WOW - The Snow and Ice

When the temperatures are below freezing, or in the single digits, for several days, things freeze up pretty fast. A little snow can stay around for days, recording the goings of any creature that walks through it. Even birds can leave tracks larger than their footprints. I don't know what bird left these wing prints, but I hope it was successful in either catching some prey or escaping from a predator.

 Kentucky Lake is a large navigable waterway, so the middle stays open all the time. The diving ducks could hunt easily, but the dabblers who need shallow water had more trouble. If enough of them stayed together, they could keep a small opening in the ice from freezing over, just by swimming around. They often stayed with the geese who are bigger and better as ice breakers.

I worried about the Great Blue Herons who hunkered down a the edge of the ice trying to fluff up and keep warm. Other parts of the lake, miles away, might have some open shallow water, but not the herons by the state park.

A group of Sandhill Cranes landed at the Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge to graze for a while, joined by a flock of geese. The Refuge is surrounded by privately owned property and the owners set up private hunting clubs, so we heard gunshot throughout the day. Some of the decoys are very elaborate and must cost a bunch. These hunters aren't allowed to bait a field with grain, but if they leave extra corn out the rest of he year, the waterfowl know to look there in winter, not realizing that they may get shot on one side of the road, but not on the other.

The native hunters aren't restricted and can hunt where ever they like. Our group saw a coyote casually strolling across the ice. Bald Eagles sat on the ice looking for a wounded duck to catch. We heard stories from some of the birders who had seen bobcats going after ducks on the ice too.

 By Sunday, the snow was all melted, and the ice on the lake was receding quickly. It broke into regular sized floes, and made a noise similar to rustling leaves as the water beneath moved it around.

WOW Birding Festival

We like to go to winter birding festivals - usually in warm Southern climes. January has been just awful in Kentucky - temps in the single digits with ice and snow. But we saw a notice for a new birding festival in Western Tennessee, at the lower end of Kentucky Lake. It's only about a 4 hour drive, assuming the weather cooperates, and the two speakers are some of our favorite people. Brian "Fox" Ellis does historical re-enactments of John James Audubon, Charles Darwin and others. This weekend he would attend as Audubon. Julie Zickefoose is an Ohio birding expert, bird rehabber, artist, author and singer! With stars like this we couldn't resist signing up for Wings in Winter at Paris Landing State Park.

For the pre-festival day, we signed up to go to Cross Creeks NWR, near Dover, TN. Of course, it was covered with snow and ice, and although there were birds, they were usually so far away you couldn't distinguish them well with just binoculars. However, the sun was bright (and me without a baseball hat in the car!) and they sky was blue, so it was the best day of the weekend. When the ducks got spooked by something, Julie gave us all wonderful lessons in duck identification on the wing. For example, the Gadwall is a plain looking gray bird with floating on the water. In flight though, it's almost entirely white. You can easily pick out the Pintails by their pointy tails in flight. And Northern Shovelers are mostly rusty on the bottom.

 Many of us were surprised to see good numbers of American Pelicans grouped on the sandbars. Then one took off and flew right over our heads!

Of course, the Bald Eagle numbers have rebounded in the last 25 years or so, and many of them either reside or come to winter on Kentucky Lake. We saw them perching in the trees, or sliding across the ice, hoping to nab a wounded duck.

The Wildlife Refuge manages the water and crops for the benefit of birds who will come to winter, so most fields have some kind of stubble, and the birds graze looking for leftover corn or millet. It's fun to look at the tracks and try to guess what made the. Not a deer, certainly.

When the geese started casually walking towards the corn stubble, it was easy to tell what made all those tracks! Once in a while, the Canada Geese would be joined by a Snow or Ross goose or some White-fronted Geese, so we had lots of variety.

We saw things I did not expect too, such as thousands of Red-winged Blackbirds in the fields along with the Grackles. I thought they all went much farther south in the winter.

Raptor numbers were good and we saw Harriers, Red Tails, Red Shoulders and Kestrels along with the Eagles.

We did NOT expect to find an armadillo, however. In Tennessee!? It ran across the road in the snow, leaving a trail of four footprints around a dragging tail mark.