The ephemerality of the shoreline at Whitefish Point is subtle, except to those who spend significant time there. Every windy day takes away some beach in exchange for new driftwood deposits--but if you did not walk here regularly, this would be difficult to discern. The passage of shorebirds contributes a further element to the changeability [...]
There’s this word, zugunruhe. It means migratory restlessness, and it looks like dozens of Common Nighthawks streaming north across Lake Superior at dusk. It sounds like the wild cries of the Whimbrel flocks that raced north over the Point this week. It feels like the predictable late-season wanderings my brain embarks on. Food and shelter [...]
Ahhh, the end of May — the mornings get earlier, and the nights get later; the sleep deprivation builds like the crescendoing peeper chorus back in the woods. One of the wonderful trials towards the end of the spring waterbird count is the phenomena of the evening waterbird flight. Though the end-of-season weariness is settling [...]
Something truly wonderful happened this past week. For the first time in what seemed like ages, I stepped out my door in the morning, and I heard birds singing. If I wasn't loaded down with a backpack full of hawk watching gear, I would have jumped for joy! It was the moment I had been [...]
There are two types of bad weather at Whitefish Point: bad weather with good birds, and bad weather with no birds. Yesterday (May 14), finally, the sky started spitting shorebirds. Yes, the sky also was spitting (and at times, pouring) 38-degree rain for the entire 8-hour count, but that is the typical tradeoff for a [...]
Lines of ducks stream through the sky. By day, I search for them. (For most of the last week — a cheek-numbing stretch of demoralizing north winds — it’s seemed that I seek far more than I find.) Then, by night, when I close my eyes and drift off, the ducks reappear, twisting their way [...]
The Sharp-shinned Hawk. Recently, I was asked what their name means. Seeing that "sharpies" (my preferred nom de plume) do have an awfully strange name, I found it to be a fine question, the answer to which is fairly straightforward. They have sharp shins. Granted, this does sound like a punchline to a corny joke, [...]
The trees speak. Through a concerted effort of mystical orchestration, they take the wind and turn its voice into their own. It is a language I cannot interpret; no matter how hard I try, the rustling of branches remains unfathomable, and the message simply dissipates in the breeze. Still, as I watch the horizon for [...]
Black coffee and bright wind maps: that’s how I start days, up here in Paradise. As I trace back towards the source of the colorful lines that flow past the Point, I imagine — and anticipate — the birds they might be ferrying. When this morning ritual is complete, I throw on my heavy layers [...]
It's Easter Monday, and as I stand here on the hawk deck at Whitefish Point Bird Observatory — in below-freezing temperatures, with frigid north winds whipping off of Lake Superior, and snow (yes SNOW) falling from the sky — I have to ask myself, "Has the time moved at all?" There may be less snow [...]
