I have a flood of animals to discuss today, and I am glad for the flood of animals. The day picked up from the morning, where I saw nothing unusual. I saw squirrels, which are unremarkable. Although, before summer began, I saw three different kinds of squirrels in the same yard in Norton Shores, a yard with more than ten squirrels scampering. I will dedicate a day to the Monarch butterfly because one is floating over the weedy garden beneath my office window, and I look to see it land on the milkweed flowers the bees are working for nectar. I haven't seen it land yet. I could dedicate it to the snipe, which the photographer Stacy Niedzwiecki has photographed this week in the Jordan River Valley, near the town of Alba, Michigan. She is looking for assistance in identifying her latest discovery, which might be a lesser yellowlegs snipe. That's taking summer fully at its promise, off in a field on the road to Kalkaska, documenting snipes in the field. Today, I was rolling downhill at US-31 and Seminole Road, and I saw a great bird ascend from the level of Mona Lake. I was pretty sure I was seeing a crane, and then my baseball cap blew off. The bird came around again to the sky above the road, and I could see the distinctive white feathered head of the bald eagle, and I stopped my bike and watched it soar off to the Celery Flats, a flooded system of diked fields that no longer grow celery. Mona Lake suffers high nutrient levels as those fields give up its fertilizer. I have been looking for photographs of eagles in flight, just to disprove my impression. A feature of the way it was flying reminded me more of crane than eagle. But what crane head has that distinctive white cowling? I hope every day this summer shows nature in all of its richness. I live up where eagles fly.Eagle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle
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