LAKE ONALASKA BIRDS IN FALL

     I have been watching water-loving birds on Lake Onalaska, a backwater lake off the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, via their live camera and our computer screen.  Most of the birds there are in flocks, making Onalaska loaded with feathered life during September into November.  Some species have been there all summer, while other kinds pour in from their breeding grounds elsewhere.  

     Non-breeding American white pelicans and double-crested cormorants were there all summer.  Both handsome species catch fish, but in different ways.  Pelicans form groups on the water to work together to herd small fish into shallows.  Then the pelicans dip their ample beaks and pouches into the shallows at once to scoop the fish into their pouches, straining water from their bills and swallowing their prey.

     Cormorants dive under water from the surface and catch one fish at a time in their beaks.  They rise to the surface to swallow their victims.

     The big, majestic pelicans are graceful in flight.  They alternately flap and glide in elegant, undulating lines across the sky.

     Numbers of stately, post-breeding sandhill cranes, great blue herons and great egrets wade stealthily on long legs in the shallows to get food.  The cranes reach out their lengthy necks and beaks to catch frogs, tadpoles, fish and invertebrates, and ingest some plant material.  The herons and egrets reach out their equally long necks and bills to mostly seize fish and frogs.  Obviously, there is some competition for food among these large, magnificent birds. 

     Flocks of attractive, post-breeding Canada geese and a variety of puddle ducks, including mallards, American wigeons, northern pintails, gadwalls and green-winged teal, gather on the shallows of Onalaska to ingest algae and other water greens, and wild rice and grass seeds.  Some Canadas and mallards nested on Onalaska's grassy islands, but others of their kinds joined them in September.  Wigeons, gadwalls and pintails raised ducklings around prairie ponds in the United States and Canada, but congregate at Onalaska before going farther south for the winter.      

     Numerous, post-breeding ring-billed gulls, Franklin's gulls and Caspian terns assemble on Onalaska mud flats prior to drifting farther south before winter strikes.  The gulls are scavengers mostly, but do catch some small, live fish by dropping to the water's surface from the air.  

     Terns, however, are real fish catchers.  They hover gracefully into the wind, on beating wings, to spot fish, then quickly dive beak-first into the water to seize a fish in their bright red beaks.        

     Some pairs of stately bald eagles raise young on Onalaska's wooded islands.  Other, majestic post-breeding eagles, adults and immatures, arrive at Onalaska in summer and into autumn.  Some eagles stay there through winter, when they scavenge dead fish and other creatures off Onalaska's islands and shore to shore ice. 

     Handsome, post-breeding red-winged blackbirds and yellow-headed blackbirds consume lots of wild rice seeds on stalks emerging from some of the lake's shallows.  Those lovely blackbirds, both adults and young of the year, bend the stalks down as they glean their seeds, creating beautiful pictures of themselves, the rice stalks and the surrounding scenery.  

     A variety of camouflaged, but attractive, migrating shorebirds, including killdeer plovers, Wilson's snipe, two kinds of yellowlegs, short-billed dowitchers and least sandpipers, stop at Onalaska's shallows and mud flats to consume invertebrates before continuing farther south.  The long-legged yellowlegs hunt food in  slightly deeper water than the rest care to manage.  Most of the other shorebirds get invertebrates from moist mud flats and inch-deep water at the waters' edges.  Gathering invertebrates from different depths of shoreline reduces competition for that food.   

     Post-breeding, duck-like American coots and pied-billed grebes come together on Lake Onalaska's shallows between islands to feed where they feel safe.  Both species dive under water from the surface to get their sustenance.  

     Coots ingest algae and other water greens, seeds, water invertebrates, tadpoles and anything else edible they can capture.  They come to the surface to swallow their food.

     But coots are also built like chickens to an extent.  Flocks of them walk on lawns to ingest seeds, land invertebrates and grass.  But at the first hint of danger, they race back to water, and safety.

     Grebes, when underwater, seize small fish, tadpoles and aquatic invertebrates in their beaks.  Obviously, there is some rivalry for food between coots and grebes. 

     All these wonderful birds I saw this fall because of a live camera and our computer screen.  In autumn, Lake Onalaska is really alive with a variety of beautiful birds, mostly in flocks.