4/15/11
The black asphalt of the newly laid road was as dark as the night sky. The gibbous moon was bright. So bright in fact that, once I had slipped beyond the glowing fingers of the orange lights of the train station, the night road ahead of me was lit so well that the shadows of gravel was discernable, made the new steel shoulder rails shimmer electric blue, and gave the street paint an ethereal hue. I felt like I was proceeding down some magic causeway and, despite the darkness, of the good and welcoming kind… or maybe it was of the menacing type beckoning me forward but nothing bad happened so I’ll assume the first. As I approached the area where I’d set for the night, the smell of skunk became more and more poignant. Luckily it never got any stronger and it showed (or smelled) the hallmarks of having been several hours old. Occasionally the rustle of leaves indicated the presence of some mammalian life and I often held my breath and hoped it wasn’t the perpetrator of the former smell. It proved a tame natured company. From the nearby marsh came the faint continuous chirping of some frog species.
Birds were not strong in accompanying my morning ritual of putting the phone alarm on snooze. Lacking in woodpeckers it seems there was only a handful of Blue Jays (Cyanocitta cristata) and Tufted Titmice (Baeolophus bicolor) greeting the warm, cloudless morning. I decided that I would explore the area near Ogden Dunes township, the much smaller west section of the national park. In order to get there I had to trek along the road and tracks at the south shore of Long Lake which prevented me from simply walking in, unless of course I was willing to take a swim. The hike revealed some field sparrows (Spizella pusilla) searching for nibbles in the cause way between the tracks and the wall of cat tails (Typha latifolia) and Pragmites (Phragmites australis) at the edge of the lake. It also briefly revealed a Sora (Porzana carolina) doing it’s characteristic descending trill.
Soon I rounded the lake on a road leading into the park area. Every few yards I walked, American Coots (Fulica americana) flew away from the lake edge. Coots, unlike ducks, actually rise out of the water and skitter along
the surface to take off. Several times I tried to capture this in photos but failed either because I reacted too slowly, they were pretty fast in their flight reaction, and or the photos were a blur. It was also along here I found a Belted Kingfisher (Ceryle alcyon) and, I got excited about this one, a Great Egret (Ardea abla)! I tried to get a photo of the last one but sadly it gracefully lifted off before I was even aware of its presence, glided into a nearby growth of cattails and disappeared. I was unable to relocate it.
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