PeterLab

Bird Identifying

On the second time we went tracking with D T-T, it was kind of hard to walk in the snow because it was up to just below my knees out by the shore. Also it was a little windy and so they weren't very good conditions for going outside that day. I had to rest a lot.

The birds were not so close to shore, but we saw a number of different kinds: there seem to have been Common Mergansers and Mallards, and also Pied Billed Grebes. We looked them up in National Geographic Complete Birds of North America. We also saw a bald eagle fly out towards the bay from somewhere over near the marina.

Some of the birds were diving under water, maybe to catch fish.

The ice in the lake sounded like glass bottles clinking together. It is called brash ice.

How to list species sightings with Audubon Guides Online

We were looking at the Audubon site , when we noticed a cool new feature: You can report your own wildlife sightings!!!

First you go to the main audubonguides.com page and click on Online Guides. The Sightings button is on the left directly below the Home button. Click on  that.

Then you have to make an account and log in. And then you can start reporting sightings which go into a searchable database with everbody else's sightings.

Birds observed through the window on a very cold morning

This morning, when we got up it was very cold, only 1 degree F, which is 31 degrees below freezing. There was white crystal ice on all the trees. After the sun came up, it was still very foggy outside but there seemed to be a lot of birds flitting in and out of the fog.

When the fog cleared away a bit, we noticed  that there seemed to be a current of warmer water (by which we mean warmer than the surrounding lake water) at the mouth of Hoisington Book, and any where else on the water there was a thin layer of ice. 

The kinds of birds we observed include:

• gulls (hundreds of them)
• loons
• crows
• chickadees
• geese
• ducks
• sparrows

Gulls (notice that some of the gulls out there on the water are standing up):

Loons: UPDATE: After looking more at the guides we think those were mergansers.

closeup:

Crow:

Canada geese:

We just discovered that we can report these bird sightings on the Audubon Society website.

Tracking #1

[MAP]

On Tuesday, we went to the shoreline down by Hoisington Brook near the beaver lodges with D T-T, and we saw lots of tracks in the snow, including

• grey squirrel tracks
• red fox tracks and urine marker
• unidentified small bird tracks 
• great blue heron tracks

We saw a great blue heron and many ducks.

Fox tracks:

Grey squirrel tracks

Bird tracks crossing fox tracks:

 

Great blue heron tracks and my footprints

We didn't see any beaver tracks, but we did see small trees that has been gnawed by beavers.

While we were out we took sediment and water samples to try to breed copepods with.

We checked the tracks against the listing in Scats and Tracks of the Northeast: A Field Guide to the Signs of Seventy Wildlife Species by James C. Halfpenny and Jim Bruchac.

Today, after the snow storm, we went out for a walk and looked for animal tracks in the same area. The fox didn't seem to have been around, but there were definitely a lot of gull tracks at the mouth of Hoisington Brook.

We didn't see any heron tracks, but we did see the heron.

I think the same one has lived down there for years. I wrote a poem about the heron that hangs out at the mouth of the brook a few years ago.

First observations

I. In Mrs. Loher's room I looked through the microscope at some of the water from the tank with the water bug. At first I had the microscope focused so I could see the cells of the duckweed which looked like -- instead of being squares -- they looked like circles. And then I noticed that whatever the little creatures were in the water, they could somehow move around through what looked like jet propulsion and had small little tails. I could faintly see what looked like their internal organs, but it was kind of hard.

II. There are two beaver lodges by my house. One is right by the mouth of Hoisington Brook, and the other is in a swamp out back of and old red house near us. We can see the one by the brook from our living room.  The one by the brook washes away sometimes when the brook gets too strong. Last spring I saw one of the beavers probably from the swamp over by the marina. I have also seen muskrats and minks and many other creatures near the marina.

Beaver lodge #1 (MAP)

 

Beaver lodge #2 (MAP)