A Swainson’s thrush looks on. (Scot Stewart photo)

“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

In another seasonal twist, Autumn marches in this Sunday at 8:43 a.m. With a number of new high temperature records in the book this past week across the Upper Peninsula, it seems like summer was just literally getting up a head of steam, ready to prove it really could do it. The temperatures are set to get back to autumn levels again, ironically on Sunday as autumn starts. Daytime highs are predicted to remain below 70F through the following week.

The change of seasons comes as the tilt of the earth brings the direct rays of the sun back over the Equator, bringing the length of daytime and nighttime to nearly equal in most places. In Marquette there will be twelve hours, eight minutes and 47 seconds of daylight that day, a bit more than twelve hours because the city is slightly above the 45th degrees of latitude and days farther north have been longer than those closer to the equator. Days will continue to shorten until the winter solstice December 21 when the day will have 8 hours, 34 minutes and 10 seconds of daylight.

The length of daylight has a huge impact on wildlife, like migrating birds, but also on other animals like amphibians. In the past few days there have been a number of spring peepers calling in the woods around south Marquette, as the length of daylight comes close to that of the spring equinox bringing the frogs to the conclusion it be spring. Under similar presumptions, ruffed grouse are sometimes heard drumming in September too. In Chippewa County near Paradise, a male spruce grouse has been observed displaying for several females recently.

Fall bird migration is hugely set into motion by the decreasing amount of daylight starting in mid-August for some birds. Because there is not the same rush to find a suitable summer range and raise a family or two, the southward movement of migrants is much more casual, and some birds will wait until October to make their big push.

Migrants strategies vary from species to species with many songbirds and some larger birds like waterfowl and cranes traveling in larger flocks with juveniles. Some birds like loons and plovers will make their travels separately, with adults leaving first and young birds later.

A few places are seeing some huge numbers of migrants, and birds grouping into areas where they prepare to leave, called staging areas. One of the biggest reported this fall is on the east side of the Cleveland Cliffs Basin two miles east of Limestone in Alger County has turned into one of the best birding hotspots in the area. A report last Wednesday morning included over 1,000 ducks, mostly mallards and blue-winged teals and other dabblers, 200 Canada geese, 32 trumpeter swans, 14 American white pelicans, a pair of ospreys and a pair of bald eagles in the twenty-five species listed.

Sandhills cranes typically began to gather in open areas like farm pastures and agricultural areas in the Chatham area as well as several areas in the eastern counties in mid-September. These staging areas allow families to gather prior to their departure south for the winter. Some may head to a large fall stopping area in northern Indiana at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area where over 8000 will remain into late fall. There they feed in corn and soybean fields where grains have been harvested during the daytime and gather in wetlands to spend the night. Eventually most sandhill cranes will head to Florida and New Mexico for the winter.

The Cleveland Cliff Basin is just north of Trout Lake, a narrow spring-fed lake, split by the Trout Lane Road south of Limestone. Because it is spring-fed, the lake usually has open water all winter attracting varying numbers of trumpeter swans to overwinter. As the trumpeter swan population in the U.P. has grown, more swans have been seen in the open waters of the U.P. in winter, including the Manistique River and on and off at other sites like the Dead River in Marquette.

While some mallards do overwinter in places like Marquette on the Dead and Chocolay Rivers and Lake Superior where waters remain open, most migrants and nearly all the other dabbling ducks moving through the area will head farther south to places where there is shallow open water all winter.

Whitefish Point has continued to also be a great birding spot this fall. Fifty-one species were found there during a three-hour walk at the point last Tuesday. The list also supports the idea dabbling ducks, grebes, loons, black-bellied plovers (the last of the shorebirds to migrate through the area), and sparrows are on the move. Five species of ducks, ten red-necked grebes, a dozen red-throated loons, and seven species of sparrows were seen on the morning. A blue-gray gnatcatcher was also found.

In Marquette, a nice flock of thrushes was seen working through the trees near the gazebo on Presque Isle Tuesday. Most appeared to be Swainson’s thrushes, but hermit and gray-cheeked thrushes are often seen with migrating thrush flocks too.

One big sign of fall to come will be Ontario’s Winter Finch Forecast. Compiled after surveying winter bird food supplies of birch catkins, conifer cones, and mountain ash crops in Ontario, it provides a reliable look at what to expect across southern Canada and the northern tier of the Lower 48 for finches, grosbeaks, waxwings and other winter wanders. Fall is here!

Scot Stewart is naturalist at the MooseWood Nature Center, a writer and photographer.