“Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.” — Pablo Neruda

Mid-June and but for the greenery, it still seems like spring. The vernal solstice is just a week away, coming at 11:54 a.m. local time next Friday, the 21st. The variation in the emerging vegetation seems to be a bit more striking this summer and compounds some of the doubts of the coming of summer. Just a few miles from Lake Superior, flowers are far ahead of those along the lake where it still looks more like spring.

This spring there have been several red-headed woodpeckers seen in the central Upper Peninsula, with one in Harvey the most frequently seen. One was also seen earlier this year at Presque Isle.

The Harvey sightings have come as recently as June 11 at a residence’s feeders. There has been a belief two red-headed woodpeckers may be present there, suggesting they could be breeding in the area.

This would be an exciting possibility considering the extensive losses of numbers of breeding red-headed woodpeckers in the Upper Peninsula. Through 1988 there were up to 10 confirmed breeding pairs, 20 probable and 41 possible U.P. pairs breeding. In the current atlas, only one pair has been confirmed since 1989 and four probable and 15 possible pairs found. All are in the south central U.P. except one.

Red-headed woodpeckers remain in the United States throughout the year and their populations have been followed for more than a century. During that time, their numbers have changed dramatically with a variety of environmental events. They are omnivores, eating a greater variety of foods than other woodpeckers — a factor that would seem to favor their success. Besides insects, they eat nuts such as acorns and beechnuts, fruits and even small mammals like mice.

The recent decline in the American beech due to a European insect, beech scale nymphs and a fungus in the genus Nectria, has led to the loss of many beech trees across the country, especially in places where the beechnuts were a source of food for the woodpeckers. Beech trees have been an important part of the forests of the eastern U.P. east of Munising.

A succession of blights and diseases has had major impacts on American elm and both red and sugar maple trees. These trees are frequently used for woodpecker cavity nests, built in high dead limbs.

The last two known red-headed woodpecker nests in Marquette were in maple trees on East and West Ridge Street. Many of the native maple trees in Marquette have been cut down due to this decline. Ash trees are now also at risk.

Further challenges to the success of red-headed woodpeckers have come from European starlings, an introduced species brought to the United States in 1890 when around five dozen were released in Central Park in New York City. This aggressive bird is unable to excavate its own nest in trees but is able to quickly commandeer new woodpecker nests shortly after they are finished when the woodpeckers are not present.

The removal of dead trees and limbs, especially those along roadways, has also been noted as a major factor in the loss of nesting sites of them.

Albinism is fairly unusual in birds. There are few studies examining the effects albinism and leucism (“partial” albinism, or loss of pigmentation to parts of the anatomy in an animal or plant) on mate selection in birds. The difficulties in finding a mate would definitely deter the passing of mutated genes to offspring.

More importantly though, albino species are definitely more conspicuous and in fully albino animals, lack of eye pigmentation leads to poor eyesight as well, two factors leading to increased dangers of predation.

A possible albino American robin was seen in Skandia on Wednesday along U.S. 41. A number of leucistic robins have been seen in Marquette over the years, such as the beautiful leucistic white male with a brilliant orange breast in Marquette, and full albino robins have been fledged in both Marquette and Marquette Township in recent years.

There are still a few late migrants and vagrants wandering through the U.P. too. Semipalmated sandpipers are still headed north, hoping to make the deadline for nesting and fledging young before the Arctic fall-winter weather arrives.

In Marquette Township off Marquette County Road 550, a black-billed magpie stopped briefly at a residence on Wednesday. A relative of crows and jays, this western species has a normal range extending into far western Minnesota and the western parts of the prairie states to the western side of the Rockies. They appear in the U.P. only once every few years, and it is usually in the open fields of the western counties.

A field trip of the Laughing Whitefish Audubon Society last Saturday to the Kate’s Grade area southwest of Gwinn led to a productive day with 57 species located, including 20 species of warblers — a great total for the warblers, especially since many of them were probably males singing on territory. It’s difficult to find so many under those conditions in an area so readily accessible.

Now is a great time to see and hear many great birds before the business of raising young kicks into full gear and summer settles in to a quieter time.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Scot Stewart is a teacher at Bothwell Middle School in Marquette and a freelance photographer.