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In: American white pelicans, Atmos room, Bay Beach Amusement Park, Bill Sallak, Cat Island, Chris Houghton, Dead Horse Bay, Emily Tyner, fox river, Green Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Green Bay sounds, Jacob Hoffman, Longtail Point Lighthouse, navigation beacon in green bay, Phoenix, Resch Institute for Music, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Wisconsin Sea Grant, Zippin Pippin

American white pelicans at their nesting colony on Cat Island in Green Bay. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

On a sunny morning in mid-June, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s research vessel, Phoenix, headed out onto the bay. Aboard were Sea Grant researchers Emily Tyner and Bill Sallak and a small mound of recording equipment. The boat was piloted by Chris Houghton, assistant professor and fish ecologist, who was assisted by first mate, undergraduate student Jacob Hoffman.

Emily Tyner aboard the Phoenix, UW-Green Bay’s research boat. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

The bay outing’s purpose was to collect the natural noises of the estuary, particularly bird sounds. It was only supposed to last for three hours but like in the theme song for the “Gilligan’s Island” television show, a mishap was involved.

Tyner and Sallak’s project is associated with the development of a national estuarine research reserve on the bay. The National Estuarine Research Reserve System is a network of 30 coastal sites that protect and study estuaries. In the Great Lakes, estuaries are areas where rivers empty into the lakes. The mission of the reserves is to practice and promote estuary stewardship via innovative research and education projects through a system of protected areas. It’s a partnership program between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and coastal states.

Tyner, director of freshwater strategy at UW-Green Bay, is the state lead on the designation of a new National Estuarine Research Reserve for the Bay of Green Bay. It will be the third reserve on the Great Lakes after Old Woman Creek in Ohio on Lake Erie and the Lake Superior Reserve in Superior, Wisconsin. Sallak is an associate professor of music and was sound recorder for the trip.

Their target was the Cat Island Chain, restored barrier islands in the bay that have created new habitat for migrating and nesting shorebirds. Then, if time allowed, they would visit several other sites.

Bill Sallak with sound recording equipment. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

Sallak described how the idea for this project evolved. “Part of our original conception was more of a hard science, bioacoustics angle. But then, we went out on a boat trip and we went, ‘That sounds cool, that sounds cool. All these things sound really fantastic.’ And so, we decided to lean more towards a more humanistic angle, which is also going to work better if we get to the point where there’s a visitor’s center, because we can take these recordings and put them into a room with a surround sound speaker set up, and you can hear the bay in different locations, different seasons.”

In their proposal, Tyner and Sallak stressed the importance of bringing the sounds of the Green Bay estuary to the community. Tyner elaborated, “Right there is a restaurant that’s one of the only places on the lower bay where you can go and have a beer and have a burger and be sitting out on the water. And there’s almost no other places to kind of enjoy the bay. There’s the amusement park, but then there’s no pier or boardwalk for access. There’s no swimmable beaches. Some of that’s for water quality reasons. To get onto the bay, you need to have a boat, an expensive boat, probably. Maybe you can do a bit of kayaking from shore, but a trail system, we don’t really have that.

“For a long time, communities had closed themselves off from around the bay because of smells and harmful algal blooms and industrial uses. But now Green Bay and other communities are reopening and turning their front doors back. Especially with the Fox River cleanup, which was a $1.5 billion effort. And so, with that kind of trying to encourage the city and communities to turn their front doors this way, we also want to reconnect people. This is one step in getting us there,” Tyner said.

Chris Houghton. Image credit: Marie Zhukov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

In sort of a happy accident, UW-Green Bay recently received funding for a new sound auditorium. Plans are for it to be completed this fall, and this Green Bay audio project will be the first to be featured.

Sallak explained. “Now the audio production program at the Resch Institute for Music is going to have probably the best facilities in higher education in the state. We were able to find about 1,600 square feet in the studio arts building and some underused space in the Wiedner Center. We’re putting in four new recording studios, one of which is an Atmos room. So, it’s equipped with a 14-speaker surround sound setup.”

He said it will be the same surround sound audio system that’s used in movie theaters. They’ll have the capacity to make surround sound recordings and present them in an acoustically refined space. When the Atmos room is finished, the Green Bay sounds project will be the first presentation featured in it. The sound files will also be available on a webpage.

The first of five stops on the boat tour was off the gull colony at Cat Island. Amid raucous gull calls, Sallak set up the recording equipment on the boat. He tagged the sound file with the date, time and location. After capturing several minutes of sound, he turned off the equipment as the Phoenix made its way to the pelican colony at the other end of Cat Island. The pelicans were very quiet, so there wasn’t much to record, but dozens of the prehistoric birds flying overhead made for some inspiring photos.

Pelicans wheel in the sky over Cat Island. Image credit: Marie Zhukov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

Their third stop was Longtail Point Lighthouse, a crumbling structure on a long sandy point. After Sallak recorded the sounds for several minutes, the unexpected happened.

“We’re beached,” Houghton said as the bottom of the boat came to rest on the sandy bottom.

“Uh oh,” Tyner said.

“Shouldn’t be a problem.” Houghton laughed, “Famous last words.”

Sallak chimed in, “We’re not going to run out of granola bars? Figure out who we have to eat first?”

Long Tail Point Lighthouse. Image credit: Marie Zhukov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

Houghton and Hoffman jumped over the side of the boat and tried to free it from the bottom. After some finagling, they were able to push it into deeper water.

The Zippin Pippin rollercoaster, Bay Beach Amusement Park. Image credit: Marie Zhukov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

Audio captured, the team moved onto the next stop, which had the ominous name of Dead Horse Bay. As they recorded, a bald eagle sat in a tree, watching as songbirds chirped and twittered. A plane flew overhead, and someone fired up a chain saw on shore. Sallak said he would keep those human sounds in the show. “We’re not apart from everything that’s going on. I’m more interested in collecting what’s literally here than trying to erase.”

Their fifth and final stop was full of human sounds offshore of Bay Beach Amusement Park. One of the most noticeable features there is the Zippin Pippin — a rollercoaster. The team watched as the coaster cars made their slow way up to the top of the ride and then plummeted, eliciting screams from the riders. Sallak said he has plans to go into the courtyard in the middle of the ride and get a recording for this project later.

With audio captured, the team motored back to the marina. They agreed there’s nothing like spending a morning on the water, even if it involved getting beached.

To hear a podcast episode of this story, complete with sounds, visit this Wisconsin Water News page.

A navigation beacon in Green Bay. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

 

The post Using Sound to Connect People to Green Bay first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

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Marie Zhuikov

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In: American bitterns, American white pelicans, birding, Bonaparte's gulls, common terns, Natural Resources Research Institute, nighthawks, Parasitic jaegers, River Talks, River Walks, rusty blackbirds, Steve Kolbe, trumpeter swans

Steve Kolbe on Hawk Ridge in Duluth, Minnesota. Image Credit: Natural Resources Research Institute

The final talk of the 2022-23 River Talk season took place in early May. Steve Kolbe, an avian ecologist with the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Natural Resources Research Institute, gave a presentation about where to find birds in the St. Louis River Estuary and led attendees on a short bird walk on Barker’s Island in Superior near the Lake Superior Estuarium.

“The reason I live in this area is because of birds, specifically because of bird migration,” Kolbe said. “This is an amazing part of the world, both in the fall and in the spring. Birding isn’t just a hobby for me. It’s not just a job. It’s sort of like an obsession.”

Spring

Kolbe began his talk with the snowy owl. They’re often seen in winter on Barker’s Island and the Superior Airport and surrounding area. Their preferred habitat is the Arctic tundra, so they like the open spaces that the airport provides.

An American white pelican files over the St. Louis River at Chambers Grove. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov

Trumpeter swans are some of the first birds to migrate through in the spring after ice-out. Kolbe often finds them in Rask Bay on the St. Louis River.

American white pelicans stage in groups in the spring in Chambers Grove along the river. “For whatever reason, they like the little island in the middle of the river. They hang out there for almost a month before heading farther north,” Kolbe said.

Bonaparte’s gulls can be found in Lake Superior off Lafayette Square on Park Point en masse. “This is one of my all-time favorite birds and an area specialty. The first week in May, these beautiful, vocal and awesome-looking small gulls with a black head and a silver back with red legs stage on Lake Superior. They hang out for a day or two and then leave in a huge flock,” he said.

Summer

American bitterns breed in Mud Lake and Allouez Bay in wetlands.

Common terns breed on Interstate Island – the sandy island that can be seen off the Blatnik Bridge. Kolbe said they winter in Peru, so they “put on a lot of miles.” The island is protected, so people can’t visit it without a permit. The best place to see them from the mainland is at Rice’s Point boat launch in Duluth with binoculars or a spotting scope.

Fall

For work, Kolbe studies rusty blackbirds. He said this wetland species likes to spend time in North Bay on the river and on many of the islands below the Fond du Lac Dam. Unlike most fall migrants, these blackbirds stay in the area for an extend time – two or three weeks. He suspects they may be using that time to molt their feathers. “Whatever they’re doing, it’s obviously a really important spot,” Kolbe said.

River Talk participants view birds on Barker’s Island. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

Parasitic jaegers migrate along Wisconsin Point in September. These birds are known for their feeding style, which involves stealing food from gulls. “They look like a gull mixed with a peregrine falcon,” Kolbe said. “It’s certainly not a bird that you see many places. They nest in the high Arctic and winter at sea. So, it’s cool to be able to see them in Duluth and Superior.”

Flocks of sanderlings and a few piping plovers can be found on area beaches in fall and spring.

Kolbe studied the common nighthawk for his master’s degree. They are another species that migrates en masse along the shore of Lake Superior during fall. “In the second half of August, if you get a really warm day with light winds, go outside in the evening and look up. If you’re lucky, you’ll see something on the order of 15,000 of these birds,” Kolbe said.  He’s been counting the birds during their migration for the past 15 years. He uses the information to develop population trend information for the species. “They seem to be doing OK,” he said.

Hawk Ridge in Duluth is a great place to see hawks and other birds in the spring and fall. Bald eagles are a common species of interest who are here year-round. “It’s really a success story that we’re able to enjoy them so readily and easily around here,” said Kolbe.

During a walk around Barker’s Island, the group saw a mix of birds: buffleheads, a horned grebe, red-winged blackbirds, mallards, a rock pigeon, a common merganser, a song sparrow, ruddy ducks and herring gulls.

River Talks will begin again for its 11th season next fall. In the meantime, there’s a new spinoff series that the Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve has begun for summer, called River Walks. Find more info about it here.

 

The post Where to find birds in the St. Louis River Estuary first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

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Marie Zhuikov