Marshbird Survey #2

Who lives here?  Rapunzel?

Today is the first of June and, not to brag, but I started the month of in a most awesome fashion.  Up at 4 a.m. and out of the house by 4:30, three of us were at the first stop of the second marsh bird survey route at 5.  As I stand to get out of the car I hear the sweet "pumper lunk!" of an American bittern. We get our papers ready.  The Bluetooth speaker is hooked up to the iPod and Christmas music spills out over the grasses, the rushes and the alder.  Oops!  We are supposed to play the sounds of marsh birds.  We laugh and save the Christmas hymns for six months.  The wind is very slight and the sky is mostly clear.  The temperature is about 56 degrees and hardly any mosquitoes are out.  We hear many pheasants and chicken as well. I must need more coffee because my sibling is winning at saying "Pheasant" first.  A marsh wren twitters in the swamp. At our second stop hear but do not see sand hill cranes. At the third stop we see but do not hear sand hill cranes.  We mark down each minute they are sighted.  Because cranes stand upright and bend over in the swamp, we don't see them every minute.  Stops three, four and five are difficult because we are on a busy county road; the main road between Zimmerman and Isanti.  Cars, trucks, semi-trailers, school buses, and other vehicles go by all the time.  Since we three are wearing our safety green vests, no one stops to question us.  The fifth stop is a pleasant relief from all that traffic. An added bonus is that we can hear and see the common yellow throat calling "whichity whichity whichity."  They are easier to hear than to see but today we are lucky. Two piebald horses watch us uncomfortably closely.  They are probably wondering why we are playing the sounds of marsh birds.  They look at us to steadily with their pointy ears aimed our way that I feel judged.  We look for the screw we placed in the ground decorated with curly ribbon.  We can't find it. So we use the Garmin GPS and find the latitude and longitude again.  After we're there for 5 minutes we see the screw and the marker in the tall grass.  We have to do things at exactly the same spot so it's good we found it.  I see a female wood duck rise up out of the tall grass and land in the branches of a dead tree 15 feet off the ground.  I know it's a wood duck because that is the only duck I know that lands in trees.  I'm right!  We hear a couple sora rail's calling on this road.  After the seventh spot we see the round silo with the room on top that I saw before. This time we can see it in the full sunlight.  I think of Rapunzel living up there.  I take a photo.  We drive slowly off and see a man in the driveway of the Rapunzel tower. He saw me take a photo.  He has a long white beard and long white hair.  He looks a little bit like Santa except he's not smiling; he's glaring at us.  I smile and wave in my most innocent manner as we drive by but he continues to throw shade at us.  We enjoy the solitude and the safety of the 8th and 9th stops.  We didn't hear any Virginia rails or any yellow rails but we did hear soras and sand hill cranes and marsh wrens, pheasants and common yellow throats, Canadian geese and a bazillion red winged blackbirds, grackles and starlings, robins and blue birds, mallards and wood ducks, swamp sparrows and a yellow warbler. By the time we are done it is after 8.  The wind has picked up enough to rustle branches and the sky has become mostly cloudy. The weather forecast was for a sunny day but the sky begins to drizzle as we arrive in Zimmerman.  By the time I arrive at work around 9 a.m. I feel like I have lived half a day at least.  June 1st was an awesome morning to be alive and to spend time with wonderful people outside, listening to sounds of nature, trying to identify what we were seeing and hearing, challenging ourselves to learn new things, collaborate, work as a team, and to enjoy the heaven on earth known as June in Minnesota.