WanderingWilbo: Prey is plucked before consumption. Thus, I am pretty sure I witnessed a juvenile Peregrine Falcon in action last night, McCracken and Lincoln, Norton Shores, @PureMichigan

The birding season has astounded me this year. I have to make sure I look up the Big Sit for this year, a bird watching and counting event during the height of the bird migration. I am sure we have twice as many raptors as last year. I was stumbling along McCracken and I had the presence of mind to spot what looked to be a pigeon in coloring. The bird was frozen in motion, perched upon a lump of stuff I couldn't see among the rockwort. I didn't have time to reach for my cellphone camera. I had a great momentary wish for a camera with a good zoom lens. I had a few seconds to gaze upon it before it flew low and fast towards the concrete structure of St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church. I examined the spot in the rockwort, which was strewn with feathers from a young plucked bird, a few feathers gouted with blood.

I've already written about the Eagles of Eastern Mona Lake and the Celery Flats. The final stretches of Black Creek flow through a wooded preserve and then through a diked passageway through the flooded flats. If you are driving south on US-31, you'll see this miniature wilderness if you look right just before the Norton Shores exit onto Airport Road. The break in the trees overlooks an area flooded and marshy. I have read 12 Eagles were spotted in the flats. So I am wondering how soon until we can build an intepretative center for bird watching there and turn the flats into a birding mecca? This is as much a goldmine as the Blue Heron Rookery manged by West Bloomfield Township.

While driving out to Conklin, I think I unwittingly became complicit in the capture of a field mouse by a redtail hawk. My nosy car came zipping by south on the blacktop out of Ravenna. As a passed by, a redtail hawk launched out of a tree on the east side of the road, and the hawk glided slowly down on extended wings, a steep glide path that allowed me to study the white breast feathers and the white field of feathers under wing. On the west side of the road, I saw the hawk wrestle in the corn stubble, failing to spot the prey caught in the claws. I had to return my eyes to the road. The mouse couldn't hear the hawk descend because of my noise pollution, I am thinking.

The Big Sit in Muskegon in May 12, 2012. The Bluebird Festival is March 31st, 2012.
http://muskegoncountynatureclub.blogspot.com/

It took a team of volunteers to enter Jim Ponshair's bird watching data into eBird
http://muskegoncountynatureclub.blogspot.com/2012/02/ponshair-wastewater-data-session.html

Fly High, eBird
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/

It's a nature preserve. It's a grove. It's a place to see stars and launch model rockets. It's also an oasis for migratory birds. It's made the Muskegon River one of the cleanest in America. It's Muskegon County's Wastewater Facility:
http://www.co.muskegon.mi.us/wastewater/