North on the Wing

by Bruce M. Beehler

  The next morning I walked the campground circuit, which was birdy. At an empty campsite just down the loop from my own, the high, weak, slurred si-syu…si-syu…si-syu of a male Bay-breasted Warbler—quest bird number 33—sounded. This elusive creature, which I’d seen last in Texas as a passage migrant, and for which I’d searched spruce stands high and low in the far north, was here at a drive-in campground. I spent several hours the following two mornings photographing the male Bay-breast doing his territorial thing. A close relative of the Blackpoll Warbler, the Bay-breast breeds in boreal conifer forests in the northernmost sectors of the U.S. border states between Minnesota and Maine, as well as from eastern to northwestern Canada. After wintering in northern South America and the Caribbean, the Bay-breast migrates north through the eastern and central United States. It favors breeding habitat that is experiencing a spruce budworm outbreak (a phenomenon discussed later in this chapter). The male is strangely handsome, with a deep chestnut crown, throat, and flanks, a black face mask, dark-mottled upper parts, and a whitish breast. Along with the Cape May Warbler, it is a favorite of many birders. This particular male on territory flitted about, foraged, and sang incessantly from the campsite, and it brought me back onto the track of my quest: only four species of wood warblers to go!

  At Sandbar Lake, I also added a new quadruped to the trip list: Masked Shrew, identified by its brown pelage and long, brown fur-covered tail. At five grams, this was the smallest mammal I had ever encountered. Back at my campsite, I made another little friend—an Eastern Chipmunk. The little guy held my finger in its two paws to receive food and allowed me to pet him while he foraged placidly on the peanuts I handed him. Clearly, he had had experience with humans and knew about people food prior to my arrival. Such a confiding Eastern Chipmunk is hard to resist.

  I biked along a narrow path through spruce woods by a wetland. Blue Flag iris bloomed in the beaver meadow. Mountain Maples flowered throughout the open woodlands, showing off their erect spikes of pale-yellow florets. Along this path, I recorded Wood Duck, Black-backed and Hairy Woodpeckers, Swainson’s and Hermit Thrushes, Least Flycatcher, Common Raven, American Redstart, Canada, Ovenbird, Red-eyed, and Blue-headed Vireos, Swamp and Song Sparrows, and Nashville, Blackburnian, and Tennessee Warblers. I had never racked up such a long list so quickly in the far north—it was a luxury to return to such bird-rich woods. Then I biked a few miles up the main road, only to be shocked by the scale and destructiveness of logging here—even right by the roadside. I hurried back to the protected forests of Sandbar Lake.

  Bay-breasted Warbler

  RESOURCE EXTRACTION AND THE FUTURE OF CANADA’S BOREAL FORESTS

  The broad-scale logging in the Sandbar Lake area got me thinking about Canada’s boreal forests. Before my trip, I had heard about threats to this massive ecosystem, and I’d also learned of conservation initiatives to address these threats. I had read about the Canadian Boreal Conservation Framework, a partnership established in 2003 that links a dozen organizations and government departments to conserve boreal forest. Scientists from around the world, dozens of major companies, Canadian First Nations people, and Canadian and international environmental organizations now work with the program to better protect Canada’s 1.2-billion-acre boreal forest ecosystem. The goal is to preserve at least half of this forest in a series of connected reserves, which will allow the vast ecosystem to function as it should. Preserved forest will provide habitat for migrating caribou and for production of the ecosystem services that underpin the health of the hemisphere.

  The challenge, of course, is to balance adequately economic development with smart conservation action. The task is made complex by the disparate viewpoints of stakeholders in this discussion; common ground must be found among miners, loggers, pulp producers, First Nations groups, and the conservation community. Yet there has been progress: in 2010, Ontario passed the Far North Act, which set targets for strict protection and for sustainable development of 110 million acres of boreal forest. It was the first provincial-scale law in Canada to balance development with forest conservation. This bill, in addition, provides for community-based land-use planning by Ontario’s First Nations.

  Also in 2010, Canada’s forest industry and several leading environmental groups signed the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, in which timber companies agreed to temporarily suspend operations in roughly 71 million acres of forest, representing a significant portion of habitat for Canada’s threatened Woodland Caribou population. The agreement improves sustainability practices on at least 108 million acres. In all, more than 350 million acres of boreal forest in Canada are either strictly protected or have been committed for protection. Furthermore, governments have pledged to sustainably develop more than 350 million additional acres, using ecosystem-based resource management practices and state-of-the-art stewardship practices. This is heartening news, although the devil is in the details, and the negotiations will continue for decades to come.

  A nagging but unanswered question is how clear-fell logging of Canada’s boreal forests has impacted the Neotropical migrant songbirds that breed here. I suspect these landscape-wide timber extraction activities benefit some early successional species but harm those that prefer undisturbed closed forest and old-growth conifer forest. Field studies have shown that permanent resident species such as the American Three-toed and Black-backed Woodpeckers are harmed by short-rotation clear-felling that is followed by intensive silvicultural activities to enhance yield. These two special woodpeckers benefit instead from the presence of mature conifers and the effects of periodic wildfire.

  THE NORTH SHORE

  On June 23, I say goodbye to my adorable chipmunk friend and travel 278 miles from Sandbar Lake to Rainbow Falls Provincial Park. The route takes me to Ignace, Thunder Bay, Nipigon, Rossport, and then Rainbow Falls, which is near Terrace Bay. I pass an abundance of mature forested habitat but see very little wildlife—only a single Red Fox. I am now on the Trans-Canada Highway, heading east toward Ottawa. Along a stretch of highway are stands of Balsam Fir killed by a spruce budworm infestation. I cross from the catchment of Hudson Bay into the catchment of the Saint Lawrence. East of Thunder Bay, northeast toward Nipigon, Balsam Fir takes the place of White Spruce as the dominant conifer. I enter substantial and forested rolling hills, and come upon even more massive hills, buttes, and basalt cliffs on the north shore of Lake Superior. At one overlook, a spectacular vista across the north shore reveals a giant table mountain with fjordlike inlets. Toward Rossport, the north shore is very rugged, with high ridges and bays and islands—all forested and looking a bit like Nova Scotia. The giant lake to the south seems positively oceanic. Late in the day I arrive at Rainbow Falls, with its hilly landscape of Red and White Pines. The evening is cold and damp, and the black flies swarm.

  The north side of Lake Superior is largely unfamiliar to those living in the United States, who mainly know the southern shore of Lake Superior—including the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and a bit of northernmost Wisconsin—as a faraway place. Cross the giant lake due north from Marquette, Michigan, and you arrive at Rainbow Falls, where I was camped. Although I’d returned from the distant Ontario northlands, I was still well off the beaten track: the nearest city was Thunder Bay, three hours to the southwest. This is the land of long distances, few roads, and big lakes.

  Next morning, I birded around my campsite, finding Black-throated Green Warbler, Ovenbird, American Redstart, Least Flycatcher, Red-breasted Nuthatch, and Red-eyed Vireo. After breakfast I hiked to the summit of the Back Forty Overlook, which provides spectacular views to Superior’s rocky north shore and a string of rugged islands to the south and southwest: Copper Island, Wilson Island, Vein Island, and Simpson Island. The clouds blew off, blue sky took hold, and a crisp, springlike day emerged. On the rocky overlook were Nashville and Magnolia Warbler, Black-capped Chickadee, Common Raven, Swainson’s Thrush, flowering Bunchberry, Clintonia, Pink Ladyslipper, False Lily of the Valley, and Crowberry.

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nbsp; In late morning, I headed southeastward to Pukaskwa (pronounced “PUCK-a-saw”) National Park, on the northeastern shore of Lake Superior. Leaving the Trans-Canada Highway at Heron Bay, I drove south to the Ojibway First Nations community at Pic River and crossed the gravel-strewn White River to the park entrance. Right beside the road sat a rock the size of a house—presumably a supersized glacial erratic. Here spring was still in full flower: I saw a Mourning Cloak butterfly and a Canadian Tiger Swallowtail at the park entrance, as well as a Shadbush in flower, and at the visitor center, Pin Cherries blossomed brightly.

  The day transformed itself once I got to my campsite on the shore of Lake Superior. A heavy fog lay on the water and edged into the shoreline forest. It was like being on the coast of eastern Maine: chilly and dank. I was camped in a low, dense conifer forest set on shield rock next to the cold lake. White Spruce, Balsam Fir, Northern White-cedar, birch, and aspen dominated the woods. This would be home for the next few days.

  That afternoon, I took a long bike ride on the well-paved, flat roads, traveling north to Pic River. The local First Nations people living here are the Anishinaabe, a major group encompassing the Ojibwe, among others. First Nations people represent 4.3 percent of the Canadian population, versus the 2 percent that Native Americans compose of the population of the United States. As I biked around, my hands ached in the fog-chilled air. Later, back in the park, I walked to Halfway Lake and lay on a rock overlooking the water, just relaxing, which is something I had not done much of on this trip. It was peaceful, and the black flies and mosquitoes few. As I lay on a carpet of low vegetation, taking in the tranquility of it all, I heard the voices of two species, Myrtle Warbler and Common Grackle. Returning to my camp, I found a raven eating my loaf of bread. He flew off with the remnants as I approached. Over the weeks, my food stores had been raided by a Common Raven, a Raccoon, a Red Squirrel, a Red Fox, and an Eastern Chipmunk.

  The fog broke in the evening, and the blue sky opened up to make the end of the day pleasant. I heard the voices of Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Common Raven, American Crow, Magnolia Warbler, Black-throated Green Warbler, American Redstart, and Hermit and Swainson’s Thrushes. At 9:30 p.m., a Swainson’s Thrush—my musical sentinel of the boreal realm—sang in the adjacent thicket. The temperature (44°F) and the thrush were a lovely combination for heading off to dreamland.

  I rose to greet a windless, crystal-blue sky, with the temperature a bit above 40°F. Before breakfast, I biked the local roads in search of birdsong and walked the perimeter of Halfway Lake, producing good wood warblers: seven Nashville, seven American Redstart, two Mourning, a Northern Parula, a Myrtle, a Tennessee, a Magnolia, a Canada, a Black-throated Green, and a Common Yellowthroat. I had recorded ten species of warblers in a couple hours of morning birding. In sixteen days in northern Ontario, I had tallied thirteen species of warblers total (and never more than eight species in a single long day). I now had truly left the empty northlands behind.

  I encountered a female Spruce Grouse with a brood of little fuzzy brown chicks. I saw two Snowshoe Hares, both dark-pelaged except for their oversized white feet, and I managed to add two new birds to the trip list: Red Crossbill and Bank Swallow. The crossbills flew over in a tight flock, giving their kip-kip calls, and the Bank Swallows swarmed in the air beside their nesting colony in a sandy cliff cut by the White River. I found my first Northern Parula in Canada, near the northern limit of the species’ breeding range. Recall that this was the very first forest-breeding warbler I’d encountered back on the coast of Louisiana.

  Myrtle Warbler

  The hike around Halfway Lake this morning produced more sublime solitude. I was serenaded by the lonesome song of the White-throated Sparrow and a single vocal Spring Peeper. A hen American Goldeneye made ripples on the glassy lake, and silently flew off when it noticed me. An adult Common Loon came streaking high over the lake on its way somewhere.

  In the late morning, I hiked up onto the park’s open, rocky promontory, which overlooks the expanse of Lake Superior. On the flat summit, colorful plastic Adirondack deck chairs beckoned me to sit and gaze over the water. There was no hint of wind, no cloud in the sky, and the temperature was in the sixties—no intimation of summer heat or humidity here. Nearby, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, perched atop a spruce spire, sang his heart out in the full sun; this little mite is one of the rock stars of the boreal forest. A few minutes later, an adult Bald Eagle soared slowly overhead, trying to ignore several heckling gulls.

  A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GREAT LAKES

  After two nights in Pukaskwa, I rise in the 37°F dawn and head due south to Luzerne, Michigan, where I have a date with Kirtland’s Warbler. I trace the eastern flank of Lake Superior toward Sault Sainte Marie and the U.S. border. I drive from Heron Bay to White River on the Trans-Canada Highway through rolling, rocky, forested country that reminds me of the Adirondacks. A thick fog obscures the road at White River. Escaping the blanket of fog, I find more shield rock, hills, spruce, aspen, fir, and curvy roads for fun driving. Few cars pass on the road in this morning’s pleasing desolation. Stark yet beguiling, the lonely road shows me evidence of glaciation everywhere. South of Wawa, the highway runs through the heart of Lake Superior Provincial Park, very rugged and mountainous and covered in boreal forest. The roadside birdlife, mainly ravens and crows, is sparse.

  The five North American Great Lakes constitute the largest cluster of freshwater bodies on earth, holding 21 percent of the earth’s surface fresh water (excluding the planet’s ice caps). The lakes began to form during the retreat of the Wisconsin glaciation about fourteen thousand years ago. The great ice sheets carved the lake basins, which then filled with glacial meltwater. It is interesting to note that in spite of their current environmental and economic importance, the Great Lakes are not old and are in no way permanent. All lakes of the world are ephemeral. As John McPhee has written in his magisterial Annals of the Former World: “Lakes fill in, drain themselves, or just evaporate and disappear. They don’t last.” It is difficult to think of the upper Midwest without those vast, sealike bodies of water, but that may come to pass in a geological blink of the eye.

  Still, on the human time scale, the lakes are a big deal, and I was in awe wherever I came upon them. The lakes drain into the Atlantic through the Saint Lawrence River. The fresh water flows from lake to lake in a series of steps, from the highest—Superior—to the lowest—Ontario—until the water flows from that lake into the Saint Lawrence. But the details of this system are complicated. The waters of Superior flow east through the rapids of Saint Mary’s River and the Soo Locks to the North Channel of Lake Huron. Just south of Sault Sainte Marie, Lake Michigan flows east through the Straits of Mackinac, on the south side of the Upper Peninsula, into Lake Huron. At the southern tip of Lake Huron, the Saint Clair River drains south into Lake Saint Clair, and then Lake Saint Clair drains south through the Detroit River into the western end of Lake Erie. The eastern end of Lake Erie drains north through the Niagara River, down Niagara Falls, and into Lake Ontario. Finally, the northeastern terminus of Lake Ontario funnels into the Saint Lawrence, which flows eastward and northward into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and finally the Atlantic.

  Lake Superior (known as Gitchi Gami in the Ojibwe language) is the superstar among these giant bodies of fresh water—the size of Austria, it is 1,330 feet deep and holds 12,100 cubic kilometers of water. In its depths, Superior is a uniform 39°F. Because of its geographic position, the lake generates sizable waves, sometimes reaching 30 feet.

  KIRTLAND’S WARBLER

  The Smithsonian’s Pete Marra had counselled me to visit his project studying Kirtland’s Warbler in Michigan. This was the appropriate moment to do that, given my relative proximity to his field site in Luzerne, Michigan, due south of the eastern shore of Lake Superior—and four hundred miles south of Pukaskwa National Park. I crossed the international border at Sault Sainte Marie, my first encounter with a real city since my brief stop in Duluth about a month before. I suffe
red a bit of culture shock from the early afternoon’s traffic mayhem. Once in the United States, I hopped onto Interstate 75 and tore across the Upper Peninsula to the big bridge over the Straits of Mackinac, which separate Lake Michigan from Lake Huron.

  The high-speed vistas from I-75 showed lovely expanses of green meadows filled with glowing beds of Yellow Rocket, as I had seen weeks earlier in southern Missouri. Continuing south on I-75, I glimpsed a pair of Sandhill Cranes just off the highway near Gaylord. Exiting the highway at Grayling, I took Route 72 east to Luzerne, in the north-central Lower Peninsula.

  This is the thick of Kirtland’s Warbler country. I was here to visit Nathan Cooper, a Smithsonian postdoctoral researcher working on Kirtland’s in partnership with the Upper Mississippi and Great Lakes Joint Venture, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Cooper and his team of five research assistants were focused on the nesting success of the warbler, the impact of Brown-headed Cowbird nest parasitism, and the movement of the warblers from their breeding to their wintering habitats, as informed by tiny geolocator devices affixed to the birds. The team spent its field season working at several breeding sites, hunting for nests, and netting birds to recover geolocators attached to the birds the previous summer. Once they found the nests, the team followed them through the hatching and fledging cycle to check on productivity and to determine the impact of nest parasitism by the cowbird in relation to distance from active cowbird removal operations. Cowbirds have been locally trapped and removed annually since 1972 to foster higher nesting productivity by the endangered warbler.