Thrasher Concert

The air was cool but not crisp as a small group of loon researchers gathered in the morning light outside the villas at Devil’s Fork State Park on Lake Jocassee in South Carolina. “There’s a loon!” someone exclaimed, as they pointed through the screen of trees toward a familiar silhouette bobbing on the rippled surface. Since we had all gathered as part of Loon Camp—the week-long loon research experience for adult volunteers—this was an appropriate first bird of the morning.

First loon!

But spotting loons wasn’t our main goal, at least not yet. Each morning of Loon Camp beings with a land-based birding walk for anyone willing to wake up early. The cloudless blue sky of our first day made it truly feel like spring—and sound like spring, too! An eastern phoebe repeated their rough, two-note fee-bee! call from among the villas. As we ventured onto the pine-lined park road, the evergreen canopy came alive with the tiny, squeaky toy noises of brown-headed nuthatches. A northern cardinal scolded harshly from the brush, then posed briefly in a sunny tree to show off his scarlet crest. A pair of eastern bluebirds posed on their nest box.

Brown-headed nuthatch

Northern Cardinal

Eastern Bluebird

Those of us who had traveled from the still-wintery lands of Northern Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ohio, reveled in the cacophony. And then it got louder. From the top of a leafless oak tree commenced a steady stream of whistles and warbles that sounded as if an entire flock of flickers, vireos, titmice, cardinals, and wood thrushes were all taking turns. Just one robin-sized bird perched there, though. Listen

Brown Thrasher

There are three “mimics” common across North America. These birds all increase their repertoire of songs and show off their skills to the ladies by copying from other birds. Northern mockingbirds repeat each stolen phrase several times. Brown thrashers tend to repeat each phrase twice. Gray catbirds say each phrase just once, and pepper their concert with a distinctive, cat-like mew.

With some imagination, I could hear the mnemonic plant a seed, plant a seed, bury it, bury it, cover it up, cover it up, let it grow, let it grow, pull it up, pull it up, eat it, eat it, in this bird’s song, and quickly identified him as a brown thrasher. Depending on who you believe, brown thrashers have a repertoire of over 1,000, over 2,000, or over 3,000 song types that they can string together in one run-on overture.

Brown thrashers are special not only in the variety of phrases they can sing, but the types of sounds they can make. Birds have a two-sided voice box called a syrinx, and by controlling each side independently, thrashers can harmonize with themselves!

We smiled at his enthusiasm, and then turned around so we wouldn’t be late for our first day of counting loons on Lake Jocassee—an experience I wrote about last week.

Later in the week, I set out by myself on an afternoon nature walk. As usual, the birds had stopped singing. The relative quiet made a rustling in the dry leaves even more noticeable. Pausing, I watched for movement, then zoomed in. Behind a screen of twigs, I glimpsed the striking black back, orange sides, and white breast of an eastern towhee. Barely a foot away, I spotted the rusty back and striped chest of the brown thrasher. Although these two birds are not closely related, they share a habit of living in brushy places, and scratching loudly through leaf litter to find insects, worms, lizards, frogs, fruits, and seeds. We’ve captured both of them during our Wisconsin Master Naturalist bird banding experiences in the Moquah Barrens—which is another similarly brushy habitat.

Eastern Towhee

Brown Thrasher

Amused, I watched as the brown thrasher used their long, curved beak to toss aside sticks and leaves with gusto. Their yellow eye with its large black pupil appeared to be open extra wide as if anxious not to miss any potential snack they had just uncovered. Once, they picked up an acorn and seemed to assess its value before tossing it aside.

Every single morning of Loon Camp we were treated to a concert from at least one, and often two, brown thrashers singing their hearts out, competing for females and territories in their own version of American Idol. As soon as the pairs start nesting, the guys will quiet down and focus their energy on more important tasks, like assisting with incubating their 2-6 eggs. These birds likely spend all year in the favorable climate of South Carolina, but across the Southeast are other brown thrashers who will soon be migrating north, just a little bit behind the loons. Their concert tour continues! Plan to attend one of their performances at dawn in your local shrubbery.

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar opens for registration on April 1st at 9:00 a.m.! The Museum is closed until early May to allow for construction of our new exhibit, The Wetland Way. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

The Loons of Lake Jocassee

Loons bobbed on the early morning ripples as our pontoon boat sped across the open waters of Lake Jocassee, South Carolina. “First loon!” someone exclaimed gleefully, but otherwise we ignored them. At least for the moment.

When Brooks Wade, our host and pontoon captain, crossed an imaginary line at the divide between the big, round lower lake and the narrow arms of the upper lake, he cut the engine. The sudden quiet gave Jay Mager a chance to explain our task. “We’re counting all the loons in our half of the lake,” he said. “The other pontoon will count the lower lake.” Brooks pointed out the imaginary center line of the upper lake, and we began puttering up the west side, counting all the loons between the center line and our nearest shore. We’d tally the east side on the way out.

Looking at a map of Lake Jocassee, it’s easy to tell that this was once a watershed of steep stream gorges cutting deep into the “Blue Wall” or the southern escarpment of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Eons of water erosion—not glaciers—carved deep wrinkles in the landscape.

Then, in 1968, when Duke Energy began building the Oconee Nuclear Station, they dammed the confluence of four rivers to create a reliable source of cooling water for the plant. The 350-foot-deep-lake filled, and the atoms began splitting, in 1973. The plant is still providing electricity to one of the fastest growing states in the nation, and today, a network of dams in this watershed creates hydroelectric power, too.

The outstanding water quality of Lake Jocassee also provides excellent winter habitat for Common Loons. Brooks got a major case of loon love in February 2010, when he began his job as a campground host by walking down to the edge of the lake and hearing a loon wail. Although they were newly married and had just moved from Florida, he told his wife Kay that they were never leaving.

Scientists used to think that almost all our Common Loons spend the winter on salt water. From across the northern lakes, loons migrate to both coasts and the gulf each fall to avoid ice-up. After starting a business giving pontoon tours, Brooks began to think that the number of loons he saw each winter on this freshwater lake was significant.

In 2016, Brooks searched out LoonWatch at Northland College online and sent then-coordinator Erica LeMoine photos of wintering loons on Lake Jocassee. She put him in touch with former Northland College professor Jim Paruk, who by then was working for the Biodiversity Research Institute in Maine. Within a matter of weeks, Jim flew in and partnered with Brooks to capture and band the first Lake Jocassee loon, which someone named Bob.

Bob is identifiable by colored bands on his legs. His frequent preening allows researchers to observe the bands and identify him. We were very glad to see him again this year!
Photo by Emily Stone.

The next year, Jim brought in his colleague, Jay Mager, an expert on loon vocalizations teaching at Ohio Northern University, and together with Earthwatch they hosted week-long loon research experiences for adult volunteers for three years. By then, Brooks and Kay had started their own non-profit outdoor education program, and they took over the organization of the “Jocassee Loon Camp,” with Jay Mager and Jim Paruk each leading a different week of research.

The first day of Jay’s week begins with a count of all the loons on Lake Jocassee, which is why I was now puttering through the upper lake on a pontoon boat with Jay, Brooks, and five other “loonatics” for the second year in a row. With eyes scanning and binoculars at the ready, we spotted solo loons fishing in the deep water, rafts of loons preening near shore, and gaggles of smaller waterfowl like horned grebes, too. Jay kept the tally on his data sheet, and we were free to be amazed by the loons.

Here, on their winter habitat, the loons are finishing up a “catastrophic molt” where they replace all their feathers, including flight feathers, and are water-bound for the duration. As a result, the loons here can look pretty scruffy. Many of their heads are grayish brown, and their black checkerboard backs are uneven. Stray feathers stick out at funny angles, and discarded feathers float on the waves after strenuous bouts of preening each day.

Loons molt their flight feathers while on their winter habitat. Photo by Emily Stone. 

One particularly avid preener’s antics showed off a specific combination of silver, red, blue, and yellow bands on his legs. This was one of just a few loons banded on Lake Jocassee five or six years ago. He yodeled when they captured him, which is how the researchers know that he’s a male. This loon was spotted in the summer on Upper Cormorant Lake in Minnesota. He was back on Lake Jocassee again to demonstrate that at least some loons return to the same winter habitat each year. Gathering this type of information is one of the main goals of banding birds.

The loons of Lake Jocassee don’t look like the Common Loons we know from summer in the Northwoods because they are in the middle of molting from winter brown to their snazzy summer tuxedoes. However, this particular loon was captured on Lake Jocassee in the winter, and outfitted with colored leg bands. Then he was spotted again last summer in Minnesota! Long-term research on the behavior of individual loons has been essential in advancing our understanding of their lives and conservation needs. Photo by Emily Stone.

The hours ticked off as we counted a dozen…two dozen…then eight dozen loons! We’d wound our way up and down every single narrow passage in the upper lake, admired cascading waterfalls, and enjoyed a calm winter day with ample sunshine. By the end, and with the tally of a second boat that explored the main lake basin, we counted 139 loons—nine more than last year!

All eighteen of us loonatics headed to shore—wind-burned and happy—ready for the next day’s task: observing and recording loon behavior.

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Winter Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

*Portions of this article were originally published in 2025.

“Whooo” will we see?

After watching Canada jays, red squirrels, and boreal chickadees stuff their bellies with peanut butter at the Admiral Road feeders in Sax-Zim Bog, my family and I wandered over to the Friends of Sax-Zim Bog Welcome Center and took a walk down Gray Jay Way—a trail that was named before Canada jays had their name changed in 2018.

Gray jays became Canada jays again in 2018. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Mid-afternoon is a notoriously quiet time for birdwatching, but we admired the whimsical shapes of the black spruce and tamarack trees in the bog and enjoyed the sunshine of an unseasonably warm day. Hummocks of sphagnum moss, bog rosemary, leatherleaf, Labrador tea, and other bog plants had begun to emerge from beneath the drifts, so I often focused down.

A flutter of movement caught my eye. Crouching low, I spotted a tiny moth crawling on the glass-like jumble of half-melted snow. Brown wings folded over their back in a nondescript robe with a short fringe along the trailing edge. Thin antennae sensed the world. Uploading a photo to iNaturalist, I was amazed when the app provided a fairly confident identification: Acleris oxycoccana. According to Wikipedia, their caterpillars feed on leatherleaf—the plant I’d found them near, and the adults have been observed flying around in nearly every month of the year!

This tiny moth eats leatherleaf in bogs and has been observed in every month of the year! Photo by Emily Stone.

Seeing a moth seemed to signal that evening was coming, and our thoughts turned to owls. Sax-Zim Bog is famous for hosting rare owls. Last year was an incredible irruption year when great gray owls, boreal owls, and snowy owls visited from their homes farther north. This year has been much quieter. A few great gray owls nest here, but lately they’ve been secretive.

This is the southern edge of northern hawk owl breeding range, and sometimes more northern residents migrate here in the winter, too. We’d heard that a northern hawk owl was hunting at the edge of a field on some of the private land that makes up the patchwork of ownership in Sax-Zim Bog Important Bird Area in Northern Minnesota, so off we went!

The line of birders with spotting scopes and giant cameras on tripods was much easier to spot than the owl. She blended in with the brush at the base of aspen trees in the fencerow. Northern hawk owls are relatively small raptors who act more like hawks. She was using her excellent vision to look for voles in the field below. Hawk owls hunt more with their eyes than most other owls, who tend to rely on precision hearing for catching prey under grass and snow.

When she finally swooped down and then back up to a new perch in the aspen tree, we got a better look. Her breast was finely barred with brown stripes and the shoulder she turned toward us was dark brown. Dark feathers outlined her face and highlighted her yellow eyes. After a while she swooped down and disappeared again among the brush.

Northern hawk owls hunt more in the daylight, and more with their eyes than a typical owl. Photo by Larry Stone.

We’d also heard reports of both a long-eared and a short-eared owl hunting in a particular grassy field, so we went to investigate.

Long-eared owls look a bit like great horned owls, with two feather tufts (neither ears nor horns) sticking up above a tan facial disk. While they nest in the Northwoods and throughout Eurasia, somehow they’ve never been on my radar. They are secretive, and very nocturnal. Using precision hearing they can catch prey in complete darkness! During the breeding season only, they give a series of powerful but monotone whooo notes—not nearly as charismatic as the barred owl’s “who cooks for you?” call. The last rays of a setting Sun turned the field golden as we watched. This is where they like to hunt…but where was the owl?

Long-eared owl, Photo by By Pavlen, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80979664

We also hoped to spot the short-eared owl, another hunter of open country. I have seen these widely distributed owls in two very different places. Once, while driving along the Dalton Highway in Alaska, one swooped over the pipeline—not too far from some caribou! And again, at dusk in Haleakala National Park in Hawaii, the local subspecies, called Pueo, soared over the switchbacks in the park road.

Short-eared owls can travel long distances even over the ocean, which is probably how they came to be found in Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii, and all over the world. A few even breed in Wisconsin! This photo is from Alaska. Photo by Emily Stone.

This is the Pueo, a subspecies of short-eared owl who live in Hawaii!

Scanning the horizon for owls, I finally spotted a black silhouette perched at the top of a far tree. My binoculars were no match for the distance and the dusk, but another birder with a powerful lens stopped to see what we were looking at. As the shape took flight, he snapped a few quick photos. Dark body, shoulders, and wrists contrasted with white trailing edges in a pattern that was unmistakable—a dark morph of a rough-legged hawk.

This is a rough-legged hawk from a different winter, probably a female because of the dark belly band, and probably in Iowa. The one we saw had even darker shoulders with no white mottling...at least that we could see in the dim light. Photo by Larry Stone.

These incredible raptors nest all around the top of the globe and migrate to the middle latitudes for the winter. Feathers all the way to their toes give them their name and the ability to withstand frigid temperatures while hunting lemmings and voles wherever they go.

The rough-legged hawk disappeared over the far trees, and the Sun sank below the horizon. We decided to head home. Thirty-six minutes after we left, more patient birders reported on social media that the long-eared owl came out to hunt. That’s the way it is with birding, and we wouldn’t have it any other way—now we have an excuse to go back to Sax-Zim Bog next winter!

Sunset + birds = joy!

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Winter Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.