Beth, Jenny:
Someday you should hike Winter Wren Trail, Ridges Sanctuary, Door
County, WI. Its a boreal forest where winter wrens go during the
summer. They also spend the summer in my Boundary Waters study area in
northern Minnesota. Your areas, around St.Louis and NYC are close to
the northernmost place where these wrens stay all winter.
See the Ridges Sanctuary trail map at his website:
http://ridgessanctuary.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/trails.pdf
In addition to winter wrens on this hiking trail, you pass 500 year old
northern white cedar trees along the edge of the swale, large stands of
the extremely rare Dwarf Lake Iris (2 inches tall), and forest of black
spruce and red pine that burned in the 1.2 million acre Peshtigo Fire of
1871 (burned the same day as the Chicago Fire). Some of the old red
pines have scars from the fire, others came in after the fire. The
observation deck is in the middle of a pond and surrounded by tamarack,
cedar, black spruce, and red and white pine trees--shown in picture at
the bottom of the trail map.
The ridges were formed as sand bars under Lake Michigan, which later
emerged from the water when the land rose, thus creating a landscape of
thin strips of forest alternating with wet swales. The boreal forest
there is also an outlier of that biome--it is separated from the main
range of the boreal forest by 200 miles. It exists because of a cold
current in Lake Michigan that keeps summer temperatures in the Ridges
around 65 degrees, too cool for temperate tree species.
Lee
Beth Koebel wrote:
Jenny,
It does surprise me too. I try to help them by providing food and
water. I love watching the gathering I get at my heated bird bath. I
think it might be the only free water in the neighborhood. I get
Carolina Chickadees, Eastern Bluebirds, Hairy Woodpeckers, American
Robins, American Goldfinches, Tufted Titmice and Mourning Doves.
Beth
Trees are the answer.--bumper sticker from Illinois Forest Association
--- On *Fri, 1/8/10, [email protected] /<[email protected]>/* wrote:
From: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [ENTS] wren?
To: [email protected]
Date: Friday, January 8, 2010, 12:04 PM
Thanks Beth, that seems to correspond with my bird id books. What
a little guy to be surviving the winter...amazing animals.
Jenny
-----Original Message-----
From: Beth Koebel <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Fri, Jan 8, 2010 12:30 pm
Subject: Re: [ENTS] wren?
Jenny,
It is definitely a wren with the short tail sticking up. my guess
is a winter wren. the only other wren it could be would a
Carolina wren. the Carolina wren has a white eye strip where in
the winter wren the eye strip is a dull gray.
Trees are the answer.--bumper sticker from Illinois Forest Association
