Big Water, Big Grass (or...when ignorance really is bliss)

During the first weekend of November, my parents, my aunt, my cousin, and I headed up to Maumee Bay State Park and Lodge near Toledo, Ohio to kick off the winter. It's been a tradition of ours to head north for the last hurrah of fall so we can experience Big Water, go hiking, and do a lot of laughing. Each year we tend to focus on a piece of natural history in the area, and this year it was the tall grasses or reeds that line the boardwalk in the marsh...

Behemoth grasses (Phragmites australis) line the boardwalk in the wetlands at Maumee Bay State Park. The reeds are outrageously beautiful, but the beauty comes at a price...a non-native monoculture that is choking out native plants.

Non-native Phragmites (Phragmites australis), the common reed
We had no idea what this sea of grass was as we walked through it. Down in Cincinnati we're not exposed to grasses that live near Big Water, so when we were walking through the towering reeds with their feathery plumes backlit in the late-afternoon sun, we didn't know it was a bad thing. We just knew it was breathtakingly beautiful, especially when the autumn breezes swept through the fronds, tossing them, and swirling them in one fluid motion...but unfortunately, the 15-ft tall plants are a non-native, invasive species that is slowly choking the life out of biodiverse coastal marshes and wetlands. As phragmites rushes through a wetland, it creates a monoculture in its wake, creating dense thickets that squeeze out native plants such as cattails.

A sea of common reeds is beautiful from the observation deck on the boardwalk in the coastal wetlands of Lake Erie.
If only it were supposed to be there... 

Phragmites australis, the common reed, along the Lake Erie coast.

We loved walking the boardwalk at Maumee Bay State Lodge. It winds through a wet woods that was filled with migrating White-crowned Sparrows and then pushes through an expansive marsh where Red-winged Blackbirds were gathering.

Even though the reeds have squeezed out many of the native plants, a small flock of Black-capped Chickadees didn't mind, and it melted my heart watching them flit back and forth in the reeds, chittering and calling out to each other. I wish I had had my "real" camera with me and not just my cell phone so I could have captured some of their antics.  

Native phragmites
Not all phragmites is bad. Native phragmites hugs the coastal and interior wetlands in the Great Lakes region as well. It supports our native wildlife and lays the foundation for a biodiverse habitat, but it can easily be squeezed out by the non-native form. The invasive form creates dense thickets that kill wild rice, cattails, and wetland orchids, which all grow well around native phragmites.

Click here for a post by the Great Lakes Phragmites Collaborative to help you tell native and non-native phragmites apart.

Click here for a wonderful video created by the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council that shows how to differentiate between the two types.

Click here for another site with information on phragmites and other Great Lakes Restoration projects.

Goats to the rescue?
In an article titled "The Goats Fighting America's Plant Invasion," by Joanna Jolly in BBC News Magazine (January 13, 2015), Jolly writes that marine biologist Brian Silliman of Duke University in North Carolina has been working over 20 years to figure out how to eradicate invasive phragmites. He tried insects and other forms of bio-control, but had no luck. Then after a trip to the Netherlands, he saw the plant wasn't a problem there because it was constantly being grazed by animals. Cue the goats! Silliman got to work and found goats can get the job done. In one study, 90% of the phragmites in the test area was eliminated. Click here to read the entire article.

Normally, we look for deer hiding along the boardwalk, but I would love to look for goats...


Click here for more of our Big Water (November at Maumee) posts.

White-crowned Sparrow with Snowflakes

I created this painting of a White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys) for my Dad. I've been on crutches for the past three weeks and haven't been able to get outside to fill my bird feeders. Instead, I turned our deck into one huge feeder so I can simply open the kitchen door and toss the seed out. Our deck is covered in snow and ice, so the birds must think they are on the ground. It took a day or two for them to get used to the new digs, but they love it now. When the snow and ice melt away (probably in June if the weather keeps up), it's going to be a huge mess, but until then, it's fab! My mom and dad were over the other day and we were talking when my dad noticed a new bird on the deck. It was a White-crowned Sparrow. We have a lot of White-throated Sparrows in our yard, but White-crowned Sparrows are rare. Some winters we have none, so seeing one on the deck only steps from my kitchen window was exciting. Good eye, Dad!

White-crowned Sparrow with Snowflakes, watercolor and gouache, by Kelly Riccetti

...the pencil sketch I created as a study for the White-crowned Sparrow painting. Can you see the cat paw prints? Bip did a little dance across it when I wasn't looking. Bad, Bip! Although those little paw prints do look cute...  

Earlier in January, I photographed a White-crowned Sparrow in our backyard. He was part of a mixed flock of White-throated Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, American Tree Sparrows, Northern Cardinals, and Carolina Chickadees. I'm glad I was able to photograph him then, because I haven't been able to get back out since...

The cross on the back of a White-throated Sparrow's head is a giveaway to this bird's ID. The contrast between the white and black is very noticeable and makes it easier to distinguish between White-crowned and White-throated Sparrows.

I love the warm browns, grays, and blacks on the White-crowned Sparrows wings. This bird is beautiful, and I always look forward to seeing one in our yard.

Fluffing up his feathers against the cold, this fella seems to have a spiky hairdo.  I love the side view of the head and the detail of the back feathers and wing feathers.

I painted the White-crowned Sparrow in this post in a style similar to a painting I did of a White-throated Sparrow in December--click here for that post. In both, I painted the birds in a realistic style but went whimsical with the snowflakes. (You'll probably notice the White-crowned Sparrow has more snowflakes than those in the White-throated's painting. We are getting a lot more snow now than in December! :-)

What has happened to our White-throated Sparrows?

The lilting song of “Oh Sweet Canada, Canada, Canada,” usually so ubiquitous in the spring at our house, is strangely missing, and the feel around here is empty because of it. The White-throated Sparrows usually stay around well into May, but I haven’t had any for at least three weeks. In February they were still here as described in this post of "Spring sounds are starting to pop up," but over night they vanished.

Rick took this photo last spring. This spring, the 

White-throated Sparrows have gone unaccounted for.

I don’t know if their early departure is from recent habitat destruction about a mile from our house, or if they just took flight north way, way early because they were tired of our digs. Has anyone else noticed diminished numbers, or is my yard’s population an anomaly?

I really miss these songsters. Spring is just a bit empty 

without their lovely song. I look forward to it every year!

Another bird missing from our ranks is the White-crowned Sparrow. We had a few in February, but they have disappeared early also. Their numbers are never as big as the White-throated and we only had a few popping up every now and then this winter. A couple years ago, they were regular visitors, but this year, they were more sporadic.

Rick also capture this shot last spring. No 

White Crowns have been around since February. 

A small woods was taken down in our area, and we lost 3 huge bushes around the feeders last autumn due to the drought, so maybe habitat destruction has something to do with it. Are they sensitive to Starlings? We had a very large flock move in late winter. The other birds don't seem to mind, but maybe they are more timid? I have no idea...but something is up.

A White-crowned Sparrow Couple

The male White-crowned Sparrow is such a striking bird. I love the combination of his black and white crown and orange bill. In Larry's photo, he has caught a male and a juvenile together. The juvenile isn't quite as flashy, but in this photo the raised rusty cap and profile are irresistible.  


Cool Facts about White-crowned Sparrows taken from Cornell’s All About Birds:

A young male White-crowned Sparrow learns the basics of the song it will sing as an adult during the first two or three months of its life. It does not learn directly from its father, but rather from the generalized song environment of its natal neighborhood.


Because male White-crowned Sparrows learn the songs they grew up with and do not travel far from where they were raised, song dialects frequently form. Males on the edge of two dialects may be bilingual and able to sing both dialects.

I like the way Larry framed the bird's head 

between the vines in this photo.