Karen Rose Wils

ESCANABA — Watch your step!

Wilma the woodcock and Greta the grouse are about to do something amazing.

These birds will transform the cold, muddy, leaf – littered and moss-covered Upper Michigan ground into a nursery.

Where yesterday was snow and ice and moldy lichen, new life will be incubated beneath the warm feathers of these upland game birds.

Camouflaged to perfection right there on bare earth, their nests will be amongst popple (aspen) roots and pine needles. Greta the grouse will raise her brood in the hardwoods. Wilma the woodcock will choose the muddier places to call home.

Wearers of hiking boots and rubber Muck boots beware — it’s time for the ground nesters to do their thing. ORV riders use caution. God willing, with a good hen, a healthy habitat and a little time, those fragile eggs will become next year’s hunting stock.

Wilma the woodcock will nest first. These birds are migratory birds that return to the U.P. in early April. Their mating dance of twirling in the sky and their peent-peent songs are famous. And then when we can still see our breath outdoors and when the cold wet ground is finally bare, Wilma lays her eggs.

Her nest is a simple small depression in the dirt. I have even seen hen woodcocks sit motionless on their eggs while late season snowflakes turn the ground white again.

But Wilma is a good mother. When the warm spring showers come, she is pulling worms out of the swamp and feeding her fledgling babies.

Greta the grouse, on the other, hand usually waits until May to build a simple ground nest of dried leaves and lay eggs. Right now, the male grouse (more commonly called partridge around here) is drumming. They are the Ringo Starr’s of the northern forests. There’s nothing nicer than to hear than the steady thump-thump-thump rhythm of the grouse’s wings as he tries to impress a mate.

Greta likes to nest next to a fallen log or a mossy old tree stump. Her splotchy brownish grey eggs will blend in well with the ground.

Both Wilma and Greta will sit as still as statues on their eggs for hours protecting them from predators and the chilly Michigan air.

This is why I always say we should use more caution when it is the ground nesting season. If disturbed, both of these hens will whistle and hiss and prance around, leading you away from her precious eggs.

Grouse and woodcock are very beneficial to their forest home. They eat worms, centipedes, ants, beetles, insects and tree buds.

It is an awesome thing to watch helpless eggs on such a crude forest floor, flourish and become beautiful birds.

Wilma and Greta are great neighbors!