“Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.” – Dylan Thomas

The light is slowly slipping away. With daylight savings time slipping in last Sunday, an hour of the evening light is gone. With the solstice 43 days away, what is left of the light shrinks with each day. What remains begs attention. The Upper Peninsula is in the middle of another long stretch without much sun, so each moment of daylight is precious, each moment of dazzling, direct sunlight is priceless. There is still plenty to see outside too.

Some of the best late color in the Marquette area was found last week at the Park Cemetery just north of downtown. There are three ponds located within the cemetery. These ponds are often filled with lots of mallard and Canada goose activity, but occasionally other species can be found there. Great blue herons, American wigeons and snow geese have showed up there in recent years. Last week a hooded merganser was found in the middle pond, spending nearly all its time in the northeast corner, but occasionally cruising to the west end with groups of mallards. It often took stunning poses against the reflections of blazingly bright yellow sugar maples and small ruby sparks of Japanese nettle leaves and berries along the water’s edge. Halloween was overcast, but bright giving the reflections a great deal of saturation.

The following day the sun was out, shining brightly on the trees, creating streaks of molten gold and ridges of burgundy filled with troughs of pink. By Saturday, there were three hooded mergansers. Following the same pattern of movements, the trio cruised back and forth along the north side of the pond, occasionally diving, in search of brook sticklebacks, dragonfly nymphs and other invertebrates. The whole complex of life in the pond was further livened by a muskrat crisscrossing the south side of the pond.

At Whitefish Point the fall count is down to its final week, unfortunately, because it provides the best index of migration across the eastern Upper Peninsula During this past week long-tailed duck migration continued at a good pace with 200-400 birds passing the point on multiple days. Red-breasted merganser migration also picked up with 83 on Sunday and 88 on Tuesday.

The influx of snowy owls has been slow this fall so far, but three have been reported in the past week. The first was seen near Rudyard on Nov. 1. This area has been the best place to see snowy owls during the winter months the past few years. More than 20 can often be seen atop prominent spots around the Rudyard-Pickford roads through the open country. One was reported at the Sault Locks on Saturday and a third in Marquette flying past the Superior Dome on Monday.

For Marquette, conditions are good for keeping owls in the area. There seems to be a fair number of cottontail rabbits in town currently, and with Lake Superior open, it is attractive to smaller ducks like bufflehead, long-tailed ducks and American goldeneyes and horned grebes. Waterfowl has been scarce so far in the Lower Harbor, but a few long-tails, goldeneyes and some grebes were spotted there last weekend. A shorebird, a dunlin, seen over a week ago, may have remained in the area as another was seen nearly a week later in Marquette.

The biggest news has been the influx of large flocks of American goldfinches, pine siskins and common redpolls. The central and eastern U.P. have seen the biggest flocks, with reports from both Manistique the Marquette area and continuing at Whitefish Point in Chippewa County. Smaller flocks of pine and evening grosbeaks are also being seen, both in the woods and at area feeders. Several birders have reported the evening grosbeaks have had extremely healthy appetites, cleaning out sunflower feeders quickly.

Another creature with a healthy appetite has also left its mark on the north side of Marquette. A black bear bent a feeder on Presque Isle recently and pulled it over, yanking the base out of the ground. After the stand was reset nearly a foot deeper and packed with rocks, the bear returned and snapped the iron bar to get the feeders down. The bear continued on a few nights later to visit other feeders along Island Beach Road.

One of the latter feeder stations had another visitor, this one a vagrant bird from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, a Townsend’s solitaire. A solitaire had been seen in crab apple trees at the residence back in August and early September. This new one, perhaps the same bird, was seen in the same trees for a period of days this past week making more extended visits as this past week wound on.

Solitaires also enjoy juniper “berries,” the fleshy coverings over the small cones. Wondering where else it might be feeding, a check of several juniper trees around Presque Isle revealed the berries to be immature. They require three year to mature from an olive color to a deep bluish-black. There are some juniper bushes near the high school in Marquette with a good crop of mature cones, so other locations around town could also host solitaires. It looks to be a great time to enjoy the hours of the season’s light.

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