Snow in Saginaw Forest

It's the end of March, and it's snowing! The last hurrah of winter? Let's hope so, because even I am getting a little tired of it. (Luckily, there is no flooding here.)

Frog chorus on Third Sister Lake

I came home today and heard some frogs. This is but the beginning, but I feel sorry for those peepers, since the weekend (and next week) are supposed to be cold (possibly below freezing at night).

And now a turkey, too!

I'll admit, the first time I'd seen wild turkeys is when I was doing fieldwork in western Michigan, on the Muskegon River. We were driving to the DNR field station just off of Maple Island Road, and as we were driving down the dirt road to the station, there came a small flock of turkeys, running across the road. (Why did the turkey cross the road?) They didn't fly off, and we hypothesized that they might have been escapees from a nearby turkey farm.

However, the one this morning ran away and then flew off shortly after I took this photo.

Geese puttering about.

I suppose it really is spring. I spotted geese puttering about on the front lawn area. (I've also seen and heard songbirds over the past few days, but they are harder to photograph.) In only a few weeks, the I've been told that the frogs will be out in full chorus -- hopefully I can sleep through that without too much trouble... We shall see though.

Daphnia simming about in TSL

Dr. Sarnelle from MSU came down today to get a sample of Daphnia from TSL. No photos of the sample jar, but I can tell you that there are lots of Daphnia (and isopods) swimming about only one week after the lake thawed.

He expects to be back out again to do more checking.

Limnology class on Third Sister Lake

Today, a limnology outdoor lab class came out to Third Sister Lake to take advantage of the now-unfrozen lake (which only just happened this last weekend, thanks to very warm weather last Friday) and look at initial production on the lake.

In addition to this UofM class, EMU limno courses came out during this winter to walk out on the ice and did sampling through the ice.

Burning willow

With such nice weather today (20 Celsius and sunny), I took the advantage and worked to burn up all the willow I cut over the weekend as well as the some of the trimmed fir (hahahah), some rotting pallet-wood, and chunks of wet logs that were lying in the fire pit through the winter.

The embers are now all dying, but in the meantime, I found out why the Japanese used willow-wood in manufacturing samurai swords - the embers really burn warm and for a long time, even though the wood itself burns relatively quickly (of course, since I only used willow no thicker than 2 centimeters, that's not much of a surprise).

In addition, today I saw the "frog man"; Prof. Keith Berven from Oakland University. He's been coming out to Saginaw Forest for - he tells me - 25 years (!), and he was out here today setting up for this year's observations. He also told me to look forward to tree frogs in about a week, followed by spring peepers, and then gray frogs. I have weeks of frog choruses ahead of me. I am looking forward to it with anxiousness and trepidation both. Who knows, maybe I'll even be able to post some audio.