Saginaw Bay

I know, I said I'd write next about the Anderson Trail, but when I looked through the photos, well, there aren't many. The woods were really uninteresting. There had been a recent controlled burn in part of it, and the rest had been burned in the recent past. I don't know what the condition of these woods was before but there were very few plants or flowers growing anywhere. I was glad that we rode the trail rather than walked it because we got through it much faster. Four miles of nothing much to look at would have been a real drag.

So we will jump to the next morning. We walked down to the beach in the morning sun only to find a phragmities choked shoreline caked in dried algae and smelling vaguely noxious and the sky colored yellow from the industry down the coast. Come to find out that the mess on the beach was contaminated with E-coli and it was recommended that anyone with cuts or open sores not even go out there. Ugh.

Anyway, the birds can't read signs and this is where they live, so this is where we went. There were a few places that were still open to the water. Here a Canada goose pair and a blue-winged teal are nesting.

There were red-winged blackbirds galore, but I was looking for smaller birds, hoping for one or two new to me. I cannot honestly say whether or not I've ever seen this bird before, but I had certainly never identified a swamp sparrow before.

Not too far down the beach I spotted another sparrow. I could tell this one was different thanks to the stripes and spot on the chest. Pretty sure this is a song sparrow.

Another shot of a song sparrow chasing bugs on the ground.

Birding, I have found, is much like a treasure hunt. Once you become interested, and start taking note of who you've seen, the doors open up to a seemingly endless number of birds to be discovered. I think there are over 900 bird species in North America, so as a new birder (and probably one who's been doing it a while) every new place you visit is an opportunity to spot a new (to you) bird.

New birds are exciting, but spotting old favorites is fun too. There were several killdeer flying up and down the beach, calling de-deeee, de-deeeee. de-deeee. I was hoping for a nest sighting but the beach was too gross and squishy to walk on.

Here a blue-winged teal, a bird I first saw in Florida in March (but somehow never got around to blogging about) takes to the yellow air. Someone told me that Madonna got in some hot water for making some comment about Bay City, and how you knew you were there by the smell. "A stinky little town in Northern Michigan" is what she called it. Well, if the shoe fits....

I felt kind of bad for all the critters that have to live in this smelly, contaminated place. We were lucky--after this walk we went back to the RV, packed up and left. I know that late April can be a less attractive time of year than others, at least in this part of the world, but this was really a disappointment. However, we had Plan B in the wings--the Shiawasee National Wildlife Refuge was more or less on the way home, so we decided to stop there and hike, hoping for something a bit more interesting than what we found in Bay City.

Perhaps this fox was headed out of town too....

Tobico Marsh

The rail trail in Bay City extends north up to Tobico Marsh in the Bay City rec area. Our plan was to ride to the rail trail to the Andersen Nature Trail, hike that trail, then ride back to the campground. As we neared the marsh the rail trail crossed a bridge, and we spotted a muskrat swimming amongst the cattails and duck weed.




From the rail trail there is a paved connector that cuts across the marsh to the 4-mile Andersen Nature Trail loop. We stopped at an observation platform on the connector to, well, observe. It was a pleasant day but there wasn't a whole lot happening at the marsh.



See, our timing was off. This is a great birding area--most of the east coast of Michigan is a flyway for migrating species. But we'd missed the hawk migration by months. Waterfowl was probably several weeks before, and song birds had not yet started in earnest.

What we did see were lots of mute swans. We counted five nests on the small island in the marsh. While we were there, we noticed a bit of a conflict underway. Apparently this Canada goose had gotten a bit too close to a swan's territory, and a chase was underway. The goose's mate is there in the background, loudly honking.

The swan, with its huge black feet, was able to swim much faster than the goose, who very nearly got goosed.

The goose would take wing and fly, but only 30 feet or so before landing.

The swan would catch up rather quickly and the whole thing repeated itself, over and over around the lake. I don't know why the goose didn't just fly to the other end, unless it too had a nest nearby.

Before we headed into the woods I tried to get a few shots of the tree swallows, who were back from there winter homes in the south. It is a personal challenge of mine to get decent shots of birds in flight. A better lens would help, but this isn't too bad--cropped, of course.

I love to watch their aerial acrobatics. These two were either fighting or in amorous pursuit, it was hard to tell which.

Next: Andersen Nature Trail, Lori goes boom.

Bay City Recreation Area

Boy, did we need a vacation. I know I've said it before but when you're self-employed it's easy to forget to stop working. It seems like it just goes on and on, especially if you work from home because then you never leave the office.

We were going to head over to the west side of the state to camp in one of my favorite places, Muskegon State Park. Wonderful campground with a great trail system that passes through many different kinds of habitat, thanks to it's being on the coastline. We decided instead to stay a little closer to home to save on travel time and to try out a new place. Bay City is on the east side of the state, on the west side of Saginaw Bay. It contains the Topico Marsh, which is supposed to be good for bird watching, has some trails of reasonable distance and is bisected by a paved rail trail.

It seems our timing was a bit off. We were months late for raptor migration, and several weeks to a month late for waterfowl migration. Songbirds don't start migrating in earnest for another week or two, so there wasn't really much to see. That's OK, we got away from the house and had a chance to catch our breath.

We rode our bikes over to Tobico Lagoon, which is the link between Tobico Marsh and Saginaw Bay.



Here a mute swan is on her nest.



It is a beautiful time of year filled with flowers and young leaves, but some places can be rather bland yet, like the marsh, whose cattails have not yet greened the place up. This red-winged blackbird tried his best to liven things up.



After leaving the lagoon we picked up the rail trail. I think these trails are one of the best ideas for reusing land. Built on top of old railroad beds, they offer an easy ride and usually some pretty nice scenery as well as, in many cases, serving as connectors between towns and cities.



These cinnamon ferns were growing along the trail.



Here are a few photos of horse tail. If you recall I posted a picture of one in my Earth Day blog last week. After seeing these plants I was a little confused, since these looked so different from the one I posted before, so I looked them up.






Turns out that these plants are considered to be living fossils. They have continuously inhabited the earth for over 250 million years--some of its ancestors grew to be 60 feet tall. Like many other ancient plants (like ferns) they to not actually flower but reproduce by spores or by spreading underground roots. Turns out the photo I posted last week is of a spore cluster of a horse tail, not a scouring rush as I indicated. Not every horse tail will produce a stalk with spores--the plants with spore cones are considered to be fertile, the ones that produce leaves are not.

Souring rush, on the other hand, is a taller plant that does not produce leaves like the ones seen below. Instead the plant grows as a hollow tube up to 4 feet tall, and each plant has spore-producing parts at the top of the stem. I will have to look for some scouring rush and do a post on the difference between the two.



Here is a trillium of a variety we don't have at home. We were a bit too early to see one in bloom, however. This plant will produce a much smaller flower on a taller stem than the large-flowered trillium. It is possible this will produce a maroon flower.



Now here's one I have only heard about but never seen--bloodroot. (I can't tell you how wonderful it is to have a naturalist in your back pocket when you're out on the trail. Lori is indispensable when it comes to pointing out plants.) Here again was a plant I knew nothing about so I looked it up.

Bloodroot, it turns out, grows from an orange-colored rhizome, and when the plant is injured will secrete a reddish-colored liquid. The flowers emerge before the leaves--you can see here that we were too late for the blooms, all that is left is the seed pod. The seeds will actually be spread by ants, who are attracted to a secretion in the plant and will take the seeds into their nest. The yummy coating will be eaten off and the seeds discarded to the ants' trash heap, where they might germinate.




Just so you can see what the plant looks like in bloom, here's a photo I found online, from the website shortcourses.com. The flowers will open up more than this.



And here is a wonderful illustration from 1791 by Sydenham Edwards, which I posted so you can see the whole structure. I thought this was better than yanking one up to see the roots for myself!



Next: More Bay City Rec Area