Common Gallinule

2018 has been designated “The Year of the Bird” by the National Audubon Society, National Geographic, BirdLife International, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Perhaps 2018 in Columbia County should be designated “The year of the Common Gallinule.”

This is a bird of multiple common names, and ornithologists have been rather indecisive about which to stick with. Drew Weber explains: "In the late 1800’s, the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) referred to this species as the ‘Florida gallinule’, but then in 1923 lumped it in with the Old World’s ‘common moorhen’. For some reason, even after the lump, the AOU kept the name as Florida gallinule for quite a few years, but then switched it over to ‘common gallinule’, and then finally in 1982, referred to it officially as the ‘common moorhen’." Then, in 2011 the AOU renamed it back to the common gallinule. However, many birders still like to call it the common moorhen. So, you pick.

Hey, nice legs! Photo by Ken Schneider

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology states “the common gallinule swims like a duck and walks atop floating vegetation like a rail with its long and slender toes. This boldly marked rail has a brilliant red shield over the bill and a white racing stripe down its side. It squawks and whinnies from thick cover in marshes and ponds from Canada to Chile, peeking in and out of vegetation.”  It is in the rail family and lives in the same wetland habitats as American coots, but is more secretive, living in dense vegetation.

Sam Robbins wrote in Wisconsin Birdlife – Population & Distribution – Past and Present that “the common moorhen, formerly called the common gallinule, was a fairly common summer resident in eastern Wisconsin with larger concentrations at Horicon and Green Bay.”  Common gallinules are more common in the southern states and are a treat for bird watchers to find in Wisconsin.  Usually they are heard and not seen.

Common gallanule ranges. Courtesy of AllAboutBirds.com

Their breeding range is interesting, geographically. They frequently breed in the Great Lakes region, but scarcely in the states south of the Great Lakes until the deep South. We're lucky to have them breed in our part of the state!

The first Breeding Bird Atlas from 1995–2000 reported common moorhens as confirmed in 28 atlas blocks including three in Columbia County. In the second Breeding Bird Atlas, common gallinules have been confirmed in 39 atlas blocks including 9 in Columbia County. Common gallinules have been confirmed mostly at larger wetland complexes including the Baraboo River and Schoeneberg Marsh Waterfowl Production Areas, Mud Lake, and Grassy Lake State Wildlife Areas, at a 400 acre wetland that is part of the Wetland Reserve Program, and at Goose Pond Sanctuary.

Brand Smith looking for gallinule nests. Note he is sitting in the front of the canoe, moving slowly to spot movement in the vegetation. Photo by Mark Martin

We are finding more common gallinules in the Atlas project in Columbia County thanks to Brand Smith, who likes to atlas by canoe. Brand has confirmed gallinules in seven blocks and has found five nests and five broods, more than anyone in the state the past four years. At one marsh he found 16 adults, two broods, and one nest. In the first Atlas only five nests were found.

Common gallinule nests are tricky to find! Photo by Brand Smith

Common moorhens or common gallinules have been on the Goose Pond Bird List for decades but were not common until this summer when Daryl Christensen reported five calling males in mid-June. Daryl’s colleague and member of the “Grebe Team”, Sumner Matteson, confirmed the first brood for Atlas II in July along the south edge of Goose Pond in a small area of open water visible from Prairie Lane.

Stop by Goose Pond this summer to see if you can catch a glimpse of these elusive birds. You'll know them by their bright red bill, long yellow legs, and charcoal-colored plumage.

By Mark Martinand Susan Foote-Martin, Goose Pond Sanctuary resident managers

Indigo Bunting

Indigo bunting photo by Kelly Colgan Azar

The Indigo Bunting, cerulean on its body and a brilliant indigo on its head, enjoys brushy early successional habitat throughout Wisconsin. These birds settle into the summer breeding season with the blooming Blephilia, exploding onto the scene with the blue spiderwort. Blue is a rare color in the matrix of communities and animals calling southern Wisconsin home. Bellflower, spiderwort, bottle gentian, and the alien roadside chicory are some of the few plants with blue blooms.

Indigo Bunting by Jim Hudgins, US Fish and Wildlife Service

But the indigo is not truly blue. The bird does not have blue pigment, but rather refracts blue light. If you hold a bunting feather facing the sun, you will see, the dull brown color of melanin. If instead the sun comes from behind the feather, microscopic structures will refract that unmistakable cerulean back toward you.

Indigo buntings use stars as more than just plumage enhancement. Besides refracting the sun's rays, the birds also use the stars to orient themselves during migration. The behavior is learned, as a sort of map from other buntings. Researchers discovered this by studying indigo buntings in a planetarium versus a natural setting under the night sky.

Another extraordinary feature of the bird is that they have worked around brown-headed cowbird nest parasitism. Indigo buntings will abandon their nest if cowbirds parasitize it, or they will build over the cowbird egg. They will readily re-nest and will sometimes nest late enough to avoid the cowbird breeding season and thus avoid parasitism. 

You can find plentiful indigo buntings throughout Faville Grove this summer, especially in the Ledge Savanna off of Prairie Lane. Come see them for yourself!

By Drew Harry, Faville Grove Sanctuary land steward

Marsh Wren

Video/audio by brevardjay (YouTube)

Many visitors to Goose Pond this spring and summer were rewarded by hearing the rich harsh staccato with few pure musical notes of the marsh wrens around the edges of the pond. 

Sam Robbins wrote “In summer this is a “fun bird” to see and hear. You can stand near a cattail marsh before dawn, after dusk, or even in the middle of the night, and hear the delightful rattle of the “long-bill”. Once it is light, you can see considerable activity as the nervous birds move around.”

Marsh wrens, formerly called long-billed marsh wrens, can be confused with sedge wrens. The easiest way to separate the two is by knowing their preferred habitat. Marsh wrens live in deep or shallow cattail or river bulrush marshes while sedge wren nest in sedge meadows and wet to mesic prairies.

Photo by Mick Thompson

Most marsh wren nests are 2–5 feet above the ground and are dome-shaped, with strips of cattail, sedges (bulrush), and grasses woven together. The nest is oblong with a small hole at the top and an enclosed cup at the bottom. The nest is about 7 inches tall and 5 inches wide. Females line the active nests with strips of grass, sedge, cattail down, feathers, and rootlets. Clutches can range between 3-10 brown spotted eggs and the incubation/nesting period is 25 to 31 days long.

A marsh wren nest is well hidden in the cattails. Photo by Graham Steinhauer

Males migrate north before females and build a number of nests in preparation for their arrival. Once the females arrive, the male escorts the lady he is courting to his various nests, putting on quite a display of bowing, bobbing, and showing off his tail and his handiwork. The female selects a mate and she may build her own nest if his nests do not suit her. Together, they defend their nesting territory, and even destroy the eggs and nestlings of other marsh wrens and nesting birds. Males often mate with multiple females in the area (does he take these ladies on the same tour of his collection of nests that the previous female dismissed as inadequate?).

Our goal this year was to confirm marsh wrens nesting at Goose Pond. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources staff Daryl Christensen and Sumner Matteson found 10 males calling in mid-June while surveying for eared grebes, but unlike some other bird species (like eared grebes), marsh wrens cannot be confirmed by seeing the birds carry nesting material. A pair can build a number of “dummy” nests, and in fact, researchers have found that male marsh wrens may build up to 22 nests!

The first week in July, Goose Pond manager Mark Martin, land steward Graham Steinhauer, and interns Siena Muehlfeld, Tanner Pettit, and Henry Weidmeyer searched for marsh wrens on the north side of the pond. This was a new experience for the interns and they thought it would be easy to confirm nesting for the Breeding Bird Atlas project. It started out strong: six males were found calling in a two-acre area.

Henry, Tanner, and Graham search through river bulrush in knee-deep water on the north side of Goose Pond. The quest: marsh wren nests. Photo by Mark Martin

When the first of 12 nests was found the interns thought that the species was confirmed. Mark mentioned that marsh wrens build many nests, so a confirmed nest has to contain eggs or young. Since one cannot see into the nests, and Mark recommended they gently poke a finger through the entrance hole and see if eggs or young could be felt. At nest #10, Tanner found a nest with 3 eggs – a new confirmed species at Goose Pond! And those six singing marsh wrens? Tanner noted that “nests were always found near singing males.”

The federal breeding bird surveys conducted in the United States from 1966 to 2015 found an increase in marsh wren numbers by 130% and researcher estimated their population at 9.7 million, putting them in to the category of "low conservation concern." However, draining and filling wetlands and marshes could create problems for this species. Conservation Biologist Randy Hoffman said that the largest numbers of marsh wrens in North America is found at Horicon Marsh, which is also the largest cattail marsh in North America.

We are still on the look-out for marsh wren nests, as there's still time for nestlings to grow big and strong enough to make the fall migration to Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. On July 24, Daryl and Sumner checked on our wetland birds and found six males still calling and observed males carrying bulrush leaves to the arrowhead for constructing nests. Will we have another chance to gently poke our fingers into nests and find more eggs? Stay tuned to find out!

Written by Mark Martin and Susan Foote-Martin, Goose Pond Sanctuary resident managers, and Brenna Marsicek, director of communications

Cover photo by Arlene Koziol

American White Pelican

If I were a bird, I might choose to be an American white pelican. One of North America's largest flying birds with a wingspan up to 9 feet and weighing up to 30 pounds, the white pelican strikingly floats through the skies at Faville Grove on warm summer days, riding thermals above the Crawfish River. If the American white pelican were a drink, it might be a piña colada—like the pelican in Wisconsin, this festive white drink is seen only in summer; is tipped with a cute umbrella, not unlike the jovial horny knob that adorns breeding male pelicans. In addition, you wouldn't dare have more than one piña colada for fear of overdoing it, and pelicans around Faville Grove exhibit similar constraint, floating by lazily, rocking through the sky and showing off their black wing tips, only to evaporate minutes later, their white bodies fizzling into the hazy sky.

Photo by Arlene Koziol

White Pelicans nest in colonies, and are almost always found together in groups—called a pod, pouch, squadron, brief, or scoop. The communal nature of the birds continues as they hunt. On rivers, lakes, and ponds, white pelicans will circle together and gradually enclose this circle, until the minnows they have been chasing are contained in a frenzied cloud and the pelicans can feast on this buffet. In Wisconsin, the most important fish in the diet of pelicans includes gizzard shad and emerald shiners.

Their high protein diet of fish likely allows these birds to reach such enormous sizes, though they won't typically take fish longer than half the length of their beak and minnows are the most common prey item. Unlike the brown pelican, which can be seen along coastal areas of North America diving for prey, the American white pelican only reaches down and scoops just below the surface, and thus the birds use shallow water to their advantage. It's also a myth that pelicans store fish in their pouch on their beak; rather, this is used when they regurgitate fish they've eaten and feed it to their young.

Photo by Arlene Koziol

In studies of pelican activity budgets on wintering grounds, it was found that white pelicans on lakes and rivers spent about 28% of their day fishing and 72% loafing, making a work day just under 7 hours with no added time for meals. Other free-loading pelicans overwintering in the south have discovered catfish aquaculture farms, and these birds were found to spend 4% of their day fishing and 96% loafing, for a work day of just under an hour!

The pelican was a rare sight in Wisconsin for most of the 20th century, and what a delight it is to have this bird back in the state. Breeding in Horicon Marsh and Green Bay since the mid 1990's, the birds we see likely range from Horicon for daily foraging trips to ponds, lakes, and streams. They're also common along the Mississippi River valley.

The biggest causes of mortality for pelicans are being shot, flying into power lines, and getting trapped on fishing line. Traditional breeding grounds are centered on the prairie pothole region of the Midwest and Canada, and damage occurred to the population throughout the 20th century with the continued drainage of wetlands and the advent of DDT. Since the banning of DDT and other environmental regulations, the American white pelican has slowly rebounded continent-wide.

Photo by Arlene Koziol

Breeding birds find islands within wetlands or rivers and place a nest on the ground, usually a few bill lengths from neighboring birds to avoid being pecked. The breeding birds are quite sensitive to human disturbance, and thus remote areas far from human disturbance are common nesting sites. Lacking a brood patch (the patch of bare skin that forms on many birds while they incubate), the pelicans instead incubate with their feet.

It never fails to amuse me when I point out pelicans in the sky, and someone responds “we have pelicans here?” Indeed we do, and how fun it is to watch them forage through the ponds of southern Wisconsin; how fun it would be to loaf as a pelican does.

Written by Drew Harry, Faville Grove Sanctuary land steward

Cover photo Photo by Arlene Koziol
 

Goose Pond's Butterfly Count

A beautiful day for a butterfly count! MAS Photo

Monday, July 2 was a sunny day, with light winds, and warm weather: perfect for meandering through Goose Pond Sanctuary's beautiful prairies and count butterflies. Butterflies are important members of the food web (they eat and are eaten) and play a significant role in pollination. Thanks to their spread of pollen from one plant to another (which ideally results in a plant successfully producing seed and a new plant), we have diverse landscapes, and a variety of foods, medicines, and materials. Some butterfly species, such as the monarch, are experiencing huge declines and this annual butterfly count helps a network of scientists to understand population changes and help make better conservation decisions. These counts are done all over the country, in roughly the same time frame to get a large-scale perspective.

Graham Steinhauer, Goose Pond Sanctuary land steward, takes a shift keeping data for the butterflies his group counts. Photo by Arlene Koziol

Goose Pond staff and volunteers participated for the fifth year in the Mud Lake North American Butterfly Count. At Goose Pond, eleven counters divided into three parties while count coordinators Karl and Dorothy Legler surveyed with four others in wooded habitat at the nearby Rocky Run State Natural Area, Mud Lake Wildlife Area, and Schoeneberg Marsh Waterfowl Production Area.

Counters choose a route to walk, and one data-keeper tracks all of the individuals and species found throughout the walk. Each group had butterfly nets, binoculars (if you turn the binoculars around it works as a great magnifying glass!), identification guides, and tally sheets. Ready, set, go, and each group walks at a comfortable pace through the prairie, calling out "Clouded Sulphur!" or "What's that one coming at you, Graham?" Within 10 minutes, you get very good at picking out the common ones, even from a few yards away. However, once in a while a counter will net a butterfly and all of the volunteers will gather round to debate whether it's a Northern or Pearl Crescent ("that patch of orange is very open, but is it open enough to be a Pearl?"). It's a wonderful way to spend a few hours with like-minded nature-lovers.

Our count's highlights were counting a record 970 butterflies and a record of 476 monarchs. In the past we averaged 545 individuals. We were disappointed to record a low of 14 species compared to an average of 17 species. In the past four years we found 24 species of butterflies on the counts. However, this year we found the only orange sulphur and five northern crescents for the Mud Lake Count, which as a whole ended up with 38 species. Both counts found high numbers of clouded sulphurs and ended with a count total of 598. Check the two tabs in the attached spreadsheet for count data. 

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The first three years we conducted the count on July 1 or 2 and counted 23 to 68 monarchs.  Last year we conducted the count on July 28 and found 344 monarchs. We always find more monarchs in late July compared to early July. The other two parties found 77 monarchs, and their past high monarch count in the past 29 years was 40 in 1991.

It was 3:30 p.m. when we finished the count on the Manthe Prairie after finding 28 monarchs on 30 acres of restored prairie. Manthe Prairie contains a low number of common milkweeds, and in hopes of finding more monarchs by the end of the day, we decided to do one survey on nearby Erstad Prairie. Erstad Prairie has a 16 acre brome grass field with about 21,000 common milkweed stems per acre (yep, that's right: over 300,000 milkweed stems), adjacent to a seven acre restoration that was burned in spring and was full of blooming flowers!

Mark Martin and Mark McGinley spent 45 minutes at Erstad Prairie and at first were not impressed since few monarchs were seen in the air. However, it did not take long to learn that the monarchs were resting in the vegetation. They found an impressive 10 mating pairs and ended with 201 monarchs! What a difference to have a high density of milkweeds.

A monarch sips nectar from a common milkweed plant during the Goose Pond Butterfly Count this summer. Photo by Gail Smith

Each fall, Madison Audubon hosts monarch tagging events at Goose Pond to improve scientists' understanding of monarch migration and population trends. Monarchs are caught in nets, and teeny-tiny stickers are placed on one wing (in the perfect spot so as to not throw off their balance and flying capabilities). Monarchs with tags continue on their migration south, and are recorded in Mexico where the vast majority overwinter. It's fun, family-friendly, and unforgettable. Accessible, mown trails pass through some of the best nectaring habitat on the sanctuary, so people of all ages and abilities are welcome.

The monarchs we found during the count will mate and lay eggs; those eggs will hatch, and the caterpillars will metamorph into adults that will lay more eggs. The adults that come from that generation are the ones we hope to tag this September. We have our fingers crossed that we will have a large monarch population in migration. If you would like to come out and net and tag monarchs in September you can sign up through the Madison Audubon website (keep an eye on madisonaudubon.org/events for registration to open in August).

The butterfly counting crew. Photo by Arlene Koziol

If you would be interested in helping count butterflies next July contact us at goosep@madisonaudubon.org.

Written by Mark Martin, Susan Foote-Martin (Goose Pond Sanctuary resident managers), and Brenna Marsicek (director of communications)