Scott Hall:
It's time for the Phenology Show. John Latimer, you on the line there?
John Latimer:
I'm here, Scott.
Scott Hall:
And our special guest, Pam Perry, a retired non-game wildlife biologist, and she's really never retired from that. Pam, welcome.
Pam Perry:
<laugh>. Oh, good morning, Scott and John.
John Latimer:
Good morning, Pam.
Scott Hall:
I caught up with you yesterday as you were over by Lake Mille Lacs. I think you were looking for some waterfowl. What'd you see?
Pam Perry:
Oh, I didn't see much for waterfowl. It was mostly just gulls, and the wind was coming across the lake from the southeast, so it was wavy and not good. Garrison is the best. They have that lookout with the big walleye there. <laugh>. It's a great place to stop and look for birds. And it's best when the wind is from the west or there's very low wind: then the birds will come in there and sometimes they're on the shore. Sometimes there are flocks out in the water or in that bay that's just to the south. Yesterday wasn't that good, but I check it out regularly.
John Latimer:
I stopped there myself in early summer and there were two Whimbrels there.
Pam Perry:
Wonderful! And occasionally there are shorebirds along the little stretches of beach right along the lake. I saw Sanderlings and Ruddy turnstones there.
John Latimer:
Oh my gosh.
Pam Perry:
Yeah. It’s worth checking because the birds do move through there, and seeing Whimbrels is really cool.
John Latimer:
Oh, I couldn't believe it. I <laugh>. I saw them and I thought, “Those are unusual birds. What are they?” There were two of them. They were sitting on that stone barricade. I was about a hundred feet away, and I got my binoculars and I started looking really closely and I was searching my brain to think, “what birds are these?” Yeah. To be honest with you, I had to go home and get out my bird book and confirm my suspicion. But it was quite exciting! Yeah, that's a great place to stop anytime.
Pam Perry:
Definitely. And you wanna have a camera with you. The new digital cameras, you see something like that and if you can shoot a quick picture of it and then you take it home and look at it, you can figure out what you had.
John Latimer:
Yep, exactly. Mm-hmm. And to be honest with you, that's precisely what I did. I grabbed my phone and shot a bunch of pictures.
Pam Perry:
Yeah,, my phone only works if they're close enough.
Scott Hall:
Well, Pam, my yard was carpeted with juncos yesterday morning, and we want to get a preview and a review of what's passing through and what's to come.
Pam Perry:
Juncos are all over right now. And I would guess that all our listeners are seeing Genos everywhere. And I was just gonna say a couple things about juncos. Of course they're coming through, it's fall migration. Most of the juncos we see are the basic type where they're all kind of dark gray, white on the top of the head, and then white underneath. But there are these subpopulations (regional variations) that sometimes get mixed in a bit. You'll see one that looks different. I think there's six different regional populations recognized right now, but they're not separate species. They're just sub species and variations on the theme of ‘junco’, I guess. And some you'll see have pinker sides and darker heads, but the majority of them are the basic ones. And they're in flocks, usually rather tight flocks.
You can see them in your lawns. You can see them along the roads, and they'll fly up into the trees. And what you really notice are the white outer tail feathers when they fly up. That's how you know they’re juncos (and because they're in this tight little flock). And what do they like at feeders? They like it if you throw some millet on the ground, that's the main thing. They'll come into your backyard, but they'll also be all over your front yards because there's a lot of seeds out there, a lot of wild food and wild seeds. And that's why they're moving: they're moving through now just as the snow starts coming in. They move ahead of the snow like that <laugh>.
The other thing that's happening is that the juncos are a big sign that most of our bug-eating birds have moved on. Those are the fly catchers and the warblers that eat many gazillions of insects during the summer. And when we get the colder weather, the bugs are going down (which some of us are happy about). <laugh> Those [bug-eating birds] have moved through. Last week I had more warblers: I have a water feature in my backyard, and I can see warblers there. They'll come in, especially in late afternoon and evening, and I can see many of them. All that I'm seeing now is the Yellow-rumped Warbler. The Yellow-rumped Warbler is the first one we get in the spring and the one that hangs on the latest in the fall, because they can eat some berries or some seeds. The one I've been seeing in the last few days is coming in and eating suet at my feeders <laugh>. The others have headed to the tropics, the warmer climates.
John Latimer:
You know, bringing up the Yellow-rumped Warbler. I was standing on the lake shore the other day looking back at a mountain ash. The robins were in there eating the berries, and there were two or three birds that I could see that were up in the tops of the tree. They would sit there, and all of a sudden they'd dash out and hawk an insect. And in fact, one of them went out, it was a moth, and the bird did a flip! So, it's flying, it's flying straight and normal, and all of a sudden it (in an effort to catch this moth) it flips entirely upside down and turns its direction 180 degrees and goes back the way it came. It was stunning. And when the bird landed and I put my binoculars on it, it was a Yellow-rumped Warbler. <laugh>
Pam Perry:
Yeah. It isn't that cool? And that behavior is called hawking. And when you see them at the tops of the trees, flying out from the tree, going out and catching these insects, then going back again, you know that that's an insect-eater. And the Yellow-rumped Warblers do that very well. I've been seeing it the last several days as well here.
John Latimer:
Yeah, I haven't seen any since that day. And I think that was probably the fifth or sixth. So it's been about a week.
Pam Perry:
Yeah. There’s still some around. But they are moving.
The other thing I wanted to mention about fall migration is that we're not hearing birds singing much. Occasionally, you get some young birds or birds that’ll try to sing a little bit or there's part of a song. Bird watchers do a lot of listening and they identify a lot by hearing. What you're hearing right now is what we call chips and calls. And you get this little chip sound [and wonder] “What the heck is that? What is, what is making all those little chippy noises out there?” And it can be a variety of birds. Often, it's the sparrows that are moving through right now, because sparrows will eat lots of seeds. We're getting White-throated Sparrows, White-crowned Sparrows, Harris Sparrows.... These are all our native sparrows. Not like the sparrows you get in the cities or in town: those are house sparrows, an exotic species. We have native sparrows that move through. One of the best ways to ID them (because many of them are brownish with a little bit of white here or there) is the Merlin app from Cornell. And it's an app for your phone that you download for free, and you can point it at whatever's making the sound. And [it’ll identify] even these little chip notes: it will tell you what's making those chip notes. I think that's really cool.
Scott Hall:
All right. Now while we've got you, Pam, the colors are just still spectacular and I've been able to be outside a lot. And John you were in Big Fork on Sunday and now you're down in the Twin Cities. So, you've traveled about 200 plus miles from north to south, what are you seeing for fall color? And also, I want you guys to take up other things going on. Like we had the student reports of snakes, and anything else you might wanna mention to look out for in the fall? Start with your color review.
Pam Perry:
Yeah. I was out and about quite a bit last yesterday. There’s still a fair amount of green, but we have got yellows, oranges, and reds and it's beautiful. Along the river especially, one of the places I like to frequent is what's called Kiwanis Park and Rotary Park, which is across from the college right along the river. Kiwanis is first, and then if you go further down river, you get to rotary. The colors are gorgeous. And I would encourage people to get out. There are plenty of walking areas, walking trails, beautiful trails, and you can walk or bike or take your dog for a walk. And it's really, really lovely down there.
Scott Hall:
We've had a wonderful visit to Crow Wing State Park too, which is a great place: not only to see fall, but also the river traffic that goes by and comes through there. We really love that state park. It's kind of a good time to visit state parks, because they're not really crowded right now.
Pam Perry:
Oh yeah. This is a great time of year to get out to the state parks. And Crow Wing, of course, is alittle further south from Brainerd and again, right on the river. They have walking trails and I've hiked a lot of those trails as well. Just getting along the river and seeing what's there and looking at the fall color. Of course the bugs are gone <laugh>, so it's really, really pleasant.
Scott Hall:
John, earlier the kids mentioned the red bellied snakes, and you've mentioned snakes to look out for this time of year. Why don't you and Pam take up other fall phenomena?
John Latimer:
Well, I was going to mention that up north, the hazel have finally dropped their leaves or are dropping their leaves. And the new red in the ditches is probably a plant called downy arrowwood. They have a deep burgundy leaf this time of year, and they'll hold on much longer than the hazel. Pam, I know you are very knowledgeable about amphibians, and I dodged a garter snake on the blacktop yesterday on my way down south. And the kids are talking about red belly snakes and of course the wood frogs and peepers tree frogs. I haven't heard a tree frog calling in the last couple of weeks, but they do call this time of year. So, what's going on with all of those guys?
Pam Perry:
Well, they're getting ready for winter and they're moving to their winter areas. That's why they're moving around and you're seeing them. I expect even today we're going to see stuff, because it's going to be so warm and they're going to move to where they want to spend the winter. And the snakes, of course, are gonna go down into underground areas where they aren't going to freeze. And the tree frogs and peepers, some of those kinds of frogs, will be going just under the leaf litter. A lot of these critters don't feed heavily before they go into the winter time because otherwise they start cooling down and the stuff doesn't digest in their guts.
So, they're just moving around. They're getting ready, but they're going to be active with the warm weather. And that's what we're going to see. And I know a week, well, maybe 10 days ago I was doing some staining on my house with a friend. And we had a garter snake that climbed up. Just a small garter snake came up the perennial flocks I had there and was just watching us, was right in between us looking around, then went back down again. They are curious about what's going on.
John Latimer:
It never occurred to me till just now, but what's the vision capability in snakes? Do they see a long distance?
Pam Perry:
Well, some of them have fairly big eyes. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> Like garter snakes. Yeah. You know, they're tasting the air with their tongue, and using that to find prey, but they're also quite visual.
John Latimer:
Interesting.
Pam Perry:
They're seeing and looking. <affirmative> They don't hear much of anything. They can feel vibrations, but otherwise, it's tasting the air and [using] their eyes.
John Latimer:
Gosh. Yeah.
Pam Perry:
If you look at a red-bellied snake, which is one of my favorites (I didn't see any this year. Some years I don't, some years I do) they have really big eyes and the size of the eye will tell you how much they rely on vision.
John Latimer:
Hmm. Okay.
Scott Hall:
Pam, we have a question from a listener. Just bring us up to date on where the loons are in their migration.
Pam Perry:
Loons are <laugh> a favorite of mine, as you know. In September or late summer, the adults start moving into groups. The adults start moving around more than the youngsters, I guess is what I'm trying to say. The young of the year. Often, the young of the year will stay on the lakes until they start freezing up. And when I was working at the DNR every fall, every November, I got lots of calls: “Our loon, our baby loon is still here.” And I was going, “well, if it's healthy, it's gonna get outta here. But sometimes they wait till the last moment.” But the adults start moving around, they gather in groups on the big lakes, and then they're going to start moving outta state. And one of the big areas where they gather is, Lake Michigan. They'll start at the north end and then work their way south down. And there's a lot of food there for them. That's what the research has found: (and this is from telemetry studies, so they can track them) and then they'll just keep moving south from there. So they [adults and young of the year] migrate separately. You don't see flocks of loons like geese. They just kind of go as they're ready to go. And as we get further into the season, they're gonna head from Lake Michigan down to the Gulf of Mexico.
John Latimer:
Pam, I was lucky enough to be part of a research project with the USGS where they put transmitters surgically implanted them in juvenile loons. And the one loon that I was part and parcel of capturing and watching them insert the transmitter, that particular loon when it migrated and it waited till the end, it went down kind of zigzagging across the Mississippi River and eventually ended up in the Gulf of Mexico. But it was not at all what they had thought. Gor a long time, the stuff that I had read was that the juveniles go to the ocean and spend like three years there and then return. Well, it turns out that this guy was either atypical or that was not the truth. This guy, after his first year, went up to Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and then spent the summer in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and then returned to Florida. And in his second year, ended up in a lake, sort of northwest of Minnesota kind of near the Ontario-Manitoba border. Loons are fascinating.
Pam Perry:
Before telemetry was only what we could observe, and we wouldn't see these young loons, we wouldn't see them on the lakes where they had been born or in the main nesting area. And the telemetry has revealed that, “Oh, they go all over the place, <laugh> they're exploring!” That was really new news.
John Latimer:
Yeah.
Pam Perry:
And we, we couldn't have known that before, because we didn't know that a loon from Minnesota ended up on Lake Huron.
John Latimer:
Yeah, yeah. Totally unpredicted.
Pam Perry:
Totally unpredicted. We knew they went to the Gulf. And then they're out on the ocean, and you can't see them easily. Without the telemetry, we couldn't know those things. It was wonderful. And the USGS has been the main research agency on that. We have learned so much about loons from them.
John Latimer:
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Hall:
All right. You guys we're about out of time. Any heads up for what to look for in the next week or so? Obviously, we've got the sparrows coming through, and the junco. Anything else to think about in the second week of October?
John Latimer:
I'm looking for the Fox Sparrows and the American tree Sparrows.
Pam Perry:
Ditto. <laugh>. Ditto. I haven't seen a Fox sparrow yet in my backyard. There was one Chipping [sparrow] down at Rotary Park the other day. But yeah, the sparrows are gonna come through, that's gonna be kind of the main event for backyard feeders and people around their house. So watch for these big sparrows. The Fox Sparrow is a beautiful bird. It's a really big sparrow with a red tail. And the way you tell it is that it starts scratching and the leaves just fly all over the place. It's just a storm of leaves. And I mean, all the sparrows scratch a little bit, but Fox Sparrows outdo everybody.
John Latimer:
All right. Find yourself some bird seed that contains millet. It just by itself is hard to find. I order mine, but, find something with white millet in it and throw it out in your yard. You'll be amazed. The juncos and all of the sparrows will be really happy with you.
Scott Hall:
Pam, thanks for checking in with us again. It's good to visit with you as always, Pam Perry, non-game wildlife biologist. John Latimer with our remote phenology report this morning with his guest, Pam Perry. Thanks!
