BY JOHN KARRIGAN
My last-minute check on the park (today, Nov. 2) showed various good and bad things. The wading pool work got going big after several days off with lots of workers, lots of new fancy tools and new construction material to work on. If November stays nice, as it may, they could get a lot of work done on the pool this year. Or it could stay a big mess until next spring. I hope for the best.
The lake has returned to a somewhat high, but not as high as it was, level for most of the summer.
And a large group of Canada Geese (about 120) were on the grass and water today, as has been happening various days, with varying goose numbers, usually fairly high numbers, which I of course love, whether seeing them in the park or watching a flock fly over the yard or street. A side note: Last night, well after dark, I heard a fairly large flock of geese, going south over the neighborhood. It was a great sound.
Back to the park. A fairly large group of American Robins—over a hundred or so—gathered in the park in late October and left by November. A smaller, hard core Robin group has stayed, as usually happens these last few years. A fairly large group of Dark-eyed Juncos (50 or more), a grey and white member of the sparrow group, have come from up north to stay in the park and yards for what they (the Juncos) consider a warm place for the winter.
I think the Wood Ducks have left for this year, but the Mallards are still quite regular. Ring-billed Gulls may have left by now or may still appear now and then for a while.
American Crows have started their winter park gathering I think, and at times there may be hundreds of them.
An adult Bald Eagle arrived at 5 p.m. one day late in October, versus the Eagle that arrived at 6 p.m. one day in September, and had the nerve to sit on the west side of “the Eagle Cottonwood tree” versus the usual east eagle side. Eagles might be somewhat regular at the park until the lake freezes, probably in late November.
The back yard is, and probably most back yards are, doing well with Juncos, Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, Chickadees, Nuthatches, Cardinals, English Sparrows and Goldfinches, the latter which have lost all their gold/yellow color until next spring.
I’ve wandered various places since I wrote last month’s column. Was I avoiding the mob? Or federal authorities? As usual, I cannot talk about that.
We tried to find a Dickcissel at the newly developed nature area in eastern Kansas, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. We did not find one, but the nature area was a very nice new find, the dried tall grasses quite beautiful at this time of year.
In Colorado, I found one American Dipper at the Rocky Mountain National Park. Often I find more than one. I really enjoy the little birds, the only songbird that regularly swims, and swims underwater with an extra pair of eyelids and nostril covers. As usual, we found many Mountain Chickadees, Black-billed Magpies and Common Ravens.
And we just spent three days in the Wisconsin Crex Meadows Wildlife Area, about an hour and a half drive from Powderhorn. Though Crex Meadows does not really have meadows (we learned), it and the area had all kinds of interesting land and water, and thousands of Sandhill Cranes at this time of year. You could see groups of cranes from a few to hundreds, heading out to eating areas in the morning, and heading to marshy water areas to roost for the night. And you could watch whatever they were up to on land or water areas. You could sometimes get quite close to very large groups of them. And just for interest, there might be groups of American Coots, Pied-billed Grebes, various ducks and swans. We also learned that the cranes migrating through Wisconsin are a different sub-species than the ones that migrate through Nebraska in spring, stopping along the Platte River, which we saw in early March on our return trip from that Colorado trip.
I need to finish writing this column soon because I have a serious bird issue happening tonight: the seventh game of the World Series. The manager of the Cleveland Indians was born in my hometown, Aberdeen, S.D. Why is this a bird issue? The manager, Terry Francona, born April 22, 1959, is the son of Tito Francona, of the Aberdeen Pheasants, then a farm team of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team. Obviously without Pheasants and Orioles, there is no point in birding or baseball! I am sure most people will agree with me on that.
Comments and observations are always welcome. Send them to me, in care of Southside Pride. Thank you.
