myers@uwmacc.UUCP (Jeff Myers) (01/12/85)
The UW arboretum is an excellent place for birding, having a wide
variety of terrain: deciduous woods, thickets, marsh, lake shore,
small ponds and streams, coniferous forest, and open, orchard-like
areas.
The section near where I live has wooded thickets bordering on Lake
Wingra, a fairly sizable lake. On New Years eve I took a walk just
as it started to snow, temperature about 25F. The woods were quite
dead except for some crows and blue jays until I got to the edge of a
small clearing bordering the lake. All the perching birds I
saw on the walk were together on one side of this clearing, in the
trees and shrubs. There were five or six Chickadees singing merrily
together with two Cardinals as the snow was coming down. In view were
pine siskins up in some small trees, and some juncos and american tree
sparrows hopping around in the thickets. The light snow and the birds
twittering made for a quite pleasant (but rather cold) stop.
Not having done much in the winter before, I was wondering if it is
common for perching birds in a forest to clump together in this
manner, or if it's just a peculiarity of being near a town?
Another nice thing about this part of the Arb is that on the other side
of the clearing mentioned above, there's a stream which is open that
goes immediately into the lake, leaving an open area in the lake, also.
Mallards seem to like to hang out there. If you like Mallards, Madison
is the place to be, whatever the season.
--
Jeff Myers The views above may or may not
University of Wisconsin-Madison reflect the views of any other
Madison Academic Computing Center person or group at UW-Madison.
ARPA: uwmacc!myers@wisc-rsch.arpa
uucp: ..!{ucbvax,allegra,heurikon,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!myers