WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY

It was a gorgeous August day – not your typical August 13th muggy and buggy morning. I’d already walked almost five miles at Lake Erie Metropark, so this was intended to be a short walk to look for the ever-elusive Wood Ducks.

In the four years since Humbug Marsh opened, at the beginning of each walk, I have a routine. I glance over at the Monguagon Delta and if I don’t see any waterfowl to photograph, I will make the Delta my last stop before heading home. Well there were no waterfowl present, so I headed straight to Humbug Marsh.

The entire DRIWR consists of nearly 6,000 acres of unique habitat, including islands, coastal wetlands, marshes, shoals, and waterfront land extending along 48 miles of shoreline and supports 300 species of birds. I have only visited the Humbug Marsh Unit of the Refuge …

… perhaps I’ll explore the rest of the DRIWR this Summer.

Humbug Marsh is the last mile of undeveloped shoreline along the U.S. mainland of the Detroit River. I strolled along the trail through the Old Growth Forest which is 300 years old and filled with thriving Shag Bark Hickories which can grow up to 100 feet tall and live for 350 years. You can see where the Old Growth Forest is located on this map below.

On the raised platform I checked for Eastern Fox Snakes slithering across – whew, none!

I passed the vernal pond, but nothing was happening there.

At the end of the Old Forest trail was a viewing platform and a marshy area where I found a few Purple Loosestrife …

… and some Cattails.

There were Pond Lily buds on Lily pads that gently bobbed in the water.

Nearby, a solitary Great Blue Heron patiently scanned the water for fish, ready to stab one with its long beak.

As I stood on the viewing platform, I scanned the sky when I heard a rumbling noise overhead. I could see a large plane approaching and, from its shape, I knew it was likely an antique plane participating in the Thunder over Michigan Air Show later that day.

I am not an expert in antique planes, so a Google Image Search helped identify this plane as a B25 Mitchell World War II Bomber.

[Just hours later, the news reported that an antique plane, a Mig 23 fighter jet, had engine failure in the finale of the show, which was held about 25 miles from Humbug Marsh. The pilot and backseat passenger ejected into a lake and the plane crashed and exploded near an apartment building. There were no lives lost and no property damage except the plane.]

On my return trip to the Delta, I passed this tree with an impressive statistic.

The pollinator gardens were looking good. When this venue opened to the public in 2020, there was extensive planting done to encourage bees and butterflies.

And, just like home gardens, weeds infiltrate every chance they get.

I was able to find three butterflies at these gardens; first, a Monarch on the Milkweed pods …

… and a Monarch that flitted around the Butterfly Weed.

A pretty Pearl Crescent Butterfly stopped me in my tracks; happily I saw it on the ground and didn’t step on it.

These wasps were glommed onto this solar light post, so I stood a respectable distance away and zoomed in on them.

Speaking of those little buzzing buggers, bugs ARE the bane of my existence. I heard that it wasn’t cold enough to freeze a lot of our bugs over our El Niño Winter, including ticks, so they might arrive earlier than usual and in abundance. Ugh!

On my walk that day there were many signs warning of ticks. This is one of them.

This is the damage caused by webworms – only the skeleton of the leaf remains. I have photos from another venue that I’ve not yet written about and most of that tree’s leaves are transparent and a huge web enveloped the tree.

I didn’t have to check my pedometer to know I had walked a lot of miles, so I had one more stop, the Delta, then could call it a day.

Urban sights and nature sites?

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, my last stop at this venue was the Delta Pond. A Heron or Egret sighting will have me walking the long, railing-free Monguagon Boardwalk pictured below. The kayak launch platform is in the foreground.

If you are a first-time viewer of this venue, you may be scratching your head at the above photo wondering how a wildlife refuge can thrive while embedded in a seemingly industrial setting; even the DRIWR signage is mere steps away from busy West Jefferson Avenue.

Here is a photo showing close-ups of the industry surrounding the DRIWR.

Urban sights and nature sites would seem to be an unlikely pairing.

Overlooking the Monguagon Delta is a huge metal statue, the reflection which I captured in the header image.

In the past I tried to glean info about this metal artwork to no avail, as did fellow blogger Zazzy who was interested in its origin. I contacted the DRIWR and got a very helpful park ranger named Maddie Drury and she researched and sent me some facts about this artwork.

My many photos taken at various parks along the Detroit River and at Grosse Ile may look picturesque; that is, if you ignore the twin, 536-foot tall, red-and-white smokestacks which always marred the horizon. You can see the smokestacks reflected on the Delta Pond, in this post’s header image. The “Stacks” as locals have always referred to them, belonged to the Trenton Channel Power Plant, a nearly 100-year-old coal-fired facility in Trenton.

Note the words “marred”, “referred” and “belonged” … as in the past tense.

The Trenton Channel Power Plant was decommissioned in December 2022 as our energy provider DTE decided to implode the entire plant and hinted that green space would replace the large property. Unfortunately, now the plan will be to build a facility to house batteries.

All hazardous materials were removed from the site and the demolition was scheduled for two parts: March 1st for the “Stacks” and May 17th for the boiler house. The public was welcome to view the implosion in safe, designated spots.

So, I hustled to the Refuge for one last shot of the “Stacks” intending to make a Wordless Wednesday post entitled “Going, going, gone”. It was a blustery, frigid February morning when I took this shot …

… then the implosion was abruptly rescheduled to March 15th, with no explanation given.

On March 15th at 7:00 a.m. a crowd of approximately 200 people viewed the implosion which used 500 pounds of dynamite at the base of each smokestack, collapsing one, then the other in a choreographed fashion. I found it fascinating to watch that video. If you are interested, you can view the short video right here.

After the dust settled, local folks took to social media to wax nostalgic for those twin candy cane smokestacks, declaring them a navigational beacon for sailors and pilots since 1924 and bemoaning their fate.

So, now you know that urban sights and nature sites CAN live in harmony.

I am joining Terri Webster Schrandt’s March 24th Sunday Stills Challenge: Urban Sights.