A WONDERFULLY WACKY WINTER
Warm weather has brought some interesting sights with it
Iheard my first cacklers of the fall and winter Saturday. The sound stopped me on what has been a very weird fall and winter.
I’m not sure why cackling geese fascinate me, other than their sound. They look similar to Canada geese, but Ducks Unlimited noted: ‘‘Cackling geese have proportionally smaller, stubbier, triangular-shaped bills than their Canada goose counterparts.’’
As the Cornell Lab of Ornithology described: ‘‘Subspecies hutchinsii, also called Richardson’s goose, breeds mainly in central and eastern arctic Canada and winters in the southern Great Plains, with small numbers found in eastern North America, as well. This subspecies is paler still and usually lacks the white collar entirely.’’
It has been a wildly odd yet wonderful winter so far. Take the state of ice all over the Midwest.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources on Friday announced the cancellation — for the first time — of the Black Lake sturgeon season, explaining: ‘‘With the current marginal ice conditions and depletion of ice on Black Lake, there is concern of excessive harvest with the inability to effectively
track harvests with limited DNR personnel on the ice.’’
Some people can judge what might be happening with the mild weather. Take Bill Peak, a favorite citizen photographer of the wild world.
‘‘I finally got out for a few hours and was going to see the sandhills in Wheatfield [Indiana, near Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area],’’ he emailed Monday. ‘‘But to my surprise, while going through the Grand Kankakee Marsh County Park, I found that thousands of cranes had moved there. Every flooded farm field had thousands of cranes in them. Better yet, there was a whooping crane mixed in. I didn’t recognize the ID bands, but I think it was a new one for me.’’
You may report a sighting of whooping cranes, which are endangered, to the Whooping Crane Conservation Association at whoopingcrane.com/ report-a-sighting.
Other signs of winter weirdness and wonder pile up.
Dan Bernstein, a midday host on The Score, was out rambling this weekend and messaged on X: ‘‘Hard to get a good shot, but there are two long-eared owls at Montrose right now.’’
Christian Howe, who is laid up while recuperating, emailed Sunday: ‘‘Paying attention to little things. Little things like my grass going green and starting to grow. My tulips and daffodils starting to pop up. Swearing I heard sandhill cranes heading north today while out on the deck getting some free Vitamin D. Or the influx of robins that seem to have landed today. A confirmed sighting of a red-wing blackbird will be the icing on the cake.’’
The way things go, such a sighting this week would not stun me.
Many people have reported spring bulbs popping. On Monday, I noticed some of my wife’s have been up for so long that rabbits and squirrels already are chewing on them. Argh.
I don’t think white-tailed deer dropping their antlers is related to the warm weather, but readers report finding sheds and seeing balding bucks that have dropped antlers.
It might be related to people taking advantage of the lack of real winter to get outside, which strikes me as a good idea.
Stray cast
Talk of the White Sox and The 78 reminds me of the potential The Wetlands Initiative showed me my first time on Hennepin-Hopper lakes.