A black-necked stilt is shown. (Scot Stewart photo)

“The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” — Bertrand Russell

Octobers have been a month of waiting in the Upper Peninsula. Used to be, waiting to see when the fall colors would peak, when the first snow would come, when all the leaves would be gone from the trees and winter would be here. Things are not some much that way anymore. Yes, there was a great blast of snow last year in October, in what seemed the snowiest month of the “winter,” a season with the second lowest snowfall ever in Marquette County. 

But now it has become more a time to wait to see just what will happen. Will it be a big thunderstorm, or another stretch of 70-degree temperatures?

Along the Lake Superior shoreline in Marquette, stretches with Norway maple, mountain ash, black locust, and northern red oak the trees are still green! Asters and even a few goldenrods are still blooming and with the recent rains the mushrooms are bursting from the ground and stumps. 

Spring peepers have continued their misguided fall songs from the trees in the woods. They’ve had the impression the length of the days, being the same as in the spring, plus the angle of the sun, meant — well that it is spring. Some do believe that the spring peepers spend most of the summer preparing their bodies and their reproductive systems for breeding as soon as conditions allow in the spring. They go into hibernation in the leaves on the forest floor ready to spring back to lay and fertilize eggs as soon as the temperatures warm them again, so warm, sunny days can definitely stimulate them. It is their singular peeps that can sound like sparrows or other woodland birds calling this time of year — few think about the possibility that frogs are singing in the trees.

And sparrows are around. A nice, new wave of dark-eyed juncos, with white-throated, Lincoln, American tree song and white-crowned sparrows has been visiting feeder stations and stalking around in the underbrush in the central U.P.

The first northern shrike report from the area came in last weekend with one on the Yellow Dog Plains. These robin-sized predatory birds wander down from Alaska and the northern tier of mainland Canada in fall. Some drift down into northern parts of the Lower 48 and the Upper Peninsula usually sees more than a dozen here each winter. They are most commonly seen atop bushes and small trees in the middle of meadows and large openings. Extremely skittish, they are difficult to approach, but amazing agile at catching mice, large insects and small birds like chickadees and juncos. Some of the first common goldeneyes and snow bunting have been seen in Marquette recently too.

This October has seen plenty of lingering summer residents now being met by the last of fall migrants and the beginnings of the wave of Arctic residents drifting south for the winter in search of better hunting grounds.

A few warblers and plenty of late sparrows now being met by the likes of the shrikes and soon rough-legged hawks and with hope some great gray, boreal, and northern hawk owls. The eastern Upper Peninsula is usually the best place to find northern owls as many prefer to work their way south along the edge of Lake Superior. At Whitefish Point, where owls are banded in the fall several dozen northern saw-whet owls have already been banded this fall, along with a smattering of long-eared and barred owls. 

While Chippewa County is usually the best place to look, occasionally northern owls do make it to the central U.P. Two years ago, a northern hawk owl made it to Marquette and hung out in the old compost area off Lakeshore Boulevard until February.

Boreal owls also make occasional stops in Marquette, but they are usually very short. For great gray owls, Seney National Wildlife Refuge seem to be the best place in the U.P. west of Chippewa County to see them.

For many, a delightful surprise turned up along the edge of the Dead River in Marquette last Tuesday morning. A black-necked stilt spent more than an hour feeding along the river above and below the Lakeshore Blvd. bridge until it was finally scared off by a dog on the beach. The stilt is an impressive, unmistakable shorebird with exceptionally long pink legs, long bill, black and white plumage. Their range map is a jigsaw puzzle of islands of summer locales in the western states, the southeastern Atlantic coast, and the coast of Louisiana. Their winter range includes parts of California, Texas, Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America.

As with a number of birds, small new breeding areas occasionally pop up outside normal breeding areas and this is the case with black-necked stilts. Stilts have had a small breeding population in southern Wisconsin since 1999 in Horicon National Wildlife Refuge. In the breeding bird surveys done in 2004 they were found nesting in two other counties as well.

In 2019, 63 adult stilts were found in Horicon. During migrations some birds do get turned around, and while birds migrating south from nesting colonies in Washington state and Montana birds migrating that could have been pushed off course, it seems more likely this bird traveled northward from Wisconsin.

A rare to the area eared grebe was seen on the Dead River this week too. It is the time to look carefully as we wait to see what else October brings.

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