taking three photos quickly, I find the exposure setting is slightly different for all three most of the time. So the exposure settings used by some one else aren’t going to help me in any way. I think magazines started that trend, I’m not sure though.
Back to my walk, I looked up to see a small hawk coming towards me, and I turned on the Canon and waited for it to go through its start-up procedure. By that time, the hawk had flown behind a tree, but I thought I would be able to see it once it cleared the tree on the other side. I could! But, I was still fooling with the Canon, trying to locate the hawk in the LCD screen and zoom in at the same time.
I find that when I am trying to locate subjects using the LCD display that it helps if I look over the top of the camera at the same time, which is what I was doing. Not only could I see the small hawk, which I think was a sharp shinned hawk, but there was a larger red-tailed hawk there too, and if I would have been quick enough, I would have gotten a shot of the two of them gliding very close to one another.
But, that’s one that got away. There are two things about the Canon I don’t like. One, is that it eats batteries almost as fast as my GPS unit. The other is that it doesn’t work well for shooting moving targets.
Here I go on another side note. I may have found a very good brand of battery to use. After my Labor Day weekend trip, I stopped at Batteries Plus to drop off all the dead batteries I had accumulated in the last couple of months, and it was a considerable number, again. As always, I talked to the guy there about available alternatives, and he suggested that I try a brand off battery they carry, which is Werker. I have been using name brand batteries, an eight pack worth every week, two at the most. I bought an eight pack of the Werker brand, and the first pair lasted almost a month! (Side tip to the side note, whenever you change or charge your batteries, turn your camera on right then to make sure that it functions. I’ve been with people who turn their camera on only to find the batteries are installed wrong, dead, or didn’t charge as they thought, and they’ve missed a picture because of that.) I haven’t been taking as many photos lately, but I have used the flash on a higher percentage of shots because of the weather. If the six Werker brand batteries I have left show the same kind of life expectancy, then I’ll let you know. This goes with the commitment I have made to refuse to pay for shoddy products or services. The Duracell and Energizer batteries I’ve been buying simply do not last.
Back to the Canon, it is slow, and the LCD screen is hard to use when tracking moving targets. There’s not much I can do about that, other than practice. I missed the two hawks together, but did get the red-tailed hawk.
Red-tailed hawk
And this one.
Red-tailed hawk
Neither are great, but they’re better than nothing. I was thinking about missing the two hawks together, and decided to stop being a wimp and that I was going to carry the Nikon with me most of the time as well. It is instant on, and I can track moving targets much better using its viewfinder rather than the Canon’s screen, or so I thought.
I stepped out the door this morning, and was stretching, looking around to see what kind of a day it was going to be, when a pair of great blue herons came swooping in towards me. I stood there like a bump on the side of the road, until I remembered I had the Nikon, but by that time they were almost directly overhead, and right in line with the sun. I turned around and shot, here’s what I got.
Great blue heron gliding
I swear! On my honor! It looked much better in the viewfinder when I pressed the shutter release! Actually, all things considered, that isn’t too bad. As you can see, the heron was below treetop level, so the entire event happened a lot faster than it took me to type this, probably less than 5 seconds.
On both days I shot a number of fall foliage pictures that I have already posted here, and I was taking as many insect and flower pictures as I could, since they won’t be around very much longer. Sometimes I got both at the same time.
Butterfly and flower
Sometimes it was just an insect.
Dragonfly
Or this one.
Dragonfly
Sometimes just a flower.
Blue wildflower
Even the berries were the berries.
Berries
But, you have to be careful with the berries this time of year. They ferment on the vines, and critters get drunk when they eat them.
Drunken raccoon
That sometimes happens with other animals as well, I read about a moose that got drunk on fermented apples, got its antlers stuck in a tree, and had to be rescued. Sorry, no moose pictures though. I do have one of a black-capped chickadee though.
Black capped chickadee
And I know that it will be all too soon that there are no leaves left on the trees at all, so I shot a couple of leaf pictures so I could look at them in during the winter to remind me that spring will return.
Virginia Creeper
And this one.
Green leaf
But mostly, it was flowers.
Thistle
and insects
butterfly
and flowers
Yellow wildflower
Even the goldenrod
Goldenrod
not only is the color pretty, but the shapes it takes on are pleasing as well
Goldenrod
it looks even better in full sun
Goldenrod
and up close
Goldenrod
But thistles are still may favorites
Thistle
They bloom all summer, unlike these asters that only bloom in the fall.
Asters
One last bug picture, another preying mantis.
preying mantis
I even saw a rainbow.
Sprinkler created rainbow
OK, so the rainbow was really a sprinkler-bow, it was still pretty. As were these small white flowers.
Small white wildflowers
Before I forget, I have found another blog that I can heartily recommend, Texas Tweeties by Bob Zeller. If you like birds and nature photographs and photography, you should check it out. I have added a link to Bob’s blog on the right side of the screen, along with the one right above here.
That’s about it for this one. I wish some of the photos had come out better, but I was fighting the clouds all week long. There were many times when I stood there waiting for a hole to open up in the clouds to let some sun shine through, but it didn’t always happen. Every once in a while a little rain would fall, not enough to put a dent in the mini-drought we’ve been having, but enough to make photography more difficult.
I am hoping the weather is better next week, and that I can afford to make a trip up to the Jordan River valley. That’s one of the most beautiful parts of Michigan at any time of the year, but especially so when the leaves turn color in the fall. The views from Dead man’s Hill and the Landslide are beyond my ability to describe them. I would love to make it up there next weekend, get an early start on Sunday morning (after breakfast at Darlene’s in East Jordan) and hike between Dead man’s Hill and the Landslide on the Jordan River Valley Pathway. I can’t find a good map that I like, if I make it up there, I’ll post one of my own when I get back, along with lots of pictures!
As always, even if I forget, thanks for stopping by!
The first full day of fall
Yesterday was the first day of fall, I have already forgotten the exact time it arrived, like it makes a difference. Notes on a calendar don’t mean much to nature, the transition to fall has been going on for over a month, and autumn will continue to push summer aside, a little at a time.
Autumn leaves starting to turn color
Fall seems like more of a transition from one year to the next to me, much more so than the New Years Day when our calendars say that it happens. Fall is when one year dies, and most of nature goes into its resting stage over our long, cold, snowy winters here in Michigan. So I am always a little sad when fall does arrive, to me, it signifies the passing of another year.
Some of that is old age talking. I swear that each year is at least a month shorter than the year before, even though the calendars I get in the mail say that there are still 12 months, and they are all the same length they have always been. As soon as I figure out where those months are disappearing to, I’ll be sure to let every one know. 😉
Fall is also the season of spectacular beauty, when nature pulls out all the stops in vivid displays of color unlike any of the other seasons.
Fall maple
Not to mention there are no biting bugs left to bother me while I am hiking or kayaking.
Autumn colors
Some trees seem to turn all one color…
Fall maple
…while other trees seem bent on having every leaf a different color.
Fall maple
They’re all beautiful on a sunny autumn day.
Blue sky, red leaves
From the time they begin to change…
Burning bush
…to when most have changed….
Fall foliage
…until they fall.
Maple leaf
From either the bottom…
Fall foliage
…or the top
Fall foliage
Enjoy.
Fall foliage
This display of color is our reward for sticking it out in an area where winters are so long.
Fall foliage
Fall foliage
And fall is just getting started. It will be several weeks before we get the full display of color that happens most years. I say most years, because once in a while a storm will blow through just as the trees are near their peak, and all the leaves will be blown off from the trees. I hope that doesn’t happen this year.
Some updates
I have added an update to the hiking page for the High Country Pathway, the Pigeon River Country Association hired an intern who spent most of the summer on trail maintenance.
I have also added a page to the Lake Huron trips page covering the Presque Isle area, including both the lighthouses, Thompson’s Harbor State Park, The Besser Natural Area, and kayaking both Lake Huron and Grand Lake. You can find that one here.
Sorry this is so short, I spent all my time on the updates.
Help! I’ve been drafted!
No, I didn’t receive a letter from my Uncle Sam inviting me to join one of the armed services, I have started a half-dozen new posts and several new pages, all saved as drafts. So I thought I would knock out a quicky of photographs, just so I can remember where the “Publish” button is.
The posts that I have started deal with serious environmental issues, and few people read them, so there is no need to hurry as far as finishing them. But I have been in a serious mood for the last month or so, maybe it is because of the arrival of fall.
I know, fall doesn’t officially arrive for a couple more days, maybe some one should tell nature that. The swallows have been gone for a month, the red-winged blackbirds left soon after, and one by one, the species of summer bird residents have left for their winter homes south of here. There are still the migrating birds passing through the area, here today, gone tomorrow. The flocks of geese, cranes, and herons grow larger every day, and soon, most of them will depart as well.
The trees are well on their way to turning color for autumn, I am getting a bad feeling that this year’s fall foliage is going to be some what muted. A lot of trees are already turning brown or losing their leaves, not a good sign.
Fallen maple leaf
I hope to make a trip up to East Jordan, Michigan to shoot pictures of the Jordan River Valley at the peak of the autumn colors, but I don’t know if I will be able to afford it, which has me bummed.
I am also bummed because I have a love/hate relationship with fall. I love the colors, the crisp, cool mornings, and the fact that the skeeters and biting flies are gone for another 6 months.
I like winters here, except for two things, the trees are mostly bare, and it will cloud up sometime in mid November, and stay cloudy until next March. You can normally count the sunny days in winters here on your fingers, some years on just one hand. Our summers are too short, heck, the years are too short at my age, which is another thing that has me bummed.
It seems as if this summer flew by, in part because I didn’t do much, I couldn’t afford it. I love shooting pictures of wildflowers and insects.
Tiny blue wildflowers
Yellow butterfly
But they are about gone for another year. I’m not ready for them to be gone yet!
Yellow wildflowers
We had an early frost this week that about finished off the last of the flowers.
Yellow day lily
There are only a few flowers left.
White wildflowers found in a wetlands area
These won’t be back until next fall.
Blue wildflowers
The leaves turning bright colors help.
Sumac leaves turning red
But they will fall sooner than I would like.
Dew on a fallen maple leaf
Even the critters are preparing for winter.
Muskrat
The muskrats are gathering grass to insulate their dens.
Muskrat
And the squirrels are busy collecting nuts for the winter.
Fox squirrel
Although they do take a break from time to time.
Fox squirrel
And there are still a few great blue herons around.
Great blue heron
And a few hardy flowers holding on.
Small red flowers
I am still hoping that the last of the Virgin’s Bower….
Virgin's Bower
….makes it to the seed cluster stage so I can get some truly good photos, rather than the so-so one I posted a while back, but I’m not sure they will hold out that long.
There are other things bumming me out right now as well. One is my job search, there aren’t many good jobs available. The other is how rude people are these days. Last week I had some ass start honking his horn and cussing me out through his window because I slowed down to the speed limit while driving past a young mother pushing a baby in a stroller, while her toddler walked next to her. I’m sorry Mr. Ass, but I am not going to be responsible for killing a child if it darts into the street, or trips into the street. If you can’t leave home on time to drive like a sane person, then screw you!!!!!!!!!
That sort of goes with another crusade I have begun, I am no longer going to pay for shoddy products or services. I am dumping my Verizon wireless Internet service, it is slower than a sedated snail, when it does work. My contract is up the end of this month, but Verizon doesn’t want to end the contract. That’s funny, they have no problem rewriting the contract that’s in effect when it suits them. I may end up switching to another carrier for everything, including cell phone.
Then there is my old car insurance company. I made a payment through their website, the money was taken out of my account, but, the company cancelled me without notice for non-payment. Ha! I switched to another company, now the first one is trying to collect a fee from me for cancelling a policy they had already cancelled. Fat chance! That left me seeing red!
Red leaf with back lighting from the sun
Maybe I should cool down a little.
Yellow maple leaf
Didn’t work, I’m still seeing red.
Red maple leaf
Just kidding.
There are a few more reasons I haven’t posted lately, I am still cleaning and packing up stuff for the winter, for one. For another, I’ve got too many irons in the fire right now. I have started pages for photography, kayaking, and breaking down the Lake Huron shoreline into individual trips. That last one is a tough one, as I work on it, I want to drop everything and head back up there!
It’s dawned on me, about the only autumn foliage photos I’ve posted here are of fallen leaves, I guess I had better post at least one more picture of leaves still on a tree.
Maple tree turning red
That’s it for now. Sorry for the rants, but thank you for stopping by to read this.
The Enbridge oil spill, one year plus
Some one should write a book about this event, but I doubt that it would ever be published if some one did.
For those of you who don’t know, a pipeline owned by Enbridge Energy ruptured on July 26, 2010, a little over a year ago, dumping over 800,000 gallons of oil into a small creek that flows into the Kalamazoo River near Battle Creek, Michigan. This was, and still is, a major environmental disaster, and I believe that Enbridge should pay for the entire clean up, and be fined heavily on top of that. But, the real story, and what has interested me the most, is the incredible amount of red tape that Enbridge faces in trying to clean up the mess they created.
In the first few hours after the story hit the news, Enbridge was crucified for not reporting the spill to federal officials earlier than they did. It turns out that when a pipeline operator reports a spill, they are required to provide an accurate estimate of the size of the spill, or face heavy fines if the estimate is even a little wrong. It took Enbridge a few hours to get an accurate estimate of the size of the spill.
Then, a review of both Enbridge’s, and the federal agency to whom they report, phone records show that Enbridge did attempt to call earlier, but all the lines were busy. And that was just the beginning.
The agency Enbridge was required to notify has nothing to do with responding to a spill or the clean up of a spill, so that resulted in delays while the proper agencies were notified.
That was on a Monday morning. On Monday evening, Enbridge had crews on site, containing the spill. On Tuesday morning, top officials from the State of Michigan, including then Governor Jennifer Granholm, toured the site of the spill, proclaimed the sky was falling, and not enough was being done to clean up the spill. On Tuesday afternoon, President Obama promised a quick response. On Wednesday morning, federal officials arrived, proclaimed there was a problem, and sent for reinforcements, which finally began to arrive on Wednesday evening.
The section of pipeline that ruptured was excavated soon after the spill, and sent to the proper federal agency for an investigation into what caused the pipeline to burst. That agency promised a report in February of this year, but as of September 17th, no report has been issued. We still don’t know what caused the pipeline to burst.
It has been one thing after another. A story will break on some aspect of the clean up that points to Enbridge not doing enough, then we learn that Enbridge is waiting for approval from some federal agency before they can proceed. I could go on and on about this, but I am going to cut this short. In looking up a few things to refresh my memory, I came upon an editorial in the Kalamazoo Gazette calling for Enbridge to be sued. Why? Because federal regulators and federal agencies have failed. I know that makes no sense, let me quote you from the editorial.
“Yet, we would view a lawsuit as a positive development in this particular case — and not because there would be any real remedy that could undo the kind of environmental damage that has been done here. Taking the case to court would ensure a public hearing of the facts.
A lawsuit could shine a spotlight on exactly what transpired; compel information to be produced through discovery; disclose facts that may have a bearing on what happened; hold those who are responsible for what happened accountable for their actions or their failure to act; and penalize any wrongdoers with significant fines and costs that could be considerable.
When the legislative branch fails to protect the people — in this situation by not reforming how oil pipelines are monitored and maintained and adjusting the penalties for failure to adequately do so — the judicial branch can effectively act in the interests of the people.
Long before this Enbridge environmental disaster in July 2010, lawmakers should have promulgated aggressive legislation to compel improvements in pipeline maintenance. That didn’t happen.
That’s why we’re looking for a lawsuit.”
You can read the entire editorial here.
With all due respect to the editorial board at the Kalamazoo Gazette, we know who is responsible, Enbridge. What caused the leak? I am no expert in pipelines, but I did see the photos of the ruptured pipe after it was excavated, it was split lengthwise. We are still waiting for the report from the federal agency investigating why the pipe ruptured, but I think it is a safe bet to say that an operator who wasn’t paying attention flipped the wrong switch, or pushed the wrong button at the wrong time, causing a surge in the pressure within the pipe, causing the pipe to split along an old seam in the pipe. Enbridge will be fined copious amounts of money for not training their employees better, even if the operator responsible had 20 years on the job. As long as there are humans involved, there will always be human error, and as long as there are mechanical devices involved, there will always be equipment failures.
And again, with all due respect to the powers that be at the Kalamazoo Gazette, if you want answers, then maybe you should assign a reporter or two to do some real investigative journalism rather than sit at their desks and rewrite the news releases sent to them. (That’s one of my pet peeves, there is no investigative journalism being done these days, unless you count the paparazzi investigating the personal lives of celebrities.)
The media loves to go off half-cocked and call for action before we know what actions should take place. Until we know for sure what caused the leak, how can any one formulate legislation, regulations, or rules to prevent the same thing from happening again?
How is filing a lawsuit against Enbridge going to get legislators and regulators to perform the jobs they were elected or hired to do? A lawsuit against Enbridge is quite likely to have the opposite effect, officials will feel they are off the hook as far as their actions, and it would be prudent for them to await the outcome of a suit before they act once a lawsuit is filed. Once a case is in the court system, the judge’s decision would have a direct bearing on how new rules and regulations should be crafted, so everything would be put on hold until the judge makes his ruling to give the officials direction as to how they should proceed.
If the editorial board of the Kalamazoo Gazette is looking for quick actions, I’ve got news for them, the court system is not where you are going to find quick action. Such a lawsuit as the one they are proposing would take years or decades to work through the system before there is a definitive ruling.
And what would that ruling be? It’s hard to say. I doubt that any judge assigned to the case has the technical background to issue a decision until they have taken the time to educate themselves on the issues, and they would have to rely on expert opinions. Then you get into a situation where you have conflicting expert opinions, depending on what axe the expert has to grind. Which expert the judge chooses to listen to is hard to say.
That whole point should be moot anyway, the Kalamazoo Gazette is calling for a court to make law since the legislature and federal regulators are moving too slow as far as the Gazette is concerned. Perhaps the editorial board of the Kalamazoo Gazette should familiarize themselves with the document known as the United States Constitution. It is not up to the courts to make law, that duty is reserved for the legislative branch of our government.
If Enbridge was shirking its responsibilities in the clean up, then I would agree, file a law suit, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. When accusations have come up that Enbridge isn’t doing what it should, or as much as they could, the federal officials overseeing the clean up have defended Enbridge and the way it is handling the clean up.
Filing a lawsuit will only slow down the clean up. People will have to take the time to attend court hearings, give depositions in the case, and that will only distract them from the task at hand, cleaning up the spill and making sure that such a spill never happens again. Enbridge would have to spend huge sums of money defending themselves in court, and how often have companies been driven to bankruptcy leaving no money left to clean up the mess they created after fighting such lawsuits? I am not saying that Enbridge would be driven into bankruptcy, but it is a possibility, and then there would be no money left to clean up the spill other than public funds, and why should we force a company out of business, then pick up the tab for cleaning up after them?
That happens way too often in this country, but then there are those who have as a goal the putting companies such as Enbridge out of business. I see that as counterproductive. It is better that a company survive and pay for the clean up out of their profits than it is for Joe Taxpayer to foot the bill.
Maybe the editorial board of the Kalamazoo Gazette should inform themselves better before they go off on a rant. I know that Enbridge is installing new safety measures on pipelines they operate in the Pigeon River Country, including automated shut-off valves to limit any oil spills should a pipeline rupture. They are working with the Michigan DNR, and other state and local officials to come up with response plans should there be a leak, and they are taking other measures as well. I think I read that they are doing the same in other parts of the state, but I am not positive about that. Maybe we don’t have to wait for federal regulators after all.
The position of the editorial board of the Kalamazoo Gazette, that we should do something even if it’s wrong, is how we end up with bad regulations that do nothing to solve the problems they were intended to solve. I am not saying let Enbridge off the hook, I am not saying that the regulations concerning the operation and maintenance of pipelines don’t need to be addressed, but let’s do it right for a change. Not as a knee-jerk reaction to a frenzy whipped up by the media trying to sell papers by creating a controversy where none exists.
In a heavy salmon run, poachers snag big fines / Michigan River News
I am blogging this news story, with permission of course, from the Michigan River News. They have many stories dealing with our rivers that never find their way into the mainstream media.
In a heavy salmon run, poachers snag big fines
By Andy McGlashen • September 13, 2011
Salmon-hungry scofflaws are flocking to riverbanks in northwest Michigan.
As MRN reported last month, this year’s salmon run has been a whopper. “It’s two to three weeks early, and it’s a very heavy run,” said Lt. David Shaw, a Department of Natural Resources conservation officer whose district includes major salmon rivers like the Betsie, Manistee and Pere Marquette.
The migration of unscrupulous anglers lured by the big, tasty fish has also been above-average, keeping Shaw and his fellow officers busy.
“With the frenzy of a heavy run, we have a lot of illegal activity,” he said. “In this district, we’re having major activity in Mason, Lake, Manistee and Benzie counties.”
That includes “some real blatant snagging,” Shaw said. Snagging, or catching fish that don’t voluntarily take the hook in the mouth, is illegal in Michigan. Many of the poachers use bare, weighted treble hooks to snag the fish, which often congregate and are easily visible in clear streams.
Shaw said he issued a citation last week to a poacher carrying the carcasses of three large king salmon from his pickup truck to the Betsie River, having put fillets from the fish in a cooler.
“It’s pretty widespread,” Shaw said, “and it comes at a time when we have six vacancies in this district.”
Tight budgets have left at least two counties–Mason and Benzie–with only one conservation officer, he added.
Shaw noted that illegally caught salmon can get pretty pricey, with a fine of no less than $250 for the first offense, plus $10 per pound of illegal fish and up to 90 days in jail. Repeat offenders will pay at least $500 and will lose their fishing license for at least two years (though MRN has a hard time believing that losing a fishing license is a big concern for a poacher).
If you see someone snagging salmon on a Michigan river, you should contact the DNR’s Report All Poaching service.
And seriously, if you’re that crazy about salmon fillets, just go to Meijer. They’re like seven or eight bucks, with very little chance of jail time.
via In a heavy salmon run, poachers snag big fines / Michigan River News.
Deer hunting with a camera
I haven’t hunted deer with a gun since the late 70’s, it isn’t that I am opposed to hunting, it just isn’t for me. I love venison, my aunt Shirley’s venison stew was one of my all time favorite meals. Her “secret” ingredient was parsnips, I add them to beef stew as well, yummy. If any one were to offer me some venison, I would gladly accept it, but I don’t want to be the person killing deer for venison though. I know, I’m strange.
By the late 70’s, I had become more of a shooter than a hunter, well, that’s not quite it either. More of a shooter than a killer. I still love to shoot a gun, and I like to hunt, but I no longer combine the two. Instead, I hunt with my cameras, and shoot pictures in the woods, and shoot targets at the range with a gun.
Many of the reasons I no longer hunt with a gun have to do with other hunters, and the way deer are hunted here in Michigan. I don’t really like being out in the woods with 3/4 of a million to 1 million people who get their gun out once a year for deer season, and can’t hit the broad side of a barn at 50 feet. I have heard enough bullets zinging through the brush or landing a few feet from me to last a lifetime, thank you very much.
I will not bait deer, I feel any one who has to resort to baiting isn’t much of a hunter, and I’ve heard all the excuses for baiting. They all add up to the fact that most deer hunters don’t know how to hunt.
Deer really aren’t very bright from what I have learned, but then, they don’t have to be to survive the typical Michigan hunter. I hate to say that, but it’s true. Even while I was still hunting with a gun, I saw how easily deer hide from and elude the typical hunter.
One time I was sitting near the top of a small ridge that overlooked a small fairly flat clearing on the side of the ridge. There were several deer trails radiating from the clearing like spokes on a wheel. As I was sitting there, a doe walked into the clearing and began to feed. I was hoping that there would be a buck following her, as often happens during the rut. The rut is the deer mating season. Anyway, I’m watching the doe, and she didn’t notice me at all from what I could tell. But, she started to become agitated, looking down the slope of the hill as if there were something there. I was still hoping it would be a buck, but soon even I could hear that it was another hunter crashing through the brush, coming towards the clearing.
The doe calmly walked over to one of the few scrub oaks in the clearing, and laid down in the tall grass at the base of it, and stayed perfectly still. I had seen her lay down, but I still had trouble making her out as she laid there. Eventually the other hunter walked into the clearing, through the clearing, not more than 40 feet from where the doe was laying, and then he went crashing through the brush on the other side. He never saw the doe, or me sitting against a tree wearing a blaze orange hat and a red hunting coat. I could still hear him when the doe got up and began feeding again as if nothing had happened.
I have seen deer crawling along on their belly’s, not more than 5 feet from where I was standing, and I’ve seen them do the same thing to other hunters. They are very good at being unseen when they want to be unseen, after all, their lives’ depend on it.
So how do I see deer when others can’t? My “trick” if you want to call it that is to not act like a typical human out in the woods. It confuses the heck out of critters,all critters, not just deer. I have deer walk up to me trying to figure out what I am, since I don’t act human.
So how do you act like a non-human in the woods? The first thing is to be quiet, most people make so much noise in the woods the deer have them pinpointed long before the people approach anywhere near the deer. That doesn’t mean you have to be completely silent in the way you walk, no one can, not even wildlife is completely silent.
Next time you are in the woods, stop and listen, really listen. The woods are a noisy place. Birds knock pieces of bark and nuts off from the trees that hit the ground with loud thunks. There are squirrels that do the same thing, or that are rummaging around in the leaf litter for fallen nuts. The wind causes the leaves on the trees to rustle, and it knocks branches loose that come crashing to the ground. Even deer break twigs and branches when they move through the woods, but they don’t go crashing through the woods like a bull in a china shop the way most humans do, unless they have been frightened.
So you don’t have to be completely silent, but the noise you make should sound like the normal background noises already present in the woods. That means all sounds, not just the way you walk. Pay attention to all the sounds you make. No metal objects rattling in your pockets, nothing clinking or clanging in your backpack, and no footwear slapping the soles of your feet with every step, they are sure to warn animals of your approach.
And before I forget, one other thing before I get back to sounds, and that is pay attention to any un-natural glares that may be coming from your equipment. I find that the screens of both my GPS unit and my camera could both be used as a signaling mirror in an emergency. I make sure to carry both of them in such a way that the glare from the screens don’t signal wildlife that I am coming.
Watch animals in the woods, they don’t go walking along non-stop, they take a few steps, stop, look and listen, then take a few more steps, and stop again. Do the same thing, and you’ll sound like a critter, not a human. Walk as softly as you can, stop every few steps, look, listen, repeat, you’ll see a lot more wildlife that way.
The other trick I use is to go where humans usually don’t. We’re a fairly predictable species, the animals know where we humans go when we’re in the woods, and that is most people stick to areas easy to walk. I take the game trails through the thicker cover in an area, not the really thick stuff that is hard to get through without making so much noise that the deer all know I’m coming. I stick to edges, between where most humans walk, and the thickest of cover, and it seems to take animals by surprise.
Whitetail doe
Not great, but I caught her chewing, she heard the auto-focus of my camera going, which is what alerted her to my being there. Here’s her fawn.
Whitetail fawn
And the two of them moving off.
Whitetail doe and fawn
My being in a place where deer or other animals don’t expect me to be is one of the reasons I get the photos that I do.
Another trick, don’t look like a human. I shot those while kneeling on one knee so I didn’t present the human form as deer know it. Animals know humans as the two-legged beasts that walk upright, change that appearance, and they are not quite so sure that you are a human.
The doe trotted across the small field next to where we were.
Whitetail doe
Then waited for her fawn to cross.
Whitetail doe
Which it did.
Whitetail fawn
They joined up.
Whitetail doe and fawn
And walked into the brush together.
White tail doe and fawn
That reminds me, another tip. If you can, stay still, but like in the series above, I had to move to get all those photos. If you have to move, don’t go all stealthy, like a cat does. Animals know the typical stalking behavior of predators, mimic it, and your subject will be gone before you get any photos. Watch animals of different species interact, like squirrels and deer for example. They will each be watching the other, but they go about their regular business as they do so. Move towards animals, especially as if you’re stalking them, and they will flee. If you do move, walk parallel to them, or even away from them a little. Act like you are just another critter in the woods, not a human or other predator. That also means no quick movements either, quick movements are signs of a predator making an attack. Move slowly, but naturally.
Sometimes, no matter how careful you are, it is just a bad situation, and there’s not a lot you can do. That’s the way it was for this next photo, The buck and I came face to face at a curve in the trail, the brush growing on the inside of the curve blocked our view of one another until we were very close together.
Whitetail buck
The fence in the picture is there to try to keep the deer off from the golf course next to where I was, these weren’t taken in a deer ranch or similar place, they were taken in a public park.
Anyway, the buck and I met, he turned, I didn’t even have a clear view of him while I was standing. I dropped to one knee to shoot under the tree in the foreground, and managed a picture, even if it isn’t a good one. I didn’t even have time to zoom.
Is it a great picture? Nope, I wouldn’t even call it a good picture, but it was a great snapshot in hunting terms. A snapshot in hunting is shooting quickly, and I did that! There’s still a lot of hunter left in me. If I did still hunt with a gun, I would be stopping at the store tonight for some parsnips to make venison stew with.
There’s another reason to shoot quickly when the occasion calls for it, to stay in practice. To be good at anything requires practice, and lots of it. Because I take so many photos, I don’t have to think about where the controls on my cameras are, it is second nature to me. Because I constantly practice approaching animals closely, it is second nature to me. Heck, I even play games with animals I have no intention of photographing.
The other night at work, I noticed a cat sneaking around the building as I was getting ready to walk out the door. I have to admit, I get some kind of sick pleasure out of sneaking up on cats while they are hunting, and scaring the bejeebers out of them. For one thing, it is hard to do, and for another, cats seem to be the most prideful animals other than man. We both need to be put in our place from time to time.
Anyway, I slipped out the door, and snuck up to about ten feet behind the cat, clapped my hands and yelled “Boo” at the same time. I had a good laugh as it jumped, saw me, and took off like a shot.
I guess I am like a kid that never grew up, one that still likes to play hide and seek, but rather than play it with people, I play it with animals. I play it all the time with the turkeys that live around my apartment. Now there’s a wary and worthy adversary! Turkeys are tough to sneak up on at any time. I can find no chink in their armor, they have excellent vision and hearing, and a very good sense of smell. They are always on guard, and show none of the curiosity that deer display.
From what I can tell, deer are nearly blind, you don’t have to do much to hide from the vision of a deer. As long as they can’t see you as a the two-legged beast that walks upright, they rely on their senses of hearing and smell to identify you. If you’re quiet and downwind from them, they will approach you to identify what you are. That, and deer are mule-headed, they make up their mind that they are going to feed in a certain spot, or travel a particular trail, it takes a lot to change their mind. Even if you scare them away, they will often circle, and come back as soon as they think you are gone.
So after I had spooked the buck in the picture above, I went a short way and sat down in a clump of grass, hoping it would come back. I never saw him again, but only a few minutes later, this doe appeared, coming from the other direction.
Whitetail doe
The grey in the picture is from my shooting through the grass I was sitting in. Behind her, was her fawn.
Whitetail fawn
Then another.
Whitetail doe and fawns
They could hear the auto-focus and shutter of my camera, but they couldn’t identify those sounds as human sounds. I thought that I was in a bad spot, with six eyes looking at me, six ears listening for me, and six nostrils trying to catch my scent. Actually, there were even more, because what I wasn’t seeing was another doe and her fawn just off to the side. But sitting in a spot humans don’t normally go, not looking or sounding human was enough, the deer kept coming, trying to catch me doing something human.
Deer have a couple of tricks they use to help them identify what they are not sure of. One is to stomp the ground with their forelegs. I am not sure why, other than to frighten off other animals so they can identify them. But, when you’re around when the deer are doing that, it drives home the point of walking softly. Not only can you hear their hooves hit the ground, you can feel it as well.
Another trick is to drop their heads down out of view, then raise back up quickly trying to catch you moving. That, and snorting by expelling the air in their lungs quickly. If you ignore all those things and remain still, they will eventually move closer.
Whitetail doe
That’s the first doe stepping into the clearing, she made one short lunge forward, and then walked up the hill.
Whitetail doe
Whitetail doe
Followed by her first fawn.
Whitetail fawn
While I was taking this next shot, the second of her fawns came out of the woods as well, but I missed it while shooting this one.
Whitetail fawn
Then the second doe entered the clearing.
Whitetail doe
She doesn’t look very healthy for a late summer deer.
Whitetail doe
And she was followed by her fawn.
Whitetail fawn
Who had to stop for a bite to eat on its way.
Whitetail fawn
And then went to join its mother.
Whitetail fawn
It hasn’t learned to avoid the sticktites yet. I thought that this would be my last shot of them as they disappeared over the hill.
Whitetail deer
But they stopped.
Whitetail deer
And began to try and identify what I was all over again.
Whitetail fawns
I think it was both that they were curious, and that they wanted to feed right where I was sitting.
Whitetail fawns
The fawn on the right must have thought that last mouthful was pretty tasty, because they started coming back towards me.
Whitetail fawns
But they didn’t let their guard down.
Whitetail fawn
I was mostly interested in the fawns, but their mothers were still there as well.
Whitetail doe
All five of them were milling about on the top of the hill.
Whitetail deer
That’s a terrible shot, I cut mom’s head off trying to get a good picture of the fawn covered in sticktites.
Whitetail fawn
The second doe looks way too thin for this time of year.
Whitetail doe
And I had figured out they want to feed where I was sitting, so I stood up.
Whitetail deer
Said to them “Thanks girls.”
Whitetail doe and fawns
and went on my way, which confused the heck out of them, partially because I had them in a bad spot. I was still between them and cover, they weren’t quite sure which way to run. I got this last one of the last fawn as it went back into the brush.
Whitetail fawn
So that was an evening of deer hunting with a camera. I hope you have enjoyed the photos as much as I enjoyed taking them, and thanks for stopping by.
Stalking the stalker
I know, I used that line about the great blue heron photos from The Big (photo) Dump, the birds, but I like it so I am re-using it for this post. In today’s post, the quarry was a little green heron, but I warmed up on this bird first, a mourning dove.
Mourning dove
Not bad, but I can get closer.
Mourning dove
Not bad, a mourning dove portrait from around 10 feet away.
On to the little green heron. I first saw it on the other side of a local pond. Not only was it too far away for really good shots, but the light was all wrong, as you can see.
Little green heron
But my motto is shoot a few anyway, you may not get a better chance. I wanted a better shot though, so I backed away from the pond and circled it, having noted some landmarks on the other side to go by to help me sneak up on the heron once I had gotten around to the other side. Sure enough, there it was.
Little green heron
Still not great, but I shot a couple more so I would have something.
Little green heron
Still too many weeds in the way, it seemed to be trying to keep weeds between us, as if I couldn’t see it through the sparse weeds.
Little green heron
This won’t do. I noted which way it seemed to be heading as it was hunting, and looking around the pond, I saw some cattails further down that I could hide behind, and let the heron come to me. So I backed away, and crawled into the cattails with just my head sticking out, and camera, of course.
Little green heron
It wasn’t quite as close, but at least it was going about its business and not watching me.
Little green heron
I could tell it was stalking something in the water by slow it was moving, and how low it was squatting down.
Little green heron
You can see that its belly is almost touching the ground, it must be getting close to what it is stalking.
Little green heron catching a fish
I can’t believe I got a picture at the moment of the strike, what luck!
The heron turned and ran up the shore a little way.
Little green heron with a fish
I suppose they run up the shore so if they drop the fish while they are positioning it to eat it, the fish won’t be able to swim away.
Little green heron with a fish
They swallow their prey whole, headfirst. The heron was working the fish around in its bill so it could swallow it.
Little green heron swallowing a fish
As it was swallowing the fish, it noticed me, and turned and headed the other way.
Little green heron
Of course I would have liked to have been closer, but I find little green herons to be very shy or skittish most of the time, so I don’t think these are too bad at all.
The Big (photo) Dump, the wildflowers
OK, I have saved the best for last, the flowers. Mostly wildflowers, although I think a few are “escapees” from cultivation in previous years. Not all the photos are great, but they’re good enough for me to post here. Actually, the first one isn’t a photo of a flower, it is of the seed clusters of Virgin’s Bower after it blooms.
The seed clusters from Virgin's Bower after it blooms.
I wish I had a better photo, the seed clusters are almost as pretty as the flowers. That one was taken just before dark while I was looking for elk.
Calico aster?
I can’t identify most of these, if you can, I would appreciate the help!
Thistle
Any help at all.
White wildflowers
How did that butterfly get in there, it belongs in the bug post.
fringed gentian
I think these are fringed gentian, I found them while walking along in a coastal marsh while checking to see if I could put my kayak in there.
fringed gentian
The coastal marshes I found along Lake Huron were full of these.
fringed gentian
And these.
Blue wetlands wildflowers
These were found growing along side of the roads back in the woods in several places.
Purple wildflowers
Another.
Purple wildflowers
The first photo was taken with my Nikon, the second with my Canon.
Small yellow wildflowers
Another.
Small yellow wildflower
And these purple flowers grow all over.
Small purple wildflowers
Are they purple? Or are they blue?
These are hostas that have escaped.
Hosta
Another
Hosta
This is a water lily.
Water lily
And there are several species of yellow wildflowers growing near the creeks here.
Yellow wildflower
I assume they are related to daisy’s and black eyed susans, but I am not positive.
Yellow wildflower
And another.
Yellow wildflower
One more.
Yellow wildflower
If I had seen the bee flying into the frame, I would have gotten all of it, drat!
Then there are these tiny blue flowers.
Blue wildflowers
Then we have these snapdragons that are escapees as well.
Pink snapdragons
Another.
Pink snapdragons
And again.
Pink snapdragons
Well, that’s it! I have cleaned out my working folder now, and I am ready to start adding new pictures to it as I go walking everyday. As always, thanks for stopping by!
The Big (photo) Dump, Cold-blooded Critters
Another post that may not be for every one, this one will be photos of snakes, turtles, and a frog, but since most people think Kermit the Frog is cute, I’ll start with one of his distant relatives, this bullfrog. After that, it will get worse if you’re not into cold-blooded critters.
Bullfrog
Just in case you haven’t been able to switch pages quickly enough, the next one will be of a Painted Turtle.
Painted Turtle
Another one.
Painted Turtle
A view from farther back.
Painted Turtle
You were warned! Here come the snakes!
Common Garter Snake
This is another Common Garter Snake.
Common Garter Snake
This was the most aggressive garter snake I have ever run into. It struck towards me before I even got close to it, good thing my camera zooms in.
Common Garter Snake
It really zooms in.
Common Garter Snake
Then there was this one.
Fox Squirrel
I know, that’s not a snake, I had to put one warm and fuzzy picture in here. Thanks for stopping by, until next time.
The Big (photo) Dump, the odds and ends.
As I continue to clean out my working folder of photos I have taken the past few weeks, I have these left. They don’t really fit into any category, so I’ll throw them all out there in this post. First up, the seed pod from a day lily.
Day lily seed pod
Then there are these acorn like nuts that I haven’t bothered to look up, as it was the lighting and shadows that caught my eye, not the nuts themselves.
Shadows
Next is some moss taken at close range.
moss
Then some berries.
Vivid Red Berries
And my trying to get artsy,
Dew on vivid red berries
I’ll have to work on the artsy thing some more. Good idea, bad execution.
A couple of maple leaves that turned color and fell early.
Maple leaf
Another.
Maple leaf
This is a fungus on the forest floor.
Fungus
And some grass flowers.
Grass flower
Another.
Grass flower
And to finish up, these grass seed heads.
Grass seed heads
Oops, almost forgot. The remnants of Tropical Storm Lee working its way into Michigan.
The remnants of Tropical Storm Lee
That’s it for this one. Just a couple more to go, and they’ll be better, I hope. Thanks for stopping by!
The Big (photo) Dump, the bugs
I am continuing to clean out the folder I have of photos that I have taken the past few weeks on my hikes, either around home or while I was in the Pigeon River Country over Labor Day weekend. This one will be all insects, so if you’re squeamish about bugs, please move on to the next one. 😉
I’ll start with a dragonfly, nothing special, but I did line up an orange flower in the background so it showed through the dragonfly’s wing.
Dragonfly
Then a butterfly that perched on my kayak rack.
Butterfly
And a bad shot of a beautiful butterfly on virgin’s Bower.
Bad shot of a beautiful butterfly
I really wanted a better shot of this one, but it didn’t stick around. So here are a few of a preying mantis that “attacked” me one night.
Preying mantis
It was huge, the largest I’ve ever seen I think.
Preying mantis
I wasn’t hiking when I took these, it was as I was coming home from work and just happened to have a camera with me.
Preying mantis
It was hard to see in the dark until the flash fired.
Preying mantis
Next up are three of a grey moth that I saw on the side of a maple tree.
Grey moth
The only reason I noticed it was because the color pattern of its wings were a mirror image of each other.
Grey moth
It shows up a little better in these last two.
Grey moth
Then there was this caterpillar.
A caterpillar with a lot going on.
With al the tufts and colors, it was hard finding the right angle to shoot it at.
A caterpillar with a lot going on.
One more.
A caterpillar with a lot going on.
Then it’s back to dragonflies, like this green one.
Green dragonfly
And this blue one.
Blue dragonfly with green eyes
And then this brown one, I love the way the colors play on its wings.
Brown dragonfly
How about a fuzzy orange caterpillar?
Fuzzy orange caterpillar
But where’s its head?
Fuzzy orange caterpillar
You can just make out its head in that one. Back to a dragonfly again.
Green dragonfly
They seem to come in a never-ending combination of colors.
Green dragonfly
And here we have a ….. I’m not sure what it is.
Beetles
Is it a flock of beetles?, no, that’s not it, gaggle of beetles?, no, that’s not it either, I guess you just call it a mass of beetles. Then there was this thing, I have no idea what it is, it looks like it escaped from the set of the old Star Trek TV show.
Strange green insect
It must have been from outer space, my camera would not focus in on it.
Strange green insect
It must have had its anti-focus force-field up.
I’ll finish up with a more normal caterpillar.
Fuzzy brown caterpillar
That’s it for the bugs, I can hear the large sigh of relief coming from a few of you out there. That reminds me, I need to say thanks to every one who takes the time to read these escapes from reality of mine.
The Big (photo) Dump, the leftovers
These are a few of the pictures I have leftover from my trip to the Pigeon River Country and beyond over the Labor Day weekend. I’ll start with a couple of the new Presque Isle lighthouse tower.
The new Presque Isle Lighthouse
It’s the tallest lighthouse on Lake Huron. I don’t know who the guy up there is, but it gives you some idea how big the tower is.
The new Presque Isle Lighthouse
I’ll bet it looks even taller from where he’s standing. 😉
Next up, a shot through the trees of the surrounding country taken while driving in the rain.
Pigeon River Country
The only reason I included it is that the small opening in the trees along the road is one of the few times you get any kind of sense of the scale of the place, and the hills. It isn’t rugged country, it is over 100 square miles of forested rolling hills cut by three deep and wide river valleys. The area is also peppered with sinkholes, some that fill with water, like Lost Lake.
Lost Lake in the Pigeon River Country
Darn trees again, blocking my view of the green water in the lake.
Lost Lake in the Pigeon River Country
Then there are the swamps and marshes. There is a difference between the two, swamps are flooded forests, and marshes are flooded fields. In the PRC, some of the marshes were at one time forests, until the beavers dammed small streams to create beaver ponds. The trees that were there have died from being flooded and underwater all the time, leaving a marsh like this one.
A marsh in the Pigeon River Country
Eventually the beaver pond fills in with sediment, the beavers move on, leaving the marsh to the wildflowers.
A marsh in the Pigeon River Country
Most of the flowers don’t show up well in these wide shots because the flowers are so small.
A marsh in the Pigeon River Country
But I hope that gives you some idea about the area and why I love it, swamps, marshes and all.
Osmun Lake in the Pigeon River Country
That’s Osmun Lake, one of several man-made lakes in the area from the logging days.
The 40 Mile Point Lighthouse
That’s the 40 Mile Point Lighthouse, it has been fully restored and is now a museum.
The wreck of the Joseph S. Fay
That’s the wreck of the Joseph S. Fay that you can find at the 40 Mile Point Lighthouse Park on the shores of Lake Huron.
Those are far from the end of the pictures I took that weekend, but I’ll be going back and getting better ones, so I will leave it where it is for now. Thanks for stopping by!
The Big (photo) Dump, The Birds
I have quite a few pictures saved that I have intended to post here that I haven’t gotten around to posting yet. I am going to do a number of posts of nothing but these photos so I can clear out the folder to make room for more. 🙂 They aren’t all great, but I think they are all interesting enough that some people will like them. I am going to start with photos of birds for this one, and I’ll kick things off with these pics of a young male cardinal.
A young male cardinal
He’s pretty shabby looking right now.
A young male cardinal
But by next year, he’ll look like his dad.
Male Cardinal
Then there are these taken as I was stalking the stalker, a great blue heron.
Great blue heron
It’s kind of hard to see.
Great blue heron
A little better after I zoomed out. I love it when I get so close I can zoom out.
Great blue heron
And finally, into the clear.
Great blue heron
Within five feet of a great blue heron, of course it didn’t stick around long. But here’s a distant cousin, a little green heron.
Little Green Heron
Getting lower….
Little Green Heron
And lower.
Little Green Heron
What ever it was stalking must have moved away, because the heron did too, but I got two more shots first.
Little Green Heron
That’s when it saw me.
Little Green Heron
And it was gone. Here’s a shot of the trumpeter swans I forgot to add to my previous post.
Trumpeter swans
Here’s one of a flock of Canadian Geese.
Canadian Geese
And to end it, a shot of a turkey vulture in flight.
Turkey Vulture
That’s it for the birds.
Pigeon River Country weekend, day three
I woke up on Monday morning stiff and sore all over, it was a struggle to crawl out of my sleeping bag and get dressed. I think some of it was from old age creeping up on me, but most of the stiffness and soreness was from having spent way too much time driving the day before. Maybe part of it was from the change in the weather as well, for with the rain the evening before, the cooler air had finally arrived. I forgot to mention that in my previous post, but then, I forgot to mention many things in my previous post.
Back in the late 1980’s, I had a boss tell me that I “was too results oriented”. I didn’t know what he meant back then, it is finally starting to sink in now. I started the previous post planning on going into more details about the places I stopped, and even adding some information about things I saw but didn’t stop for, like Grand Lake for example. It is a large lake, with several very good access sites, and it looked like a great place to spend a day, maybe two kayaking. There are many bays and islands to explore, even though there are quite a few homes around the lake.
That’s where good intentions run into my obsessions with results and efficiency, and that actually started to hit me Monday morning when I got up. Of course that didn’t stop me from falling back into the same old me when I started yesterday’s post.
As I was typing it, I realized that I was going to go back to every place I visited on Sunday, and that my descriptions from the Sunday scouting trip were going to be the same for every place I stopped. I got out of my explorer, did a quick walk around the place, shot a few pictures, then went to the next stop on my GPS unit. So if I am going to go into much more depth when I revisit these places, and spend enough time at each one to write an in-depth report on them, why bother doing a quickie on each one now?
Another place I didn’t mention in my previous post, the Rockport boat ramp. I assumed it would be just a boat ramp for access to Lake Huron, it is more like a park than an access site. There are picnic tables and lots of room to spread out there.
Rockport, Michigan access site
I didn’t shoot a picture of the park itself, just a few of the old docks, and the shoreline.
Lake Huron shore at the Rockport, Michigan access site
One could easily spend half a day, maybe an entire day, wandering along the beach, and eating a picnic lunch there at the park. My reason for stopping there is that the access site is the best place to put a kayak in to paddle out to Middle Island, which lies 2 miles off the shore where the access site is located. There is another historic lighthouse on Middle Island, that you can only reach by boat of kayak. After visiting the access site at Rockport, I think it is worth a visit in its own right, even if one doesn’t use it to reach the lighthouse.
So, back to Monday morning. I was pacing the campsite, trying to work all the kinks out as I was drinking my coffee, and re-running the previous day’s scouting excursion through my mind when I noticed waves on Round Lake. There was a cool breeze blowing, but Round Lake is so small and so sheltered that you seldom see wind generated waves on that lake. That meant something other than the wind had to be creating those waves, so I grabbed a camera to check it out.
Trumpeter swans
It turns out that the waves were from a pair of trumpeter swans that had landed on the lake!
Trumpeter swans are native to Michigan, and they are the largest native North American bird, if measured in terms of weight and length, and they are, on average, the largest living waterfowl species on earth.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the trumpeter swan was hunted heavily, both as game and a source of feathers. These birds once bred in North America from northwestern Indiana west to Oregon in the U.S., and in Canada from James Bay to the Yukon, and they migrated as far south as Texas and southern California. The trumpeter was rare or extinct in most of the United States by the early twentieth century. Many thousands survived in the core range in Canada and Alaska, however, where populations have since rebounded.
Early efforts to reintroduce this bird into other parts of its original range, and to introduce it elsewhere, have had only modest success, as suitable habitats have dwindled and the released birds do not undertake migrations. One impediment to the growth of the trumpeter swan population around the Great Lakes is the presence of a growing non-migratory Mute Swan population who compete for habitat.
You can tell trumpeters apart from the more common mute swans by the color of their bills and feet. Trumpeters have black bills and feet, whereas mute swans have orange bills and feet. The mute swans were brought here from Europe, after the Europeans had all but wiped out the trumpeters. In Michigan, the mute swans are now considered an invasive species, and the DNR is trying to control the number of mute swans so that the trumpeters can increase in numbers and re-occupy its traditional range. Here’s a photo of a pair of mute swans and their young, you can clearly see their orange bills.
Mute swans
The two trumpeters on Monday were giving me fits. They weren’t all that shy as far as me being there was concerned, but they seemed to go out of their way to avoid being in direct sunlight. I never did get a great picture of them, just some good photos.
Trumpeter swans
They seemed to be teasing me.
Trumpeter swan
These shots would have been so much better if the swans had been in the sunlight rather than the shade!
Trumpeter swans
I needed another cup of coffee by then, and I thought that as the sun climbed higher in the sky, it may burn off some of the clouds and throw more light on the swans.
As I was drinking my second cup, one of the guys from the campsite next to mine walked by, and I pointed out the swans to him. He thanked me, grabbed his camera, and went to the end of the lake where the swans were then. On his way back to his site, he stopped by to chat, and that started what turned out to be a long conversation.
We started exchanging Pigeon River Country stories, turns out his name is Ryan, and like myself, he began going to the PRC as a kid with his family, fell in love with the PRC, and continues to return as often as he can. Somewhere in there, the swans took flight and made a couple of laps around the lake.
Trumpeter swans in flight
Beautiful birds!
Ryan and I went back to our conversation, and soon we were joined by his friends, Meagan and Andy. That was actually the first of a couple of long conversations over the course of the day, they are three of the nicest people I have ever met. I hope to run into them again someday.
Talking to them reminded me of the past, when I would be camping there with other people, mostly Spud, but there were others as well. I began thinking about how it all fit together, the way that I am always on the go when I am up there, the way that I camp, how I had jammed too much driving into the previous day, and how I couldn’t just sit down and relax and enjoy the peace and quiet. Maybe I am one of those people who needs some one else along to make me slow down.
I almost didn’t take my tent with me for this trip, to save the time it takes to set up camp, then to pack it all back up again at the end of a trip. “Too results oriented”, I am beginning to understand what you meant, Dick, finally.
Even as I was thinking about it, I couldn’t sit still. I was either pacing the campsite or taking short walks on the roads to the campground. Maybe some of that is because of my job. Often, when people offer me a seat, I tell them, “No thanks, I sit for a living”. That about sums up a truck driver’s job, sitting behind the wheel of a truck for a paycheck. But that doesn’t explain why I used to do about the same things as I do now long before I became a truck driver. I have always been on the go, and have always camped as light as I could so I would have more time to be on the go.
You may have the mental image of me as one of those people who is always going 100 MPH in every thing I do, that’s not the case either. I may be on the go, but slow. That’s why I noticed the things other people pass by without seeing or hearing. In fact, most people who I hike or kayak with go at a much faster pace than I do. Larri used to say I dawdled, I think she just liked using the word dawdle 😉 , but I do go slow. I am like the tortoise in the story the story of the tortoise and the hare. I may not move fast, but I am always moving, well, except for while I am shooting photos or examining something in depth.
One of the things people would have heard often when Spud and I were out in the woods or fishing would have been “Whacha looking at?” We were both easily amused, and it didn’t take much for either one of us to stop and examine something closely, like a bird, a flower, a rock, a tree, a cloud, you name it. When we noticed the other had stopped, that was the standard question, “whacha looking at?”, and then we would most likely examine it together and discus it.
There is an upside to going as slow as I do, when every one else is worn out and ready to call it a day, I am still ready to keep going. In that way, I am like the Energizer Bunny, I keep going, and going, but at a tortoise’s pace. That’s the problem, I do keep going, and going. I don’t need some one to slow me down, I am slow already, I need some one to make me stop!
So, is there a point to all this rambling? I hope so. First of all, I have to apologize for the quality of my last post, it is not what it should have been. I rushed it to get on to the next project, and parts of me feel I should re-do it, but I know the same thing would happen again. It will get re-done in a way anyhow, when I put together the pages for exploring the Lake Huron shoreline. I know I have promised in the past not to rush posts, and I should know better than to make promises I can’t keep. So this time I am going to promise to try not to rush posts.
Secondly, it was so great chatting with the Terrific Trio, my new nickname for Ryan, Andy, and Meagan. Talking to them has convinced me that I have taken this solo thing too far, and that I would love to sit around a campfire and swap stories with some one else. Heck, I don’t even have campfires when I go solo, and what is camping without a campfire?
I am going to buy one of those folding camp chairs and have campfires again, maybe even roast some hot dogs, and look for some one to share them with. I am not going to be able to see all there is to see in Michigan in one day, no matter how hard I try, so I need to stop trying. Here’s a map from my Sunday scouting trip, you can click on it for a larger view. The green pins are places I stopped, the red ones are places I haven’t been to yet.
Click for a larger view
And even after all that, I stopped at two places trying to see elk, and several spots that were so cool that I wish I would have had more time that day to even note them on my GPS unit.
I sure covered a lot of ground that day, but it was worth it in a way. I gathered some good information about the places I want to go back to, and a saw a lot of beautiful things.
Wildflowers blooming in a marsh
And these.
Yellow wildflower
But, I am never going to do that again, at least I hope not. I don’t want to wake up the next day in the same shape as I did on Monday!
If I hadn’t been in such bad shape on Monday, I would have never met the Terrific Trio, or realized what I am missing out on doing things the way that I have been. It pays to sit still now and then, I am going to have to do it more often.
Pigeon River Country weekend, day two
I have no idea what time I woke up on Sunday, except it was already light out when I woke up. Between the heat, the distant thunder, and the fact that I’m getting too old to sleep on just a foam pad, I hadn’t slept that well. The rain from the night before had ended, and there was some mixed clouds and sun. Here’s the view from my tent that I was treated with when I got up that morning.
The view from my tent
I fired up the stove to brew coffee, and started to plan my day. I wanted to take advantage of the sunshine for photography purposes, and there was already a good breeze blowing, which meant that fly fishing could be tough. Besides trying to get a good photo of a bull elk, my other goal for the weekend was to check some of the places along the Lake Huron shore for some future trips I am planning. What tipped the scale was the sunshine. I won’t say that I am tired of the flower and insect pictures I have been taking around home, but I really wanted to take some scenery pictures for a change.
Since I have never seen the Ocqueoc Falls, and they are only a few miles north of the Pigeon River country, I decided that the falls would be where I headed to first. If I headed north on Osmun Road, I could also stop at Inspiration Point and get some pictures there in some good light for a change. After that I would go to the closest point that I had marked on my GPS unit, and continue on from there.
So after finishing my coffee, I headed for Inspiration Point, one of the highest points in the Pigeon River country. It is also one of the few places that isn’t completely forested, so you have a great view of the area.
The view from Inspiration Point
That’s looking west, and the water that you can just barely make out is the Cornwall Flooding. Here’s the view to the south.
The view to the south from Inspiration Point
This is looking to the west again, zoomed in on the Cornwall Flooding and several bright white birch trees near it.
The view from Inspiration Point.
It is only a quarter of a mile walk from the road to the top of Inspiration Point, through what I believe is an old orchard. There are dozens of old stunted apple trees, a few cherry trees, and many crab apple trees along the path. Mid-May is a great time to go there when the fruit trees are in bloom. Since this was Labor Day weekend, the trees weren’t blooming, but the wildflowers along the path made up for that.
Wildflower
That’s just one of thousands, I don’t have room to post all the wildflower pictures I took along the path, as I have so many great photos from the day to try to fit in this post, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
I started north again, and decided that since I was going right past Osmun Lake, I would stop to see if the loons that live on the lake were within range of my camera. I didn’t see the loons, but I did see a butterfly that I tried to get good photos of, but it would not turn the right way for me, and eventually it flew off. I turned around, looked down, and saw that I was nearly standing on a northern water snake! As soon as I began to lift the camera, it took off swimming, under water.
Northern water snake
Now that’s some clear water! That’s what I love about the Pigeon River Country, it seems so pure and unspoiled by humans, it is hard to believe that just over 100 years ago it was a burned over desert of sorts. Some people find it boring, since it isn’t developed at all except for a few campgrounds, and it is mostly heavily forested. There are few grand vistas like the one from the top of Inspiration Point, 99% of the time, you are in the woods. It is a subtle area, you have to love forests, in all their many types. You will catch glimpses through the trees of deep, wide valleys and distant high hills, but you have to use your imagination to pull those glimpses together to form a mental picture of the terrain.
I was going to go on at length about the Pigeon River Country, but I am going to save that for the post about the third day of this three-day weekend.
From Osmun Lake, which is on the northern edge of the PRC, it is only a 20 mile drive to Ocqueoc Falls, the Bicentennial Pathway, and a state forest campground. The route to the falls is well signed, maybe too well. The place was jammed with vehicles and people, and there was no room left for me to park. The Bicentennial Pathway to the falls was closed for repairs, but that wasn’t stopping people, some were using the trail, some were wading the river to get to the falls, even though the DNR had tried roping off the river trying to prevent people from doing so. The campground is nice, somewhat developed, not like Round Lake, and it was about full.
I didn’t want to fight the crowd, there was no place left to park anyway, so I edited the info about the falls and campground in my GPS unit, then looked for the next closest spot I had marked. Surprisingly, it turned out to be 40 Mile Point Lighthouse and the park there. I took N. Ocqueoc Road north from the falls, and as soon as I came to the junction of that road and US 23, I saw a sign for an access site at the mouth of the Ocqueoc River where it enters Lake Huron.
The Ocqueoc River flowing into Lake Huron
That wasn’t marked on my maps, it is now! It will make a great spot for kayaking, either the river or Lake Huron. My next stop was a scenic overlook on US 23.
Lake Huron
There were several scenic turnouts on US 23 on my way to 40 Mile Point Lighthouse, but I don’t have room for all the photos I took. I also found an unimproved access site on Lake Huron that would be OK for kayaking at Hammond Bay, right next to the federal Hammond Bay Biological Research Station there on Hammond Bay. The research station is dedicated to lamprey control, they give tours there, maybe someday I’ll stop by again and check it out.
I arrived at the 40 Mile Lighthouse Park.
40 Mile Point Lighthouse
This is a cool park! I just did a quick walk around since I was going to try to hit as many places as I could, and this park was somewhat crowded as well. They have a lot of stuff there at the park, including the wheelhouse from the Calcite, one of the old “Lakers” that used to ply the Great Lakes.
Inside the wheelhouse of the Calcite
That’s the only structure I went into, I’ll save the rest for a future trip, and I’m sure there will be many. If you are into lighthouses, Great Lakes shipping history, or shipwrecks, you have to check this place out! That reminds me, there is the wreck of the Joseph S. Fay there at the park as well, a very short walk from the lighthouse.
The wreck of the Joseph S. Fay
OK, so there’s not a lot left of the wreck. There is enough to give you an idea how ships were constructed back in the day, and also a sense of how small those ships were back then. They weren’t like the 1,000 footers on the lakes today. Those were brave men who worked in all types of weather on small ships in big storms.
I edited the info in my GPS unit, and headed off to the next spot I had marked, which turned out to be the old Presque Isle Lighthouse.
The old Presque Isle Lighthouse
That is another very nice park, and once again, I just did a quick walk around, then it was off to the New Presque Isle Lighthouse.
The new Presque Isle Lighthouse
It is the tallest lighthouse on Lake Huron, and sits in another great little park. I did a quick walk around the outside of the buildings, then checked out several other of the park’s features, which you can find if you click the link above.
I found most of the information for this trip at one web site the US 23 Heritage Route. It is a fantastic source of information about almost everything there is to see or do in the counties along Lake Huron in northern Michigan. Most of the time these websites are all ads for local businesses, and there is some of that on that website, but it has surprised me how much information they have that appeals to some one like me as well. If you are at all interested in visiting the northeastern Michigan area, you should check it out.
I am leaving many of the things I found this day out of this post, simply because I could go on forever with what I saw. I went past several state parks that I am sure that I will visit in the future, like P. H. Hoeft and Thompson’s Harbor State Parks. Thompson’s Harbor really looks interesting, from what I saw, it is mostly coastal marshland. That may not sound appealing, but they are beautiful areas filled with wildflowers, many of which grow nowhere else in the world, like the dwarf lake iris. I didn’t find any of them, too late in the season, but when I was wandering around another coastal marsh later in the day, I did find these.
White wildflower in a coastal marsh
and these.
Blue wildflower in a coastal marsh
And if you have never seen a Great Lakes coastal marsh, here’s what one looks like.
Lake Huron coastal marsh
Those pictures were taken at Isaacson Bay, just outside of Alpena Michigan, which was my last stop on my trip, so I have sort of jumped ahead of myself here. Oh, I do have to go back to this photo though!
Red tailed hawk
I shot that photo through the sunroof of my explorer. The hawk heard the bird chirping sounds my camera makes when I turn it on, and the hawk thought that maybe I was bringing him supper, or wondering why I was chirping like a bird.
I am not going to write any more about the other things from this day trip right now, because I will be going back when I can spend more time at each of the places I checked quickly on this day. I did find a better access site to Misery Bay than I knew of before this trip, but I missed a couple of spots to check out somehow or another. Misery Bay is part of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, where there are over 200 shipwrecks, some of which can be seen from a kayak or while swimming. In addition, Misery Bay is a cool place to kayak in its own right, with many islands and marshes to explore. To top it off, there is also a giant karst sinkhole in the bay. So I will write more about all those places when I am able to spend more time there exploring them fully.
It was getting late in the afternoon by the time I got to Alpena, so it was time to head back to the PRC for the evening. I took the back way in, going through Atlanta, Michigan, and then north to Clear Lake State Park, and into the PRC from the southeast side, which I had never done before. Of course I found even more places I wanted to stop and wander around, but there wasn’t time, and the weather had turned somewhat nasty. It had been warm with a lot of sun all day, but then the wind picked up and was driving intermittent rain showers into the area. I shot this picture of a marsh as it was still raining, but the sun was also coming out from the clouds at the same time.
A marsh in the rain
I stopped at a couple of the fields the DNR plants that I had learned about from the couple on the ATV’s the night before. I walked back into one, found a nice tree to sit down against, and the rain started coming down hard again. I didn’t have a good way to protect my Nikon from the rain, other than tucking it under my rain jacket, so I walked back out, then drove to a spot where I could remain in my vehicle and see most of that field. No elk appeared at all. Note to myself, from now on, do two things, carry the case for the Nikon, and check the state’s hunting seasons! When I got home, I saw a news story that the early season elk hunt had ended on the Friday before Labor Day, and that the hunters had been very successful!
No wonder I wasn’t seeing very many elk or deer for that matter. The DNR doesn’t issue many elk permits, but any hunters at all are going to make the elk a lot more wary than they are to begin with. Oh well.
I went back to the campground, ate supper, and turned in for the night.
I have left out a lot of pictures I wish I could add, I may do a post of “leftovers” after I finish a post on the third day of the weekend, I haven’t decided yet. I know I spent too much time on the road this day, or did I? In some ways it seems like a wasted day, but on the other hand, now I have some solid information to go on when I do future trips along Lake Huron.
That’s one of the many things I was thinking about on the third day up there, so I will leave this where it is, and continue on in my next post.
Pigeon River Country weekend, day one
I got a late start, due to sleeping in later than I had planned, but still managed to make it to Round Lake State Forest campground at around 2:30 PM. I was quite surprised to see that the campground was almost full. I know that it was the Labor Day weekend, but last year, there were only a couple of people camping there over Labor Day. I guess the publicity about it almost being shut down this spring helped to bring more people to the campground. I did notice that most of the campers there were younger people, I’ll have a lot more to say about that later on, in my post about the third day up there.
It didn’t take me long to set up camp, but I did work up a pretty good sweat while I was doing so. Lesson one this weekend, despite computer models, radar, and satellites, weather forecasters today are less accurate than they used to be. What they forecast played out more or less, but at a completely different time frame than they forecast. I should know by now, going by forecasts has messed with my plans the last couple of years, time to go old school and bring clothes for all types of weather, then go with the flow.
Anyway, I sat at the picnic table to cool off, and enjoy the surroundings. Even with the campground near capacity, it was still quiet and peaceful, and the scent of pine, maples and oaks helped to rejuvenate me. That didn’t last long though, I was in the Pigeon River Country, and that meant there were places to go, things to see, photos to take, and fish to catch! I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t sit still and relax, I found myself pacing the campsite, so I went for a walk around the southern end of the lake, and down the cut-off from the High Country pathway for a way, then turned around and retraced my path back to my campsite.
Looking across Round Lake to my campsite
Here’s a closer look at my campsite, you can make out the picnic table and my tent.
My campsite on Round Lake
People sometimes ask me why I don’t go in for backpacking when I do so much hiking. There are several reasons. One is that the super lightweight gear for backpacking is too expensive for my budget, too many other things to spend money on, like more fishing gear. Another reason is that I have found that I miss way too many things if I go from point A to point B. I find that when I walk the same path backward, that it puts a completely different perspective on the trail, and I notice many things that I missed on my way down the trail the first time, even though I try to remember to look behind me often. When I do trails that loop, I do the loops in the opposite direction every time that I hike them, that way I get to see everything along the trail sooner or later.
When I got back to my campsite, I decided that since it was warm and muggy, it was a good afternoon to do some fly fishing. In weighing where to go, I kept in mind that one of my objectives for the weekend was pictures of a bull elk with a rack. What better place to try to catch fish and pictures of elk at the same time than the Black River at the Blue Lakes Road bridge? None that I could think of, so that’s where I went.
Technically, that isn’t in the Pigeon River Country, it is right on the edge. The land north of Blue Lakes Road is owned by the Black River Ranch, but no one has ever kicked me off the river when I fish there. I managed one small brookie, and one other hit while fishing on Saturday. I don’t know what I do wrong when I fish the Black. It looks like great trout water, the river has a reputation for big brook trout, but I have never done well fishing it.
While I was fishing, I was listening for the sound of bull elk bugling, but I never heard one. I did hear that there were suddenly a few cars driving down the road, which meant it was time for elk watching.
That’s one of the things you can rely on while in or near the Pigeon River Country, every evening, cars come out of nowhere with people driving slowly along the roads and two tracks looking for elk. I have learned that driving isn’t the best way to see elk, finding a spot where they are likely to feed in the evening, and waiting for them to show up is.
I went back to my explorer, put my fishing gear away, got out my cameras, and sat on the guard rail to the bridge to wait for the elk to show up, and they did.
Elk in the distance
There is a bull elk in that picture, but you can’t really tell, even if you click on it for a large view. As always, they came out of the woods just at dusk when the light was fading, and as always, they stayed in the back corner of the field about as far from the road as they can be.
Every so often a car full of people would drive up slowly, look at the elk for a few minutes, then continue on down the road. At some point, a couple about my age drove up on ATV’s, and we talked at length about places to see elk herds. Since ATV’s are not allowed in the Pigeon River Country proper, they stay on the edges on the southeast side of the PRC, the one area I have never explored fully. They told me of several places the DNR is doing plantings of fields of crops to attract the elk and deer that I wasn’t aware of. I know of a couple of fields planted by the DNR closer to where I normally stay, but I haven’t had great success at them, either. But, since I have heard that the elk herds are larger towards the southeast corner of the PRC, I think they may be worth checking out. In fact, I did, on my second day up there, I’ll get to that story in my next post.
As it was, the field where I was watching the elk was full of wildflowers, like this.
Wildflower
It was getting too dark for any photos, so it was time to head back to camp. I ate supper, then was sitting at the picnic table when this guy hopped up to me.
Bullfrog in camp
If I couldn’t get a photo of a bull elk, at least I could get one of a bullfrog. 🙂
I wasn’t really tired, since I had slept in so late in the morning, but I went in my tent and laid down on my sleeping bag anyway, hoping I would be able to sleep and get an early start in the morning. It was way too warm and humid to sleep though, and it wasn’t long after I laid down that the tent lit up from lightning, and then I heard the thunder off in the distance. I was hoping the storm would cool it off, but the storm missed us for the most part, all we got at the campground was rain.
I eventually drifted off to sleep, and at some point during the night, it cooled off enough that I crawled into my sleeping bag rather than on it.
There is still hope
I just got back from my Labor Day weekend in the Pigeon River Country. I don’t have the time to do a full post about it right now, I am sorting through the nearly 500 pictures I took this weekend. But, I met three of the nicest people I have ever met this weekend. I was going to say the nicest young people, but that would make me sound like an old codger, and I am not quite ready for codgerhood, yet.
I was up early this morning, drinking my coffee, when I noticed waves on Round Lake. Huh? Waves on Round Lake? It is so small and sheltered that there are seldom any more than ripples on the water from the wind, I had to check out where the waves are coming from. They were coming from a pair of trumpeter swans that had landed on Round Lake!
Trumpeter swans
I chased them around the lake for a little while until I had a few fair pictures taken in the early morning light, and I went back to my coffee to let them relax and enjoy their breakfast, while I finished my coffee.
About that time, one of the people staying in the campsite next to mine walked by, so I pointed the swans out to him. He took some photos as well, then as he was returning to his campsite, the two of us started talking, first about the swans and how rare they were in Michigan, and then one thing led to another. We introduced ourselves to each other, his name is Ryan and the conversation continued. Soon, his friends Meagan and Andy joined us and our conversation.
A couple of things struck me about them, they are all very intelligent, all very well spoken, all very soft-spoken, all love nature, and we all share a love of the Pigeon River Country. I told them about my blog, and I hope that they do read it. The best part of talking to them is that I learned from them, not just about nature and places to go, but they also made me realize a couple of other things as well. One is that I spend too much time on the go up there, which I’ll explain when I do the full length post on this weekend, but also that maybe always going it alone isn’t so great after all. So, Ryan, Andy, or Meagan, if any or all of you read this, I would go camping, hiking, or kayaking with any of any of you, any time. That may not mean much to you guys, but it isn’t often I meet any one that I would make the same offer to. I am pretty darned particular who I spend my outdoor time with, very few people qualify, but all three of you do.
I know you won’t take me up on that, I probably seem like a weird old codger to you, that’s OK, I understand completely. I have been losing faith in the entire human race these last few years, meeting you guys renewed my spirits more than you know. I always enjoy my time outdoors, but it seems as if I have been running into more than my fair share of jerks lately, from drunken mushroomers, campers who party all night, slobs who think it is their duty to kill anything that has hair, and, well, you guys know what I mean. Thank you for proving that not every one is like that, and that there are people who do love nature for nature’s sake.
Heading to the Pigeon River Country this weekend!
Well, all my scrimping and saving has paid off! It will be tight, but I have enough money so that I will be able to go camping in the Pigeon River Country this Labor Day weekend!
I have two major goals for this weekend, one is good pictures of Michigan elk with antlers, and the other, if money allows, is to check out a few places for later trips along the Lake Huron shoreline. On my trip last year, I saw male elk with racks, but they were either too far away, or it was too dark for good photos. But, I did get to hear them bugling! Now there’s a sound you never forget! I have photos of western elk with racks, but for all the times I have been to the Pigeon River Country, no “native” elk.
Of course I’ll do some fly fishing, at least for a few hours or so. The weather is supposed to be crappy according to the forecasts, a strong cold front is going to move across the area sometime on Saturday, and cool us off from the 90’s to the 60’s. I’ll love the 60’s, maybe even some frost at night, but I’m sure it will turn the trout off. Oh well, I don’t fish to catch fish anyway. That kind of change in the weather always affects the fish, and it will mean scattered showers over the weekend as well. It may not be great for photography either, but I am going to be enjoying myself no matter what the weather brings.
I don’t have much time to write more about my trip, I’m taking a break from packing as it is. But one other note as well, when I get back, I will be cancelling my Internet service, or I should say non-service. I have Verizon wireless Internet service, and it is the pits. It is terribly slow and unreliable, and when I complain, they give me updated hardware and software that works great for a short time, then it is back to the same old, same old. I have had it with paying for products and services that do not perform, and I’m going to go to another Internet provider, but there will likely be a gap as far as a time when I don’t have service at home. I do have access to a couple of wi-fi networks at times, I will be writing my posts ahead of time, then posting them when I can get to one of the wi-fi networks. I may not be able to post as often for a while, but that may give me more time for writing and photography until I do get hooked back up to the web!
I will be doing a long post, or maybe several short posts about this weekend when I get back, if I get back. I may run out of gas money and have to stay up there, no wouldn’t that be a shame?
Oh, and I’ll throw in a picture just so it looks good on Facebook and twitter.
Green and brown dragonfly
OK, I’ll make it two for those of you not into bugs.
Hostas in bloom
Until next week, bye.
Quiet Solo Pursuits 