July 31, 2007


The Mississinewa Battlefield is just upriver from the Reservoir and the scene of another embarrassing period in White American history. In December, 1812, a mounted force of 600 men left Fort Greenville to extirpate the Miami Indians from the headwaters of the Mississinewa River. Two villages were destroyed before the Miamis counterattacked on December 18.
The Army was forced to return to Greenville, along with 74 hostages, at least half women and children, forced to walk in the bitter winter cold. Records indicate at least 300 soldiers were frostbitten, but make no note of the Miamis.
William Henry Harrison, future President, returned in 1813 and drove the Miamis from their homes throughout the area, to Lafayette, where he defeated Tecumseh, one of the greatest leaders and statesmen of all time.
Know these villages were not tepees by the river. The river was a freshwater source.
These "savages" lived in framed houses with shingled roofs in platted villages, planted and cultivated hundreds of acres, and had central, communal grain storage.
Verily.
Their legacy is several miles of road on the east side of the Mississinewa. And a giant celebration each October.
Mostly, the road is quiet, pleasant, and a nice place to walk. Driving west to the area this morning, I nearly passed a red tail hawk on a post. By the time I braked he had left for higher places. Looking up into a bright morning sun, the hawk was nearly translucent, absolutely beautiful.
He circled, coming to a near dead stall into the west breeze, all but glowing in the sun. And he circled, and went into trees to the south.
The road along the river was a bust, but very pleasant.
Went north several miles to cross Grant Creek (why not?) and continued towards SR 13.
There is a model airplane flying field, very well decked out and maintained two miles west of Grant Creek. No one there, so I stopped to let Abbe run. The shade was in the driveway, and I parked there.
After a couple minutes I noticed a raptor perched on a lot marker, two feet high, 40 yards to the west. Very soon the little bird began cruising the air field, very low, and in the next 30 minutes displayed every description of a Northern Harrier.
Except the bird had two dark vertical stripes on her head. Definitive.
Maybe American Kestrels do this all the time, perch low, swoop low along an open field, landing several times.
Her behavior was so enjoyable, so entertaining to watch, it never for a moment occurred to be disappointed she wasn't a harrier.
In fact, it was more than satisfactory to learn about this behavior from a kestrel.

Later, That Same Day

Last evening I took a round-trip a few miles west, which has become a bit of routine the last couple months. The birdless monotony was broken by an American Kestrel within about 100 feet of a house, a rarity in my (limited) experience. A hawk flew back east across the same house last week, and, as I watched, I was offered assistance from a goodly resident, so I was loathe to again linger.
Just around the next corner, a red tail hawk flew over the road, and my windshield, low. And mobbed by fifteen LBJ's - Little Brown Jobs. What's a red tail so beset to do? Fly into some trees, where I lost sight, and where the LBJ's wheeled off, allowing me to tally them.
Returning, I noted the kestrel, moved now, even closer to a house just up the road.
North across IN SR 18 and headed back east, I found 13-14 barn swallows. Superb flyers. Scribble on a sheet of paper, hand it to barn swallows as a flight plan, and they will zag every zig. It befuddles one to find any logic, but they surely and absolutely know their business, and never even brush each other.
This evening I retraced the route, without the kestrel, red tail, or barn swallows. Miami CR E1200S crosses little Sugar Creek, a trib of Honey Creek, and on the north side there is a pool about the size of your house, sans garage. In that pool, with no particular place to go, are carp in the 2, 3, even 4-pound range.
When the wind is down, I always stop and watch, suppressing bad thoughts from my childhood concerning carp.
While I was looking at them this evening, a bird crossed the road in a flash of underside white and landed low on a wire fence. The bird recrossed the road and landed on a soybean stalk (!), then flew back to the fence. Intrepid as always, armed only with my little Nikons, in the gloaming, I crept ever closer (uhm, in my truck), until the bird had had enough.
Based on subsequent research, that bird was an Eastern Kingbird, a First!, bringing my lifelist to, maybe, 43.
I chose to follow Sugar Creek to the next downstream bridge (on Miami Co. S700E). At the intersection, an Indigo bunting did a dead dive from 18 feet, flared his wings, and alit in a cut wheat field with nary a dustmote.
Falcons of America, notably the Peregrine (poster child to curb DDT) and the gyrfalcon, do what is most inelegantly called a "stoop". (Other falcons do this, including the Prairie Falcon, but I am more conversant with the Peregrine and the gyr.) The falcon climbs in circles to an altitude of 1000 feet and more, then actually powers into a dive (the stoop), assisted by the 32 feet/second/second pull of gravity to speeds absolutely unheard of in the non-mechanized world, and strikes prey on the wing. Prey may be up to 7X, 8X, or even 10X, the weight of the falcon.
Somehow the falcon manages to bear the full force of this magnificent power dive onto its prey, with minimal, or no, shock to itself.
How a bird can possibly do the calculus, without a computer, choose the correct altitude, the power to apply to the stoop, then calculate in full power dive the prey's location, speed, and thus extrapolate the exact point of impact, and instantaneously decelerate at and through that point, is much too much for a birdbrain to even consider.
Walking my dogs early one morning, I caught sight of a pigeon overhead, truckin', 20 -25mph, and he flies up under the eave of a granary, full speed, until he's like five feet away, throws up his wings, and sticks it. On the ledge, two point, not even a correction shuffle.
Birds are pretty cool. And the show is free.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Got an early start today (okay, 7:30, but I was going to a boxstore, and the anticipation woke me early) and went to Lost Bridge at Salamonie Reservoir. There's a marshland area on Lost Bridge West Road I wanted to photograph. The lighting wasn't the best, so I put it off. Also, I forgot my camera.
Did get to report a water leak at the shelter at Lost Bridge East. Ever the public servant.
The marsh isn't really, but it is out of the ordinary. Hoping it will make a real photograph, and will post it (them), if, you know, I figure out how, and remember my camera.
The three major rivers in North Central Indiana (the Wabash, Salamonie, and Mississinewa, all Miami Indian names) flow northwest into the reservoirs, then turn to the southwest, generally along US 24. This displays that Bedrock Rules, despite the geomorphological manifestations of 4 periods of glaciation. The rivers are steered by the Cincinnati Arch, a feature trending from Cincinnati to Chicago, low on the ends and high in the middle. Petroleum migrates to the highest area of a (subsurface, or bedrock) formation, hence the Texas oilman's axiom, "Always drill updip".
The Cincinnati Arch is why there is a Wells County, in Indiana, and a Gas City, and a Petroleum, and a Wellsburg.
And there are thousands of capped oil and, mostly, natural gas wells in the Northeast and Central Indiana area. The Arch trends northwest, defined by US 24, and most (but not all) wells tend to be south. There are wells to the north, which have much less sulphur, and are still in production. The Tethys River canyon is also a manifestation of the arch, and a prehistorical, huge, river. The glacial till has been scoured from the Tethys at Wabash, leaving massive sculpted river features the Wabash River could never have produced.
The result is you drive west, but mostly south from the tailwaters of one reservoir to the next's headwaters.
I went from the Salamonie State Forest (no, Cooper's hawk magic wasn't working) to the east edge of Mississinewa with nothing of note, except, you know, how far south it was. In the farmlands of my Indiana, everything is a grid, lining out the land-grant sections. Any diagonal, like the reservoirs, is mystical, unfathomable.
I get to the Grant Creek bridge, hoping to catch a glimpse of the kingfisher, known to return to familiar spots. Instead, there is a Great Egret, standing stock still, hip-deep in the ponded water. And with the words of some newly arrived fishermen, I move enough to find three more egrets in a dead tree, and a Great Blue Heron, probably taking fishing lessons.
I am not worthy...

Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Today dawned - well, at 10am - with thick clouds, like it was raining somewhere(s), and might here.
There is a small creek (Grant's Creek) flows into the headwater area of Mississinewa Reservoir.
At summer pool, it is the reservoir, standing water, little bridge, creek bottomland, and a high vertical bluff at the confluence - dizzying, by glacial till standards. Grant's Creek bridge is the easternmost extent of Mississinewa windshield birding, and a true destination, about 2 hours round-trip if one wishes to note the iridescent blue of the Indigo bunting when passing one perched on a wire.
On the reservoir they plant three crops: corn, soybeans, and sunflowers. Much of the corn is left to stand, I assume for deer forage. A further guess is the soybeans are harvested as cashcrop, but a real consideration is crop rotation, as legumes fix nitrogen in the soil.
The sunflowers are another story. Names are submitted to the IDNR (Indiana Department of Natural Resources) and drawn for firing-line positions for the annual September 1 & 2 Dove Hunt. Mourning doves are shot as they fly in to feed on the heads.
If you have ever driven by a full-flower sunflower field, you have noted they acknowledge the passing of the sun, fully facing Sol from morning to evening. Dependent on time of day, every flower in the field is facing the same direction. The larger the field, the more arresting the phenomenon, and the beauty.
But this morning they were all facing down, a most fitting commentary on the weather.
And I hadn't seen a bird. A few Northern Cardinals, which are both extraordinarily beautiful and easy to identify, a one-two combination impossible to ignore. (I read about a bird woman from England who was dumbfounded by the complacency her host showed to a cardinal, and said, more or less, "You must understand: in England, we have no red birds, and nothing at all this brilliant. If this bird showed up back home, cars would be backed up for miles to see it.")
As I drove over the bridge, I caught sight of that magnificent head: a belted kingfisher. As I watched she sailed upstream, mere inches off the water. Trip saved.
I turned around and came back minutes later. She was perched on a salient, a knobbed stick about 18 inches above the water. She allowed herself to be viewed for fifteen or so seconds, then left in some hurry. As she left, I noted the rufous underwing marking she a she. I decline juvenile, respectfully.
Red Bridge is located 4 - 5 river miles upstream from Mississinewa Dam. Just around the corner is a small stand of trees. On the south side of the road (Wabash Co. W950S) is a dense wooded area. On several occassions I have observed an accipter in the tallest dead tree on the east end of the little stand.
I would have bet even-money on A. striatus, but identification is an antonym of guess.
Driving towards the intersection, I see a form on a branch hiding behind a stick (Bare Naked Trees would be a great rock-band name, but you would probably hear from Bare Naked Ladies and Screaming Trees). So I'm glassing this bird for 5 minutes.
Okay, I do not ever intend to disturb the birds, but it seems I usually (always?) do. A lack of morphological accumen is the problem, but how else acquire that knowledge?
Reading the books and guides is essential, but, armed only with this information, good luck with that first American Robin.
So I waded in wearing clown shoes, but with the most unanticipated results. The bird made a series of high, almost plaintive cries: meuw, meuw, meuw. And the call is answered from the thick woods. And the female (much the larger, which is always a problem with raptor ID for a novice - me) flies across the road and takes a perch, the male retracing her route within seconds.
Okay, I was stunned (and awed, and overwhelmed, and blessed). The birds continued to call, the female moving about in a state so agitated even I figured it out. And headed home.
Later, as I checked books to find the meuw call, I noted that sharp-shinned hawks nested well into August. I had found a nest.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 9:47 PM

Lately I have spent some time driving around the reservoirs, spotting hawks (why I'm driving) and birds that interest me (mostly indigo buntings, goldfinches, bluebirds, and anything I don't recognize - and barn swallows, which are among the very best flyers in the universe).
In the past, I have spent hours running in the Salamonie State Forest, both the road and the fire trails.
Late this morning I was driving the same road, much of which is canopied by trees, and on a little uphill curve, there is a Cooper's Hawk, standing on a kill, on my right bumper. She flew across my windshield into the trees, about 15 yards into the woods, allowing me to make a positive ID.
I have some guilt about windshield hawking, not actually communing with nature, but driving around looking at stuff, like a tourist on a schedule, and I come on this magnificent bird, renowned for its reticence, who sticks around for minutes while I stare agape and stare ("gather information" sounds like someone who actually knows what he/she is doing).

I'd just love to have one to fly. She is an accipiter, one of only three hawks in Indiana (predominately two: the goshawk is rare) to take birds on the wing.

Apprentice falconers in Indiana can't capture and fly Cooper's hawks. They (hopefully, soon, we) are "limited" to red tail hawks and American Kestrels. I assume this is because of their relative abundance - come on by, I'll show you several of either.
But this is a very good thing.
Red tail hawks are just awesome, the largest resident hawk in most eastern states, tame by every standard, easy to train, and can feed a family of four, with due diligence.
On the other hand, the kestrel is a true falcon, more than capable of taking small birds (safely, up to a grackle) on the wing.
It is truly a winner's choice: big bird, big game, or little bird, lives in the house, takes sparrows out the car window.
The great thing about falconry is the birds are always better hunters after training than before. For instance, a kestrel may be satisfied with insects (scarce in winter) and is then taught to take down birds, in its capacity. A red tail dependent on road kill, to its constant endangerment, is taught to hunt fields and open range. The point is, rather than being "domesticated", the raptors are taught that there are no limits to their skills. (This obsevation does not ignore the need for "hacking", weaning wild birds fron dependence on their human providers.)
This is the apprentice's safety net. If the bird doesn't want to be a part of the process, you can release it, knowing it is better for the encounter.
And get another.
Win-win.

Windshield Hawker

My interest in birds was derailed last spring when I couldn't find a sponsor to further my interest in falconry - to house and nurture a raptor and witness the awesome beauty of a hawk or falcon taking prey (meals).

A health problem mixed in, limiting my hours-long walks to minutes.

My interest was somehow rekindled, and mostly, dropped my speed limit from 50 mph to 15.

And the world opened up.

There are 3 flood-control reservoirs lined up across north-central Indiana. There are roads and roads. I began looking for hawks along the roads, and found many.

There are many American Kestrels, our smallest falcons, and red tail hawks, our largest buteos.

What I have seen on the local roads in just a few short weeks is overwhelming.

My purpose is mutual education, to encourage any level of interest in birds, and to inform the most basic and the most extraordinary observations, often limited by the windshield.