JOHN PEPIN

“Been a hoot owl howling outside my window now, ’bout six nights in a row,” – Michael Martin Murphy/Larry Cansler

With darkness gathering, a burnt-orange glow persisted along the jagged horizon in the western sky. Above us and out in front of us, the sky remained a cool shade of cobalt blue.

We were standing on a wooden deck at the southeast corner of Lake Superior, with chilly winds blowing toward us off the lake from the north and east.

It was me and my next-door neighbors – an affable younger couple we first met a couple of years back.

As we stood there at the mouth of the infamous 80-mile-long “Shipwreck Coast,” we talked about the things we saw around us.

There were the old, wooden breakwater pilings still being soaked and splashed by incoming waves. The breakwater is long gone, along with roughly 200 ships sunk to the bottom of the lake over the decades in the area surrounding the point.

Of these, none is more famous than the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in 1975 about 15 miles northwest of where we were standing – all 29 hands on deck were lost.

To our right, as we faced the water, there stood a sea of red lights glimmering far off in the shadowy distance. We used a deck viewing scope to get a better look.

This was the Prince Township Wind Farm in Ontario, which sits on a ridge above Lake Superior, its 126 wind turbines twisting like pinwheels in the almost dark beyond.

Out in the beach sand, not far from the platform, the Queen of Shebis and our neighbors’ Kindergarten-aged daughter were on their hands and knees with a flashlight, looking for pretty rocks to collect.

They were emulating the behavior of numerous other people dotting the shoreline with ultraviolet lights looking for glowing sodalite-rich syenite rocks known more commonly as “Yooperlites” or “emberlites.”

The second term is an apt description of what the relatively plain, bluish-gray rocks look like when struck with the beam of an ultraviolet light. The rocks glow in spectacled fashion, like the red-orange embers of a campfire.

These rocks, while not especially rare, are found only along the shores of Lake Superior.

We turned our backs to the water.

Our attention was drawn immediately to the white light flashing intermittently from the lighthouse tower above us. The oldest still-operating light on the lake, this beacon was built back when Abraham Lincoln was president — 164 years ago.

“Hey, what’s that,” my neighbor asked, pointing to the sky not far to the west of the lighthouse.

I saw a bird flapping its wings with heavy, deliberate beats, like it was trying to get itself up higher into the sky. It kind of looked fluttery.

“It’s a long-eared owl,” I said.

“I thought it was a bat,” my neighbor replied.

“I’m glad it’s not,” I said. “I don’t want to see a bat that big.”

The bird banked to its left and floated in a glide over the jack pine forest south of the lighthouse complex of buildings and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.

It was about this time that the Queen and her little friend returned from the beach, their pockets full of rocks, weighing them down.

“She wanted to find some shiny rocks, some pink rocks, some purple rocks and some glittery rocks and we found all of those,” the queen said.

We walked slowly back to the parking lot under skies beginning to twinkle with stars.

It was chilly but not cold. We were all wearing warm boots and heavier coats.

The main reason we had come to Whitefish Point was about to begin.

We drove a short distance to a meeting spot at the south end of the parking lot, where we were soon met by our hosts for the evening.

We had signed up through the Friends of Whitefish Point to watch veteran researchers Chris Nere and Nova Mackentley band owls outside a work trailer secluded among the pines.

Chris first became fascinated with owls as an eight-year-old after reading the Hardy Boys mystery “Clue of the Screeching Owl,” one of my favorites. He has been owl banding at Whitefish Point since 1999.

Nova studied in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Tanzania before she came to the point to band owls more than two decades ago.

The wonders of Whitefish Point — Michigan’s premier bird migration hotspot — have fascinated her and inspired her artistic work as a nature photographer.

There was another group soon huddling with us in the darkened parking lot — another family group whose daughter and sister was aiding the researchers that night.

We all walked along the edge of the blacktopped road until we stopped when we saw a pair of flashlights bobbing toward us in the blackness.

It was Chris and Nova, heading to check one of their mist nets they had set out to trap long-eared owls. They would soon join us back at the work trailer in the woods.

The air around us was electrified with the excitement we all possessed, hoping to have an opportunity to see live owls close-up.

The songs of boreal, long-eared and saw-whet owls were ringing through the skies, played by the researchers to attract owls to the woods where the mist nets were set up.

When a bird flies into one of the nets, it drops into a pocket in the webbing that contains the owl until it can be taken out.

The researchers take various measurements of the birds, including wing and tail lengths and weight. They record this data in a notebook before placing a small metal numbered band around the leg of the owls.

The numbers identify the owls as individuals in databases able to be referenced across the world. If the bird is found dead or is recaptured, the numbers allow the banding of the owl to be traced back to this night at Whitefish Point.

In the roughly hour-and-a-half we watched the banders, they had captured, banded and released a handful of long-eared owls and the much smaller saw-whet variety.

Nova said we had come at peak time for owl migration. On their best night over the years, they banded 200 owls before daybreak.

I watched closely as the eyes of the little girl getting very tired after 10 p.m. grew to the size of Kennedy half-dollars when Nova moved a saw-what owl to within inches of her little face.

Nova let the girl and her parents use an index finger to pet the back of the owl’s head to see how soft it was. Mom asked if her daughter if she was going to call the owl “violet,” which is the girl’s favorite color.

She nodded her head, “yes.”

Chris showed us the underwings, talons and ears of the birds.

The researchers answered questions from the group and allowed us to take pictures of the owls, without bothering them with a camera flash.

Then, with a gentle nudge, the owls were released back into the nighttime in opposite directions by species. During the time we were there, no boreal owls were captured, but the researchers had caught a couple so far this season on previous outings.

Carried on her dad’s shoulders, the young girl looked up toward the jack pine branches that hung down near her asking anyone who would listen, “Where’s violet?”

We chuckled at the question and admired the innocence and tenderness of this little one, still relatively new to the world.

This was the second time the queen and I have visited the owl banding station this spring. It was such a great experience I wanted to bring our neighbors back and tell everyone I knew about it.

The researchers will sell adults tickets (www.friendsofwp.org/events) to visit the banding station on weekends through May to help fund their banding efforts and other science-related educational activities. Children get free admission.

“This is the kind of thing that can change a kid’s life,” the queen said. “But I know I’m preaching to the choir.”

Indeed.

The “Clue of the Screeching Owl” changed Chris’s life as a child. I was influenced by birds and the outdoors at a very young age – thanks to my parents – and our stories are not by any means the only ones out there.

Our neighbors booked a room in Paradise for the night. We decided to drive home from Saturday night into Sunday morning.

By this time, the stars were amazingly bright, with clear and cold skies over the point.

The woods still held plenty of snow on both sides of the road as I drove. The farther away from the lake we got, the more the piles of snow became pools of standing water reflecting the headlights of our vehicle.

I saw a couple of cottontail rabbits and deer on the way home.

As the queen nodded off to sleep, I was happy to enjoy the scarcity of vehicles on the roads, the pitch blackness of the nighttime and the opportunity to drive and listen to music.

I was wide awake. Nature had again filled me with incredible fascination, inspiration and an overall sense of well-being.

I drove on knowing I was fortunate to have had the experience I did.

Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.