er tee ey Ue b OUND BLU Ke TIN 11 
SURPRISE IN THE NORTH WOODS 
By Betty Groth 
Be Prepared For Anything if you set foot in the North Woods this early 
in the season — and so I packed my wintercoat, spring raincoat, extra 
footwear for spring torrents, gloves, bird guide, binoculars and camera. 
Heading northward, I arrived at the big, beautiful log house at Land’s 
End at sunset. The Crested Flycatcher with his yellow breast, cinnamon 
brown tail, and pearl gray crew-cut head was the first to say “hello!” He 
was “wheeping” for me in the great birch tree. He heard my startled cry 
to my hostess, Dr. Margaret Brookes, “You have heat — a thermostat in 
my bedroom!” The house was over forty years old. She was aglow with 
hospitality. “A thermostat in every bedroom, but the two fireplaces down- 
stairs will still keep the real feeling of the north woods.” 
Another surprise was on the way. It rained only at night on the nearly 
3,000 feet of wilderness shoreline. Sunshine smiled on us, and my winter 
coat went into the guest closet, never to come out till I went home mid- 
June. Outside the front door delicate ferns uncurled, day by day, from 
brown fiddles at the base of the great birch. Large white Trillium Grandi- 
flora and Yellow Lady’s Slippers had overstayed their blooming season and 
awaited my camera at peak. Hundreds of white Trillium and surely a 
thousand Yellow Lady’s Slippers! Mists of blue Forget-me-nots drifted 
through the garden, around stone walls, and far into the woods, competing 
with wild Blue Bugle. 
In contrast to the wild beauty, tulips were budding in the east garden 
near the great stone chimney where the American Merganser had fallen 
down inside the fireplace, and lived to return safely to the wilderness. 
Purple lilacs were starting to bloom at the edge of the woods. In the west 
garden, with only a glimpse of Wisconsin Bay, white lilacs were getting 
lacy and fragrant, and the bird bath was snubbed by the Rose-breasted 
Grosbeak in favor of an old gray granite pan of water on the stone wall. 
Raccoons, too, came here to drink, casting baleful eyes at the electric pump 
where they could no longer poke their fur heads in a pail of water. 
One surprising morning, as Dr. Brookes was busy with seedlings in 
the picking garden, I was hanging over the upstairs hall window with 
binoculars in hand and my Roger Tory Peterson Bird Guide balanced on 
the window sill. Puzzled, the housekeeper, Mrs. Huber, put mop aside and 
watched me sight a pair of Red-breasted Mergansers courting offshore 
below. Between tall green timber 70 feet down, I watched the male dive 
and the female float demurely, awaiting the return of her suitor. Identifica- 
tion was confirmed by his twin emerald plumes and distinctive red breast, 
as great an attraction to me as they were no doubt to his mate. 
Chickadees, Scarlet Tanagers, Red-headed Woodpeckers, Robins, Blue 
Jays and Flycatchers all came to call, some to the roof outside my bedroom 
window to inspect the moss. Outside the kitchen windows vireos joined us 
at breakfast-time, and a hummingbird discovered the columbine. Warbler 
songs from wooded seclusion confirmed our nesting friends: the American 
Redstart, the Black and White Warbler, and the Black-throated Green. 
Overhead Herring Gulls, Martins, Swallows and Chimney Swifts crossed 
and re-crossed our sky, and at high noon four Red-tailed Hawks wheeled 
slowly over Green Bay. 
