Lansing Loamy Plain

A single American Golden-Plover (Pluvialis dominica) has been working the farm ground along West Sherwood Road west of Fowlerville for the past several days, seen again on September 7. It is a long way from any shoreline, and that is the point. This is a shorebird that prefers dirt to water: plowed fields, sod, short pasture, anywhere the vegetation is low enough that a bird can see what is moving on the ground in front of it.Watch it for a minute and the method is plain. It runs a few steps, stops dead, scans, then darts forward to pick something off the soil, much the way a robin hunts a lawn. It is finding prey by eye, not by probing, which is why it wants bare or close-cropped ground rather than the mudflats other shorebirds crowd onto. In a September field that means beetles, grasshoppers, ants, flies, spiders and earthworms turned up by tillage or exposed on short turf.By this date the bird has mostly shed its summer look. The black face and belly and the gold-spangled back that give the species its name are gone or going; adults are patchy and buff-gray, and a juvenile wears crisp, evenly scaled plumage with a fine gold speckle across the back. In that drab state the bird to rule out is the Black-bellied Plover, which also stops in fields on migration. The golden-plover is smaller and slimmer, with a noticeably finer bill and a smaller head, and its folded wingtips extend well past the tail. If it lifts, the difference is settled at once: Black-bellied shows a black patch in each wingpit in every plumage, golden-plover's underwing is plain gray, and its rump and tail are dark like its back rather than pale.This bird is partway through one of the longest journeys any shorebird makes. It nested this summer on Arctic tundra somewhere between Baffin Island and the Bering Sea. It will winter on the pampas of Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil. The route is a loop rather than an out-and-back: in fall most of the population stages along the Atlantic coast of Canada and New England and then flies nonstop over the western Atlantic to the north coast of South America, a single overwater leg of roughly 2,400 to 3,100 miles with nowhere to land, rest or feed. In spring they come back up through the middle of the continent, through the Great Plains and Mississippi Valley, feeding in open fields much like this one. The full circuit runs on the order of 20,000 miles a year.A field in Livingston County is an inland refueling stop on the southbound leg, after the tundra and before the coast. Adults leave the Arctic first, in July and August, and juveniles follow from late August into October, so the timing here fits either a late adult still heading south overland or a first-year bird on its first passage, fattening on Michigan insects before a flight that will not touch ground again until Venezuela or the Guianas.

Ionia County shifted from completely free of drought conditions to nearly blanketed in abnormal dryness in just two weeks, a pace worth pausing on. Through most of this spring and into late July, the U.S. Drought Monitor showed 0% of the county registering any dryness at all. Then, in the week ending August 3, that jumped to nearly 69%, and by the week ending August 10 it had climbed to over 99% of the county classified as abnormally dry.That's an unusually fast onset, the kind of shift that outpaces the slow, gradual drawdown this landscape typically sees as August wears on. The Lansing Loamy Plain sits within the broader Southern Michigan/Northern Indiana Drift Plains, a mosaic of till plains and moraines where soils generally hold moisture well into summer; a swing this abrupt suggests conditions turned quickly rather than built gradually.For now, none of that dryness has crossed into moderate drought, and that distinction matters. In the week of August 12\u201318 last year, the county wasn't just abnormally dry, it already had nearly 17% of its area in moderate drought or worse. So this year's dry spell arrived faster but hasn't yet deepened the way last year's did by mid-August.No streamflow gauge close enough to this stretch can currently confirm whether the creeks and wetlands here are already running low, so the story right now is about the dryness classification spreading rather than about confirmed low water. Given how quickly it moved, the next few weeks are worth watching closely. Grand River Waterway tracks conditions across this drainage and is a good source to follow as this develops.

Polyphemus Moth (Antheraea polyphemus) emerged near Clarksville this month — a single sighting on July 9th, right at the peak of the species' fleeting adult flight window. These are among the largest silk moths in North America, with a wingspan of up to about 5.5 inches (14 cm), and are named for the Cyclops of Greek myth, their hindwings marked with pale eyespots that mimic the mythical creature's gaze.Adults emerge mouthless and live only a few days — a brief, frantic window for mating before they vanish. The real work of the species happens in the long caterpillar stage, which spends the summer feeding on oak, maple, birch, and cherry leaves. In midsummer, when the big silk moths are at the peak of their brief season, a single sighting like this one is worth pausing for.

Polyphemus Moths (Antheraea polyphemus) have been turning up steadily since late May — 35 observations across 60 days, from residential streets in Grand Rapids to rural townships near Lansing, with the most recent confirmed sighting at Whistle Stop Park in Byron Center on July 26.These are among the largest silk moths in North America, with wingspans reaching six inches. The large eyespots on their hindwings — giving the species its name from the one-eyed Cyclops of Greek myth — serve as a defense against predators during the adults' brief final days. Adults live only a week, never eat, and exist solely to find a mate.The larvae feed on oaks, maples, birches, and cherries, making the species a tracker of woodlot edges and riparian corridors across a range of settings. That these moths are turning up from urban parks to farm-country woodlots suggests broadleaf tree cover is widely distributed here, though presence records alone don't tell us how well connected those patches are.

Midsummer brings the year's most perilous moment for stream ecosystems here: water temperature peaks, dissolved oxygen plummets, and excess nutrients from forty permitted dischargers are running in significant violation of Clean Water Act limits. When oxygen stress coincides with nutrient loading, the biochemical cascade is swift and severe — algal blooms consume what little dissolved oxygen remains, suffocating fish and macroinvertebrates that cannot seek refuge in deeper, cooler water.Twenty of the forty-eight stream reaches in the region are already officially impaired. The harm is not evenly distributed: reaches below the largest dischargers face compounded stress, while others cling to marginal compliance. Summer is when the regulatory failures of the past months become visible in the water itself.

Cyanobacteria appeared near Lowell in late June as summer heat began pushing water temperatures into bloom territory. The outbreak is not surprising: of the roughly 50 water bodies in the immediate area, twenty are now impaired by nutrients streaming in from cropland runoff.What makes this bloom instructive is what's missing from the landscape. The wetlands that once filtered this agricultural drainage were systematically drained beginning in the 1800s, converting water-retentive ground into tillable fields. That historical choice eliminated the natural treatment system that worked at no cost and no maintenance. Current remediation efforts — pond construction, filter strips, in-stream restoration — are now attempting to rebuild, piecemeal, what the original wetland complex once provided freely.

Three Elfin Skimmers (Nannothemis bella) turned up in the bogs on July 4th — a noteworthy arrival for a dragonfly this exacting. Their larvae develop only in cool, acidic, nutrient-poor water, the kind of conditions that have become rare across this landscape.Within ten miles, two-fifths of assessed water bodies are now impaired, most degraded by nutrient loading and warming. In a watershed altered this thoroughly, an Elfin Skimmer isn't just a pleasant sighting—it's its own monitoring station, a living signal that some pockets of intact bog habitat are still holding.

Two-thirds of this watershed is crops, and 20 of 48 nearby streams are officially impaired. This was once wetland and oak savanna; drainage tiling started in the 1800s removed natural filtration. State cleanup plans now try to do in law what that landscape once did for free.

Blanding's Turtles are crossing roads to nest right now — the most dangerous weeks of their year. They take 15 to 20 years to reach breeding age, so each adult lost to traffic removes decades of reproduction from the population's future.A turtle population can look stable long after it has quietly stopped replacing itself. Records from the region this spring show scattered sightings, but the broader picture is one of stress: most of the water bodies in the area carry pollution designations that impair their capacity to support long-term turtle populations. Road mortality and degraded wetland habitat are working in concert — a combination that can unravel a population far faster than any single threat alone.

The wetlands near Clarksville are full right now. Water levels are high from spring rains, aquatic insects are emerging in clouds above the surface, and the days are at their longest. In this kind of light, if you watch the edge of a marsh or slow creek long enough, you might see a dome-shaped shell moving through the shallows toward shore. It is early summer, and the Blanding's turtles are nesting.The Blanding's turtle is a threatened species, and the wetlands around here are part of its core range in Michigan. It is a medium-sized turtle, recognizable by its bright yellow chin and throat, and by the high, rounded profile of its dark shell, which is often speckled with small yellow flecks. For most of the year, Blanding's turtles stay in the water, hunting crayfish, aquatic insects, and small fish in marshes, ponds, and sluggish streams. But in early summer, females leave the water entirely. They walk overland, sometimes a quarter mile or more, to find open, sunny ground with loose soil where they can dig a nest and lay eggs. Sandy roadsides, field margins, gravel shoulders, disturbed ground near trails: these are the places they look for. The same places that put them directly in the path of vehicles and foot traffic.A female Blanding's turtle may not nest until she is seventeen or eighteen years old. Once she starts, she returns to the same general area year after year, navigating by cues that researchers are still working to fully understand. She digs with her hind feet, deposits a clutch of six to twelve eggs, covers the nest, and walks back to the water. The nest is on its own after that. Incubation takes around sixty to seventy days, and the temperature of the soil during that period determines the sex of the hatchlings. Warmer nests produce more females. The hatchlings, when they emerge in late summer or early fall, are small enough to sit in a teaspoon, and they face an extraordinary number of predators: raccoons, foxes, skunks, crows. Nest predation rates in many populations run above eighty percent. The species persists because adults live so long and reproduce across so many decades, not because any single year goes well.The landscape these turtles move through near Clarksville has changed considerably. Autumn olive, an invasive shrub, has spread densely through many of the open and edge habitats here. So have invasive multiflora rose and Morrow's honeysuckle. Together, these shrubs close off the sunny, open ground that nesting females need. A turtle emerging from a marsh and moving upslope into a thicket of dense shrub cover may not find suitable nesting soil at all, or may travel much farther than she otherwise would, crossing more roads and open ground in the process. The native woodland edge that once offered open patches under white oak and black oak is harder to find. Where it remains, near the sycamores along creek margins and in the drier oak uplands, nesting habitat still exists. But the corridor between water and nesting ground matters as much as either end of it.Tree swallows and barn swallows are working the air above the wetland margins right now, catching the same emerging aquatic insects that Blanding's turtles hunt below the surface. Red-winged blackbirds are calling from the cattails. The marsh is loud and active. But down at the waterline, or crossing a gravel two-track somewhere nearby, a turtle may be moving slowly and steadily toward ground she has visited before. She is not fast. She does not need to be, in the water. Out here, her pace is the same regardless. Watch the edges of any open ground near the marsh. The soil is warm enough to feel it through your shoes.