The River Landing

Dead Trees, Disturbance, and Illinois’ Red-headed Woodpeckers - Part 1 of 2

The Illinois River at Two Rivers National Wildlife Refuge was over its banks in a typical spring flood. I canoed through the forest about a foot above ground. Filtered sunlight gave the woods an almost phosphorescent light green glow; humidity was low; mosquitoes absent. These were perfect conditions to simply sit and listen to the discordant croakings and other bizarre sounds coming from the great blue heron rookery above my head.

Then, just when the thought struck that I was within the wildest, most primeval place in Illinois, where natural rhythms of the river reign supreme, the strangest, growling sound of all commanded my attention. The sound came not from herons, but from two red-headed woodpeckers vying for a coveted hole near the top of a standing dead tree (snag). Although red-headed woodpeckers are abundant along the river, and on that day all seemed right, in fact, the red-headed woodpecker has been declining in Illinois by nearly 2 percent per year. I was not sure, but I suspected perhaps the decline might have something to do with most of Illinois being just about the opposite of wild and primeval. In effect, the woodpeckers delivered an environmental message to me that I found troubling. I felt compelled to begin a search for more information.

Habitats

One of the most unusual behaviors one would expect a woodpecker to engage in is flycatching for insects. Woodpeckers are expert at climbing trees. In general, though, they appear much less agile in flight compared to tyrant flycatchers or any of the swallows. Yet leaving a foraging perch to pick out an insect from the air, sometimes after a convoluted chase, is a common foraging technique for red-headed woodpeckers during the breeding season. This type of behavior requires open habitats with widely spaced trees. Indeed, the cavity-nesting red-headed woodpecker is often characterized as a bird of savannas, a transitional habitat type between true prairie, totally lacking in trees, and closed-canopy forest. But since most of Illinois’ savannas have long been replaced with developed landscapes, breeding red-heads have adapted to other types of open landscapes, including farm country, which serve as surrogates for the missing savannas. I have often observed red-heads flying across agricultural fields, eventually landing on a wooden utility pole, flying from pole to pole, and hawking for insects over the fields and roads. In some instances, they may return after a catch to the original foraging perch. Perhaps the utility poles form the same function as scattered standing dead timber in their original savanna habitats.

Hawking red-heads can also be found along Illinois’ rivers, lakes, and wetlands. Floodplain woodlands along the Illinois River, in particular, appear to provide ideal breeding habitat. The floodplain woodlands have suffered greatly in recent years from frequent flooding. But this has given rise to an abundance of snags and has caused most floodplain woodlands to have a rather open aspect.

Snag along the Illinois River at Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge.

And, of course, nesting sites must be easy to located in the open floodplain woodlands, given the great abundance of large snags and large living trees with dead limbs. Even logs lying and decaying upon the forest floor enhance foraging opportunities, as decaying timber normally harbors an abundance of insect life. Dead wood, without doubt, is an important habitat feature of living woodlands. In fact, red-headed woodpeckers may even be absent from wooded areas lacking snags. And given a choice, red-heads may actually prefer to forage on dead rather then live trees.

Oak snags are particularly valuable to wildlife because they tend to last longer than snags of other tree species. Larger specimens last the longest. In addition, the furrowed bark of oaks provides a larger surface area for insects to hide compared with smooth-barked species such as maple. Oaks also produce nutritious mast in the form of acorns. And, for overwintering red-headed woodpeckers, abundant mast is an absolute necessity.

Yet not all oak-hickory woodlands and forests produce abundant fruit every year. Mast years, when many individual oak trees within the same area produce a great number of acorns all at the same time, typically occur only every two to five years. Moreover, species in the red oak group (black, blackjack, pin, red) require 18 months to produce an acorn, compared with six to eight months for species in the white oak group (bur, post, white). To complicate the situation even further, mast years appear to be induced by a variety of unpredictable, interacting environmental factors such as temperature regime, light duration and intensity, and nutrient and water availability. The end result is that, from year to year, a good mast crop is unreliable.

Red-headed woodpeckers have adapted to this unreliability by evolving migratory behavior. Other species of woodpeckers, such as the downy and red-bellied, may overwinter in their breeding territories. If mast is not available, though, red-heads will migrate after the breeding season. I have readily observed this phenomenon in the floodplain woodlands along the Illinois River – which usually are dominated by silver maple, green ash, and cottonwood – because these areas tend to have a high density of red-headed woodpeckers in the summer, but lack the species during the fall and winter. Many red-heads move south to the comparatively heavily forested parts of southern Illinois, which has a higher density of overwintering red-heads than the rest of the state. Others find sites with heavy acorn crops in smaller wooded areas. During winter, red-heads may occupy forests that are much less open than their breeding habitats because insects are mostly inactive, and the hawking foraging strategy is seldom used.

How soon red-headed woodpeckers detect a mast year in progress is not known. But by late fall, they begin to enter one of two major phases of winter behavior. The first phase involves claiming and defending small territories, one per bird, and storing acorns within their territories. (Although acorns are without a doubt the most important mast used by red-headed woodpeckers, they have been known to store beechnuts, pecans, and even grasshoppers.)

Sand Prairie-Scrub Oak Nature Preserve (1,460 acres) is about three miles east of the small Illinois River town of Bath in Mason County. The woodlands and savannas of the preserve are dominated by black oak and blackjack oak (plus hybrids of the two species). The open woodlands provide good red-head habitat for breeding as well as overwintering. During some winters, red-heads appear to be completely absent. Then, in other years, they seem to be the most common overwintering woodpecker species in the preserve. During mast years, I have sometimes heard their "quirr"calls from throughout most of the preserve’s woodlands. Their territories appear to be not large; and, because the woods are open with little underbrush, sometimes from a single vantage point it is possible to see two or three individuals on different territories. Studies at other sites documented territory sizes to be from about one tenth of an acre to five acres. Territory size is apparently flexible in order to respond to the amount of mast available; that is, during poor acorn production years, larger territories would be necessary, and conversely.

Red-headed woodpeckers use snags to store acorns and other mast. After their initial caches are complete, the red-heads enter the second phase of winter behavior. This consists of long periods of quiet time perching, and time spent defending their territories and restoring their caches of acorns. The birds apparently move some of their acorns to other caches in accordance with the well known adage of not keeping all of one’s eggs in one basket. Even with a strategy of aggressive territorial defense, where a single red-head will drive off any bird that it perceives to be a competitor (blue jay, tufted titmouse, white-breasted nuthatch, or red-bellied woodpecker), piracy is common. Sometimes red-headed woodpeckers may even cover their acorn store with slivers of wood torn from snags. If the slivers are slightly damp, they will form a nice seal upon drying. Another tactic for protecting acorn supplies is to hammer the acorns into the deep furrows of oak trees, which few birds are able to remove.

Sand Prairie-Scrub Oak Nature Preserve is another of those rare and diminishing areas in Illinois still wild enough to give a sense of the original Illinois landscape. Frequent fires (actually controlled burns) have left their mark on the landscape. Ultimately, and taken to the extreme, fire favors grassland over trees. Though black and blackjack oaks at the preserve have thick bark and are fairly fire resistant, they are not totally immune from damage. And if a collection of fallen branches, twigs, and leaves have gathered at the base of a tree, a hot fire can do extensive damage. Eventually a fire-damaged tree will have fire scars, where fungi and bacteria can enter, and dead branches and dead wood within the trunk where parts of the tree can break off during strong winds. But like the standing dead timber in the Illinois River’s floodplain woodlands, snags and fire-damaged trees in these upland oak woodlands play a necessary role in maintaining the ecological health of the system as a whole. There may even be an equilibrium established whereby snags are lost to decay at about the same rate at which they are created by natural processes, such as fire and disease.

Sand Prairie-Scrub Oak Nature Preserve, Mason Co., Illinois.

I once stood at Sand Prairie-Scrub Oak Nature Preserve over the faint, lightly tinted image of a log in charred dust – all that was lift of the log following a fire of major proportions. The image suggested that even within this complex mix of destruction, ecological balance, and rebirth, the red-headed woodpecker has made a home for thousands of years. It was so unlike the modern human relationship with the natural landscape, where we are like uninvited guests who disrupt our host’s normal routines, overstay our welcome, and have no intention of leaving. And so, now it is necessary for all of us to find a way to live together.

[Note 1: For images of the red-headed woodpecker and more information, see Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology web site All About Birds at http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Red-headed_Woodpecker.html.]

[Note 2: This story originally appeared in slightly different form in the fall 2000 issue of Illinois Audubon magazine, number 274.]

Dead Trees, Disturbance, and Illinois’ Red-headed Woodpeckers - Part 2 of 2

Problems

As I have watched red-headed woodpeckers purposely flying across farm fields, their wings flashing in characteristic black and white, they seemed little interested in the straight rows of corn and soybeans and neatly mowed roadsides. In recent years, farm sizes have increased, and many owners seem to find little incentive to keep windbreak tree lines along the former property boundaries. The resulting intensively row-cropped landscape with few trees is poor habitat for red-headed woodpeckers. In most cases the windbreaks are the only hint of semi-wild habitat in an otherwise tamed and broken landscape. Although most of Illinois has been domesticated for quite some time, the pace of natural habitat loss has increased even more within the last half century.

As if monocultures of row crops were not enough of a challenge for wildlife, for decades urban areas have been sprawling outward with an accelerating rapidity, despite small gains in human populations in most cases. For example, between 1970 and 1990, population gains in the Chicago metropolitan area were minimal, but suburban sprawl, and all that the term implies, expanded by 45 to 65 percent. And where we find low-density subdivisions and isolated estates – outposts of future sprawl – we find neatly manicured lawns, trimmed shrubbery, and artificial landscaping, with nary a native plant in sight. Would a standing dead tree or rotting log on one’s lawn seem appropriate for this picture? Of course, I would say without hesitation. But most in our society would emphatically answer, absolutely not! And so we find suburban developments as they are. Snagless suburban sprawl cannot be good for red-headed woodpeckers, given the fact that dead trees are such an important component of their habitats throughout the year.

Because of the red-headed woodpecker’s affinity for roadside poles and hawking for insects over roads, the species probably has a higher chance than most woodpeckers at colliding with vehicles. But although this idea seems logical, results from limited studies have not been conclusive. Even so, with more vehicles on more roads each year, and with miles driven per vehicle increasing, it would seem surprising, indeed, if there were not an increasing number of collisions with red-headed woodpeckers.

The proliferation of the non-native cavity-nesting European starling in all habitats across Illinois has frequently been cited as a cause for population declines of many bird species, including the eastern bluebird and red-headed woodpecker. But it may be that because starlings and red-heads are not synchronized (starlings begin nesting earlier than red-heads), and red-heads are actually more aggressive at nest hole defense than starlings, red-heads can probably co-exist with starlings, all else being equal.

However, "all else" is far from equal. A much more intractable problem lies at the heart of the way nature works and the natural processes that have been either stymied or highly altered. For thousands of years, fire at varying intensities and frequencies, was a dominant disturbance factor influencing whether this or that tract of land grew prairie, forest, or the transitional savannas. Furthermore, the oak savannas and woodlands are actually maintained by fires; they require fire to merely exist. The fire-resistant bark of oaks even attest to this. Without at least an occasional fire, savannas and open woodlands soon grow a denser understory, where oak seedlings are shaded out, eventually giving rise to a dense, closed-canopy forest lacking an oak component. It is common today in many of Illinois’ remaining old-growth woodlands to see large, old, healthy, mast-producing oaks in the canopy, while the understory and seedling layers typically are lacking in oaks; that is, lacking in future generations, despite the still-abundant acorn crops. In many oak woodlands, fire-intolerant sugar maple saplings are standing ready, by the hundreds, to compete for the canopy when the oaks eventually fall.

Although prescribed fires are regularly set by resource managers at some locations to reverse this widespread trend, it is unclear whether these tame, controlled fires are enough to maintain the oak communities. Most prescribed fires are probably not even close to the landscape-scale conflagrations of the past that actually created the savannas. And with insurance companies and lawyers increasingly becoming part of the discussion, it is getting more difficult to plan and carry out controlled fires. In the end, of we lose our oak woodlands in Illinois, overwintering red-headed woodpeckers, dependent upon mast crops as they are, will have to migrate elsewhere. Breeding pairs, though, will probably still find a home along the Illinois River and other major streams.

The growing season following a fire at Sand Prairie Scrub-Oak Nature Preserve, Mason Co., Illinois.

Challenges

I think it is safe to say that Illinois will never again be wild and primeval, although many small protected natural areas remain. I can travel to the Illinois River Valley and spend a few hours watching great blue herons, or forget about modern society completely within the wilds of Sand Prairie-Scrub Oak Nature Preserve, where fire is still a dominant disturbance. But when I see a red-headed woodpecker, the message is clear that today all of us face many environmental challenges. Perhaps someday, if we rise to these challenges, the bird may deliver a different message.

[Note 1: For images of the red-headed woodpecker and more information, see Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology, web site All About Birds at http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Red-headed_Woodpecker.html.]

[Note 2: This story originally appeared in slightly different form in the fall 2000 issue of Illinois Audubon magazine, number 274.]

Isle Royale: A Wilderness Island in Lake Superior - Part 1 of 2

Cold winds blow across the harbor

Cold winds on the inland sea

Same winds that called our fathers

Cold winds calling me  

– Tom Kastle, from the song Cold Winds^©

Every spring, when the yellow-rumped warblers move through west-central Illinois and the songs of Swainson’s thrushes echo throughout the oak-hickory forests, I think of Isle Royale in northern Lake Superior, the place where I first learned these birds’ songs. My mind begins to fill with memories of previous adventures at the island – as well as some misadventures – that have helped shape my perspectives on life, such as they are.

Isle Royale National Park is an archipelago of some 200 islands, totaling 210 square miles, located about 15 miles from the Canadian mainland. The main island is 45 miles long and varies in width to a maximum of eight miles. It is an official federal Wilderness Area, and is internationally recognized as a Biosphere Reserve. This status gives Isle Royale a fair amount of protection from inappropriate developments. So except for the modest activities of the National Park Service, the hard-to-define quality of wildness remains intact

Isle Royale’s floral character is very different from Illinois owing to its higher latitude, and this is also reflected in its bird communities, which of all things tend to hold my interest the most. Traveling north from Illinois, some of the first obvious traces of the north woods are natural stands of paper birch and quaking aspen trees that begin to appear at about Portage, Wisconsin; the abundance of these trees increases with latitude. By the time one reaches the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the oak-hickory forests that are common in Illinois are left far behind. Here, the forests are dominated by sugar maple, white pine, and hemlock. Boreal forest conifers such as balsam fir and spruce are also abundant. One may expect to see a goshawk, as well as ospreys and bald eagles, during the breeding season. In summer, warblers that only pass through Illinois during migration will be singing on their breeding territories. A displaced Illinoisan has the feeling of being in a different world.

Traveling to Isle Royale requires a commitment in time unlike that needed to visit most of our other national parks, for it cannot be driven to or through. One must travel to the island by boat from Grand Portage, Minnesota; Houghton, Michigan; or Copper Harbor, Michigan; one can also fly to the island by seaplane out of Houghton. I usually take the Isle Royale Queen ferry out of Copper Harbor. Because the ferry leaves for Isle Royale at 8 a.m. (eastern time), it is necessary to arrive at Copper Harbor the previous day. My preference is to arrive in the early afternoon, allowing time to view the harbor area, where some interesting birds can always be found, and perhaps the nearby forested hills. Indeed, I once saw a merlin making a determined effort to catch swallows from a small flock that was foraging for insects above the harbor. The merlin, truly a bird of the northern forests, is a very agile falcon, but the merlin was no match for the swallows, which easily countered every one of the merlin’s moves. Turkey vultures can usually be found soaring above the forested hills of the Keweenaw Peninsula in the same way their southern counterparts ride the air thermals above the cornfields of Illinois, but here the similarity ends.

Cooper Harbor on Lake Superior's Keweenau Peninsula

Voyage to the Wilderness

Beyond Copper Harbor, Lake Superior was covered in thick, early morning fog, at times obscuring the division between air and water. The passengers were not festive as might be expected when on the verge of a summer vacation trip, but appeared rather somber. No one, it seemed, knew what to expect from the big lake, the largest body of freshwater (in area) in the world. As the boat left the protected harbor, the wind and waves picked up; the captain said it might be "a bit brisk" on deck, as the temperature of the lake, which never gets above the middle forties, keeps the air cool, regardless of the weather on the mainland. Superior, truly an inland sea, creates its own weather. The boat bounced around quite a bit, though not enough to make it uncomfortable. I spent most of the four and a half hours of the trip on deck, until I became chilled in the cool temperatures and wind. Herring gulls were interesting to watch as they seemed to be following our boat across the lake, but inside the cabin there was free coffee, with its needed warmth.

Just as the fog lifted, the big island came into sight, although it was still about a half-hour away. My plans were to stay at Rock Harbor Lodge for the first two days and then rent a canoe and camp in a remote area. After embarking I sat on the back deck of my room for a while facing Lake Superior, re-gaining my strength and alertness that was lost to the winds of Superior. There were herring gulls and double-crested cormorants to watch in addition to the occasional common and red-breasted mergansers, common goldeneyes, and black ducks, some with young. It was strange to see the mergansers and goldeneyes during the summer months, as I normally associate these birds with winter (along with freezing toes and fingers).

Rock Harbor Lodge, Isle Royale National Park

Not less than 197 species of birds have been listed for Isle Royale. Of these, 120 are considered permanent and/or summer residents. Only 22 are listed as permanent and/or winter residents, an indication of the harsh winter conditions. The best way to see the most birds is to locate them by habitat type. There are eleven major bird habitats on the island, each with a characteristic bird assemblage, though most species may be found in more than one habitat. Other than Lake Superior and its shoreline, the spruce-fir-birch forest (boreal forest) is the most common habitat type on the eastern end of the island near the lodge. Without thinking about bird habitats, if one is staying at the lodge, most bird watching would then be done in the boreal forest, thus minimizing the search in other habitats. So I made a mental note to try to find as many other habitats as possible, so that I could locate species not characteristic of the boreal forest.

Although I was anxious to see as much as possible during my short stay on the island, I decided to take it easy on the first day by spending the afternoon on the Stoll Trail loop to Scoville Point, then taking in a Park Service lecture in the evening. The Stoll Trail is self-interpretive with signs along the trail every so often explaining the ecology and geology of the island. It provides an excellent introduction to the island and also passes through several types of bird habitats.

On the Stoll Trail, Isle Royale National Park

The small forest dwellers, though, are difficult to find, if not hear in the dense spruce-fir woods. A great deal of patience and determination is required to actually find the birds. As an example, all afternoon I had been listening to the incredibly complicated song of many winter wrens before actually seeing the bird. Because of the difficulties of finding a single singing bird, other species that are heard while trying to find a particular singer must essentially be ignored; I found myself having to ignore the black-throated green warbler in favor of the northern parula, only to be enticed by a loudly singing Tennessee warbler, a challenge to find under any circumstances. Trying to located a Swainson’s thrush was pure madness, but a good madness. Back at the lodge, there was a persistently calling least flycatcher cooperating very well by sitting on a tree top in full view, while several gray jays flew close by the front door of my room, where I had a fleeting glimpse of a pileated woodpecker. The yellow-rumped warblers were surprisingly easy to find; their songs will forever make me think of Isle Royale, the boreal forest, and Lake Superior.

My second day on the island I awoke early for a quick breakfast. As I opened the front door of my room, I was greeted by the sight of a moose. During the next few days I would see many more. Isle Royale, in fact, has a large moose population, sometimes over 2,000, although the number varies from year to year. There apparently is no evidence that moose inhabited the island any earlier than the winter of 1912-13, when an ice bridge formed between the island and the Canadian mainland. Moose are strong swimmers, though, so some folks think they may simply have swum to the island.

Wolves arrived on the island about 1949, probably for the first time in history, by undoubtedly crossing an ice bridge. And for the last several decades, wolf predation seems to have kept the moose from too severely over-populating the island. Sick or old moose and young calves are the primary prey of the wolves. Though wolf numbers vary from year to year, and at one time they numbered 50 individuals, they may be slowly dying out. The most probable cause is inbreeding, which results in reduced reproductive success. If the wolves disappear, the moose will surely enter a cycle with population booms and busts, as they periodically overshoot the island’s carrying capacity.

[Note: This story originally appeared in slightly different form in the spring 1996 issue of Illinois Audubon magazine, number 256.]

Isle Royale: A Wilderness Island in Lake Superior - Part 2 of 2

A Wilderness Camping Experience?

After spending two days as a pampered poodle at the lodge, I was anxious to camp on the other side of the island. To do this, I would have to cross Tobin Harbor and then portage a heavy 15-foot aluminum canoe and my backpack over the Greenstone Ridge 0.8 miles to Duncan Bay, described by some as the hardest portage on the island. It sounded fine to me, and I was on my way.

Duncan Bay from the Greenstone Ridge

There was a thick fog over Tobin Harbor when I left. At times it was a white-out condition in the middle of the bay, and though I could not tell which direction I was paddling, I could at least tell, by the pull of gravity, up from down. A loon popped up out of the water about twenty or thirty feet away and gave its laughing call, a vocalization indicating stress. I thought, "Right, tell me about it." Finally when I began the portage, it started to rain, then thunder and lightning. Birds were scarce in the rain.

Because of the heavy weight of the canoe, I had to stop and rest every few hundred feet of the 175-foot rise in elevation from Tobin Harbor. My heart was working overtime; I thought of the hundreds of pizzas I had consumed over decades and hoped that my heart and arteries were not completely encased in fat; yet all still seemed to be in working order and up to the task at hand. After setting up camp, I took the canoe out toward Blake Point along the Palisades, occasionally accompanied by several loons, about as far as I dared venture onto the open waters of Lake Superior, which seemed relatively calm for the moment. Singing white-throated sparrows were near the camp upon my return, and I looked forward to a night with only the sounds of the wilderness: wind blowing in the trees, owls and loons calling, perhaps even the howling of the island’s elusive wolves.

Canoeing out to Blake Point

But that was not to be. A party of boaters soon arrived and set up their camp at the next wooden shelter. They were immediately loud, but to their credit on this one solitary point, one of them came to my shelter during the early evening festivities with an invitation to join them and share a few drinks. Though they were friendly, I politely declined, hoping they might be quieter as a result. But true to my expectations, their raucous yelling and laughter continued until the early morning hours, getting louder as they became drunker.

Duncan Bay at sunset

At first light, I awoke angry, vowing never again to camp at a site accessible to powerboats, and I quickly and noisily broke down my camp with plans to head for another site far away form the powerboaters. Then an osprey flew over as I left, improving my disposition tremendously.

It may be a sad result, but from this experience I learned to avoid disappointments on future trips by lowering my expectations, especially when seeking something so ill-defined as a "wilderness experience." So I decided to return to the Rock Harbor Campground near the lodge, via the dreaded Duncan Bay portage, in preparation for the next day’s ferry trip back across the lake. On the trail, my spirits picked up when I saw cedar waxwings and a golden-crowned kinglet. And although it was difficult to observe birds while carrying the canoe, I did manage to hear an ovenbird and red-eyed vireo among many magnolia warblers. That afternoon a moose leisurely made its way around the Rock Harbor Campground, snacking on the lower branchlets of balsam fir saplings. The moose looked at me several times, yet seemed mostly unconcerned about my presence; I could not help being fascinated by the fact that this was a wild animal, prey for a pack of wolves, with no fear of humans. The moose apparently considered me to be a normal part of its surroundings, so perhaps at that point I was having a true "wilderness experience" after all. At any rate, it caused me to realize for the first time that such a concept is really just all in our minds, and can be defined however anyone may wish it to be.

Homeward Bound

I heard my last yellow-rumped warbler just before walking to the boat dock. When the Isle Royale Queen left Rock Harbor bound for the Keweenaw Peninsula, I was sad, knowing it would likely be a long time before I would see a wild moose, or hear a gray jay, red-breasted nuthatch, or winter wren. I had yet to hear a wolf howl or see my first black-backed woodpecker. The island, though, would always be there; and because of the powerful legal protection, would remain much as I remembered it. It was a comforting thought. Luxury condominiums and noisy highways would never be a part of Isle Royale.

Herring gulls followed as our small craft left the protection of Rock Harbor for the open waters of Lake Superior. With Isle Royale in our wake, I could clearly see the lookout tower at Mt. Ojibway on the Greenstone Ridge, where on another trip I had hiked and had been almost trampled on the trail by a crazed moose and calf. And I know that that could have easily happened, because Isle Royale is not a fantasy theme park; it is the real world; just ask an old moose.

Far from the island, the large swells, one after the other, tossed our boat like a piece of flotsam, sending heads hanging over the side. And I recalled the foreboding aura in the air on that first day out of Copper Harbor. So it was like returning to the security of a warm fireplace after coming in from a blizzard when we finally entered the sanctuary of Copper Harbor, where the swells finally and mercifully stopped. As we passed the Harbor Haus German Restaurant, we were greeted by the synchronous kick-dancing of the waitresses arm in arm on the restaurant’s outdoor deck, a daily tradition when the Queen returns safely. But that evening there was little doubt as to my choice for dinner: I would find a place that served pizza with extra cheese! Why change now? It has served me well over the years. And I must stay in shape for the next portage to Duncan Bay, when I am again beckoned by the migrating yellow-rumped warblers moving north through central Illinois.

[Note: This story originally appeared in slightly different form in the spring 1996 issue of Illinois Audubon magazine, number 256.]