Creature Feature

“Something isn’t right here,” the woman said with a perplexed look on her face. Our group was birding Greenlawn Cemetery, and we’d just looked through an apparent group of Grackles. Most of us had already moved on, but she looked back at the Grackles, a few of which had dropped to the ground and were tussling with leaves and tree debris. “They don’t sound like Grackles,” she intoned. As it turned out, we had almost been fooled by the Midwest’s stealthiest winter resident, the Rusty Blackbird. Her initial comment was also prophetic about the species as well.

It’s one of the most recognizable symbols in conservation: the flying Great Egret, symbol of the National Audubon Society, devised when the organization was lobbying to curtail the millinery trade. Most of you have probably also seen a live Great Egret as well, but have you stopped to think about how these essentially southern birds

green and blue slivers the dragonflies whirl and dart high and low circles The above haiku is one of many about dragonflies, an insect contemplated in Asian poetry and prose for hundreds of years. But you don’t need to be haiku master Basho to appreciate these fantastic little predators. We in Ohio are blessed with

I saw the small bird out of the corner of my eye as it hovered only inches from my head, plucking insects from a budding branch. It was a ‘BTG’ or Black-throated Green Warbler; one of the more fearless migrants, and its closeness that spring morning took my breath away. Almost all local birders have

“Look. There goes another!”

“No way. How did you see that?”

“Look for the movement.”

“I certainly can’t see them when they land.”

These were snatches of a conversation I was part of as we traveled through the farmlands of Wisconsin in early Spring, running between ponds looking for waterfowl. The subject? That field will-o’-the-wisp, the Horned Lark. We’d see their ghostly forms flitting out into the fields everywhere, but it was a challenge to keep track of them, especially once they landed. This is one of the quintessential open country birds of the Midwest, a bird that livens up even the dullest open farm fields.

The Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor ) is one of our earliest, hardiest insect-eating migrants. Their scientific name means ‘swift-moving two-colored’ in reference to their quick acrobatic flight and their dark iridescent backs contrasting with their white bellies. These beautiful blue-green swallows winter in areas around the Gulf of Mexico and start heading north in late