2012 Year in Review: Hot stuff

There was a lot to be nervous about heading into our trip to Van Buren State Park in Southwest Michigan in July. It would be the first camping trip in about two years, and we had a toddler in tow. It was a record summer for heat, and the forecast for our trip was daunting--multiple days in the mid-90s. 

We had booked our three-night trip months in advance. Van Buren is a popular spot--just two hours from Chicago in the popular Harbor Country of Southwest Michigan. So it wasn't a surprise that the campground was full. Our spot was on the fringe of the campground and didn't offer much in the way of shade. We set up our tent at the edge of a forest and nabbed some shade for the morning hours. The friends we were meeting there had a nice corner spot that largely was forested--we spent much of our time at their site.

The highlight of Van Buren is the beach, which is wide and sandy, at the foot of a steep dune. The water felt great every time we went in. My friend Cub parked a lawn chair in a small pop-up shelter. From the water, he appeared to be a light-beer-swilling monarch, overseeing his sandy realm from his beach hut.

The heat persisted for two days. Amazingly, a weak cold front moved through, accompanied by morning thunderstorms. It cooled everything just enough and we had a wonderfully cool morning to sleep in, and yes the toddler slept in, too. Even when the seams broke on our tent, we stayed dry.

All in all, it was a great trip. We explored the town of South Haven and drove past a number of u-pick blueberry farms. We got to know the scenic Blue Star Highway that runs along the coast north of Benton Harbor. The trip proved that it's worth going even in the worst weather conditions.

2012 Year in Review: Good coppice

In 14 years of going to the island of Eleuthera, I've always been as intrigued by the interior of the island as much as the famed beaches. The seashore is a lot of fun, for a number of reasons, but the scrubby interior has a great deal of interesting flora and fauna, too. So it was exciting to learn during our spring trip this year that the Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve recently opened within minutes of the home base of North Palmetto Point. The preserve, part of the Bahamas National Trust, features lengthy trails through the native coppice forest as well as mangrove wetlands and a medicinal plant garden. The highlight is a hand-constructed tower atop a hill that offers amazing views of the Eleuthera's interior and of the Atlantic Ocean. We saw several bird species on a steamy day including migrants like northern parula and northern waterthrush. The preserve is the only national park on Eleuthera, and a lot of planning and resources have gone into it. It's a great addition to a special island.

Good year

After nearly a year off, I'm back and ready to post on the blog occasionally. Driftless Area is now password-protected, too.

A few weeks ago, we finally saw the movie The Big Year on DVD. It's probably the most prominent movie ever made about birding. It's certainly the most expensive, reportedly costing $40 million to make. 

The Big Year features an all-star cast: Owen Wilson, Steve Martin and Jack Black. In seeing the trailers, I feared that the movie would strive to make fun of birders--an easy target to be sure. With a few small exceptions, that was not the case at all. In fact, the movie took care to portray birding accurately and kindly. That may have been why the movie was a big failure at the box office, grossing less than $10 million in the United States. 

Casting Wilson as a cocky, world-renowned birder was pure brilliance. Martin and Black were both subdued and likable as they chased Wilson around the country trying to keep up with his North American big year. The bit players were good, too, including Rashida Jones as Black's love interest and Brian Dennehy as Black's curmudgeonly father.

I remember some birders being dismayed when The Big Year came out. But it really does mostly get it right, any quibbles are nitpicks at best (would a whistling-duck really hang out at the top of a mountain?). I highly recommend The Big Year!

Western phoebe

I spent some time last week in San Jose, Calif. I went for a morning walk around the center of the city--the ninth-largest city in the United States. San Jose sits in a valley just south of the San Francisco Bay. The Guadelupe River flows through the center of town and is flanked by a recreational trail. The river is really no more than a creek in a little ravine lined with sycamores and other riparian trees. It was there, in the shadow of the headquarters of Adobe (above), that I saw my lifer black phoebe. The bird isn't uncommon in its range along the West Coast. Like the eastern phoebe, it spends time near bridges and branches hanging over streams.

Winter recess

While the hills never rise to more than about 1,100 feet, southern Ohio is quite rugged. The southeast quarter of Ohio is a sea of steep ridges and deep valleys. In a few hidden, idyllic spots there are high-walled gorges and waterfalls. Rarer are recess caves, huge sandstone overhangs carved by erosional forces. In winter, the area is made all the more spectacular by a coating of snow and massive ice formations. The flora is that of a much more northerly place, in some places hemlock-laden ravines stranded by the last glaciation. Above is Cedar Falls, the 50-foot high waterfall on Queer Creek, part of Hocking Hills State Park. A few miles away is Old Man's Cave, the largest recess cave in Ohio (top). The area has many hiking, backpacking and camping options. I recommend it in the off-season, when the crowds are away and temperatures are a bit cooler.

Annual report

It was a great birding year, starting with a late migrating american pipit at Montrose on Jan. 2. One thread throughout 2011 was my use of the eBird tracking tool. For no reason in particular, I embarked on a slow-speed chase to be one of the top 100 eBirders in Illinois. I fell short on my quest, ending up 113th with 119 species at the time of this writing. But I can count strange achievements like being the 73rd-ranked eBirder in the state of South Dakota, because of our week-long trip there, and 47th in the Bahamas.

I added seven birds to my life list: Bell's vireo, Henslow's sparrow, american dipper, upland sandpiper, mountain bluebird, plumbeous vireo and snowy owl. A snow-less winter, ironically, capped by a snowy owl sighting. Our trip to the Bahamas yielded a number of island specialities and a tally of 33 species, including LaSagra's flycatcher and thick-billed vireo--both common in Eleuthera but resident only on a couple of other islands.

The birding adventure starts over again tomorrow, starting at zero species for 2012. Should be fun.

Snowy haven

A snowy owl is a good reason to end a blog hiatus. Snowy owls are invading the Midwest this winter, with perhaps the largest surge in more than a decade. Two weeks ago, two were photographed at Montrose Point. I went out to search for them the next morning. I saw a couple of photographers who helped point me to an owl on the end of the fishhook pier. It was several hundred yards away, but I had an okay look at my first-ever snowy owl.

Then, this past weekend, an even better look. The owls had continued to hang around the point for days. We went Saturday afternoon. We didn't see the owls in the dune area, or near the pier. As we walked toward the beach house, a passerby said the owl was just ahead. Just a few yards away, the owl was sitting atop a light post in plain view. One needn't binoculars to make out many details. A small crowd had gathered, photographing the bird from every angle. Amazing stuff and a great way to cap an eventful 2011 of birding.