Friday, April 10th, 2015

Today was one of those days I'm glad I am not subject to routine pat-downs.

Set out at about 7:45AM and wandered around the nature preserve for more than an hour. Much more activity today, I saw a pair of male Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers (more on that species in a moment) as well as what I believe were a bunch of thrushes, probably Wood Thrushes.

Male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Wood Thrush

On the beach I saw a few more small birds including a Black-capped Chickadee as well as a pair of small gray birds with brown heads and long tails. I think they may be some sort of Flycather, but I can't find anything that matches.

Chickadee 

Possible Flycatchers

Violets

While on the beach I also followed a series of what I am almost certain were coyote tracks heading north. They may have been dog prints, but because of the rain these must have been made very early this morning, plus I did not see any fresh shoe prints. The clincher, however, was a pile of scat I found at the north end of the woodland trail that clearly has animal hair in it, meaning it is from a predator ergo, almost certainly a coyote. If I get up early enough I think I'll have a really good chance of seeing one.

Scat

The big find today, however, was along Capitol Drive. Near the intersection of Capitol and Downer I found a small bird's nest that had fallen (and turned out to be loaded with mites or ticks or some set of small bugs). I'm not sure, but based on the size and the brown-speckled white egg shells this is probably either a House Wren or House Sparrow nest. I say House Wren because while the specimen's I found don't seem to exactly match anything (the white horizontal stripe down the wing is something I have yet to see) there are two species of Wren that migrate here within a two week timeframe of their discovery, the Winter Wren and the House Wren. They seem a little too big to be the Winter variety, plus the bill of the House Wren seems to be longer and more curved like the ones I found.

Bird's nest, possibly a House Wren or House Sparrow

That was all very exciting, but a few minutes later in front of Falbo Bros. Pizza I found an immature female Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that had struck a window. Like the others it's sad of course, but it's also so amazing to see a bird like this up close, particularly one so much larger than the others I've found.

CH6 (weight was 49g, forgot to include that)

CH6

CH6

CH6

It appears as if the top part of her beak broke off in the collision. I say "she" because there doesn't seem to be any indication of any red coloration on the neck, which males have, however there is the slightest hint of some on the forehead, indicating an immature specimen or at the very least one that has not yet developed it's adult plumage. Apparently they do not get their full adult plumage until late April, so that lines up nicely.

These guys are covered under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, so I can't keep her or get her taxidermied, but it was really wonderful none-the-less to to be able to see and document this bird up-close. Finding this last specimen has taken up a bit more of my time today than I expected (another reason to get up earlier) but I expect I'll have an nice productive workday all the same. I'll check in at the end of the day.

Ship on Lake Michigan

Evening Update:

I think I'm going to try to do this, at least for the moment. Writing in the morning and then checking in later in the day seems to be helpful for me.

Overall, rather productive day. I definitely made some more progress on that Vitruvius article , plus I did a good job with eating today, very consistently good blood sugars. I guess the only thing that is left is the photo of me, so here it is:

4/10/15