The spring smelt run in Lake Michigan brings fish lovers of various biological orders to the lakefront. Around Montrose Harbor the breakwaters and step-stone revetments are covered with people bearing nets, coolers, and grills ready to catch, cook, and eat as much smelt as they can.
The double-crested cormorant is one of 6 species of Phalacrocoracidae in North America, one of 30 species worldwide. It is the only North American species regularly found away from saltwater. Historically its breeding colonies could be found on the shores and islands of the Great Lakes, along the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, and on large inland lakes. The name comes from a pair of feather tufts that develop during breeding season and are almost always invisible to a human observer.
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If you have ever been near a nesting colony of fish-eating birds, your nose will never forget the experience. However, in the capitalist tradition of turning shit into gold, the accumulated droppings of piscivorous birds have been mined as guano, a fertilizer rich in nitrogen and phosphates. Phalacrocorax bougainvillii, a cormorant that nests on islands off the coast of Peru, has been called the most valuable bird in the world. It is the major member in a triumvirate of cormorants, boobies, and pelicans that provides the bulk of the guano deposits there.
Bald eagles and Caspian terns are among the other species that have rebounded as a result of the DDT ban. However, we still have some problems. Birds in nesting colonies around Green Bay and at some other Great Lake sites show an alarming frequency of birth defects. Many young birds have crossed-bill syndrome. Their upper beaks twist to one side, and their lower beaks twist to the other; as a result they cannot close their beaks and are unable to feed themselves.
The pictures she sent do indeed look like fox squirrels; I will pass them around to various experts for verification. This would be the third known fox squirrel population in the city.
It has been suggested that black squirrels are on the increase. The uniformly dark color could be a recessive character that is more common in some populations than in others. It could confer some disadvantage on a forest squirrel but be irrelevant to a city squirrel. Maybe black squirrels will be as common as blue-eyed Swedes.
