Chirp Nook's guide to birding, Memorial swims, and Fish Cleaning | Brother Nature

Welcome to this week's edition of Brother Nature. I'm your host Jack Nissen. So excited to have you all with us. We're gonna be talking about birding a lot today. But first I caught a really weird video in my backyard. Take a look at this thing. Not gonna tell us just yet what you're looking at, but you might have some guesses. We'll have a little bit more of a longer explanation and what exactly is just growing in my backyard later in the show. But for now, I'm here with Carissa. She is the I guess curator of Chirp Nook. Is that what I have? Is that right, I guess? That's true. Yeah, Chirp Nook. It's my brand. It's all about bird watching and just the love of birds. The love of birds. Let's start really the inspiration behind your love of birds. When did you first get interested in Chirp Nook? You know, it's interesting because a lot of people that are into, you know, into birding have been birding their entire lives. And I really just started a couple of years ago. So I feel like the best part is that you can just start birding at any time at any level. So I'm definitely not an ornithologist, but I just picked up birding one day and it honestly has changed my life. Yeah, it's kind of, I'm sure it's a gateway for a lot of people into birding. I found that, myself included, as you get older, this kind of hobby is absolutely the kind of thing for me and probably a lot of other people that like to go outside, right? Yeah, I feel like Millennials are kind of entering their bird watching era, which is really exciting. People are getting bird feeders for the first time or going out in the nature trails and just finding new bird species and realizing that it's kind of like collecting Pokemon, but in the wild. So it's just really fun all over. Real quick aside, have you seen the Lister's documentary yet? No, is it about birds? It is about extreme bird watching. Okay, well I'll put it on my list then. And for everybody else watching the show, also go watch it. It's an amazing little foray into just what birdie can offer. I gotta start, when it comes to Chirp Nook, what did you get the idea for the name? Oh my gosh, okay, that's a really good question. I bounced ideas back and forth with a few different things, but the whole idea is really to create like a cozy space online for bird watching. So Nook kind of made it feel like come to my center of the internet where things are just really exciting and joyful. I want to bring joy to people's days. And you know, when we're on social media, a lot of what we see is really heavy. And so I just love popping up on people's feed and giving them just a chance to just relax and feel good with nature. So it's a Chirp Nook. I love it. It's also like, it's a very kind of comforting vibe. How did you come up with the, I guess the aesthetic of the profile? I mean, it's a really cool shot of your little, I don't know, food. You got everything set up for your birds. How did you come up with that style? I just wanted it to feel really accessible. I started by just putting out a bird feeder and seeing, it wasn't even a feeder, it was just a bowl, let's just call it. It was a cereal bowl with bird feed in it. And I just realized it was crazy how many species were actually just coming right to my backyard. I spotted almost like 50 species in my little suburb backyard here in Michigan. So you definitely don't have to go anywhere special to see the birds. They just show up everywhere. It's great. Well, and I gotta say, based off of what the birds are eating, it looks like they're eating better than I am sometimes. You put out this beautiful little jelly. You got their nuts for them. Did you come up, I mean, where did the diet idea come from this? It's like a beautiful charcuterie board of organic... No, I'm just kidding. It's just bird seed. It's really just high quality bird seed. And once you start to observe the birds in your backyard, you see what species you have. And then you can start to say, okay, well, these are the species that are showing up. What seeds are needed for them? And that changes at different points throughout the year too. So it gets really exciting. If there's a specific bird species I want to attract, can I put out a specific kind of food to attract them? I'm so glad you asked me that question. Because yes, you can. It's like my favorite thing. So different seeds attract different birds, which is great. Black oil sunflower seeds attract just about everybody, which I love. Peanuts also attract everybody. But if you go online, I have some resources on my website, chirpnook.com, with if you want to attract specific birds, what do you feed them? And then you can just get either the individual seeds or blends that have all of those things in them. It's really fun to curate little dishes for your specific birds. And I also see you don't always just attract just birds, but critters as well. Do you like when they make an appearance? I actually hate that you asked me this question. Because no matter how I answer, people are going to be upset. I have a love-hate relationship with the squirrels and the chipmunks. Here in Michigan, we have fox squirrels, red squirrels, gray squirrels, eastern chipmunks. And when you feed nature, you kind of just have to accept that if you're feeding the birds, you're feeding the squirrels too. So I'm going to politically decline to answer that question on how I personally feel about the birds. Fair enough. I know my experience is, when I have put bird feeders out, the birds will eat, they'll drop it, and that's when everybody else comes and visits. And usually the consequences of that spread from there on out. I guess I sort of invited this in the first place. Yeah, you kind of get what you asked for when you start feeding nature. But it is a beautiful, symbiotic relationship. You just have to let it play out. Another thing I've noticed about your videos is that you're often showing the birds don't seem like they're fighting one another for food. Is that a choice of video you're showing? Or is it always just peaceful and loving in your clips? I feel like the birds definitely fight. They do. The doves like to pull their wings back and give a good dove slap every once in a while. But I feel like, for the most part, I have a really good bunch of birds. And we're so lucky in Michigan to have so many different species that if you put out different feeders in different places, sometimes they'll fight. But for the most part, everybody just grabs what they need and then fly off. It's a beautiful thing to watch. For anybody who wants to get into birding themselves, you have some resources that you might recommend. What do you have here for us? I just brought some things that are great for beginners getting started. Something like this is my absolute favorite. It's a waterproof field guide so you can have it at home or you can take it with you out on a trail if you go out in the wild to watch birds. It also has tons of beautiful pictures of birds inside so it's easy to identify birds. And then just grabbing any beginner birding book is really helpful for people that are just getting started because you're going to see tons of birds and have no idea what species they are and having a picture to reference is really helpful. And then the patches. You have to tell me, how do I get my hands on one if not all of these? Isn't it exciting? Yes, this is for the Bird Club. You do monthly challenges that are all related to birding. Whether it's feeding birds in your own backyard or spotting different species and you can earn collectible patches every month. So it's very exciting. And you've got to get a cool jean jacket to go along with it. I know, it's my pride and joy of course. But yeah, it's Bird Club so you can join at chirpnook.com and start earning your collectible patches. When you had birds starting to first appear in your yard did you know what you were looking at when you saw them? Not at all. I knew I had doves because they were very easy to recognize but other than that I did not know until I started learning more about them. And since then, do you have any favorites that you might share with us? I do. I actually have just started getting more into going out to the trails and going birding so more egrets and herons are really fun but honestly my favorite backyard bird are going to be the woodpeckers. They're just so cool. All woodpeckers. Downy woodpeckers. So cool. Yes, they are really fun. But woodpeckers are my favorite. I'm always a big fan of their housing choices as well. Dead and decaying wood often times is pretty affordable for a bird. Those are the best ones. Anytime I see a dead tree I'm like there's got to be a woodpecker there. I've got to go check it out. And also pretty easy to know if you can actually hear them by the hitting of the wood, right? Yes, exactly. And they all have different patterns too. Different calls. You could just go on for days learning about woodpeckers but honestly our songbirds are just as beautiful. Well I'll have to make a plug as well to the metro parks. I've found some pretty sweet birds there. Carissa, where can people learn more about Chirp Nook? Chirp Nook dot com is my website or you can find me anywhere on socials at Chirp Nook. I'm on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. Alright, well there you have it. Check out Chirp Nook for more and we'll be back just after the break. We're back here on Brother Nature and just so you know if you see something in the camera lens, that's a wasp. Apparently he's like to join us for the show for today. Hopefully we can move him after the fact though. Alright, so what did I show you guys at the beginning of the show? That really weird long red thing stretching out of the ground? Take a look at my explanation. What you're looking at is a stinging worm they have just like all mushrooms they have a very special place in that they are saprobes and they break down decaying material like wood chips, that's why you might find them in mulch. What is happening is there's mycelium all over your garden, it's everywhere. We can't take a step without walking on some sort of mycelium. That is the main part of the organism. That mycelium is what is actually breaking down they're excreting enzymes to break down materials in the ecosystems. When all of the conditions are met for that stink horn to come up it produces an egg, literally it looks like an egg and within that egg that's where that mushroom is bound up. It was one of the strangest discoveries and also told me why the back of my yard actually smells so bad. It's because it stinks like dead flesh. Who knew, right? A little bit more pretty that's growing out of someone else's yard though is over in West Bloomfield Township I met up with a guy who's actually growing a pretty rare little cactus. Take a look. This cactus grows very rare it only grows in the Mojave Desert. Cacti grow in the desert we all know that but did you know they actually grow also in Michigan specifically West Bloomfield and I'm here with David Kamisar who is actually quite the garden growing on. What's going on man? It's hard to believe but cactus is growing in Michigan we have a ton of cactus as you can see these are eastern prickly pear and that's the one variety that can grow in Michigan however I was getting bored of this which is hard to do because cactus in Michigan is unusual but I said can you come up with anything else and they said no not a chance and then finally some scientists said well maybe maybe because in the desert there is mountains a mountainous area in the desert and in the mountain although it's hot in the mountainous area it snows and they get used to cold and they might be able to since they're used to cold possibly live in Michigan it's possible so I tried a bunch of different mountainous cactuses known as western prickly pear cactuses and a lot of them failed but actually one extremely rare the rarest one made it. Alright so David Kamisar actually texted me after the fact a couple weeks later after shooting that segment the heat has very much brought all the other cacti growing in his yard and they're all flowering and it is quite the impressive sight so if you're not going to go with the native plant idea you might as well try cacti although apparently they're also native to Michigan as well pretty neat. So now we're in the thick of summer here there are two really cool memorial swims coming up around the Great Lakes the first one I talked to Mr. Jim Dreyer he's the shark about his cannonball swim. I'm really excited about the US 250th Cannonball Memorial Swim this is going to be a real legacy project Jack and it's going to sound a little bit crazy but people are kind of used to that with me I guess my crew is going to drop me off out in the middle of Lake Michigan 22 miles offshore and I'm going to pull 250 cannonballs for his 50th birthday to the coastal town of Whitehall Michigan and why Whitehall? Because we're going to use those cannonballs to build the US 250th Combat Veterans Memorial in Whitehall I'm going to be pulling 249 of the cannonballs in two different dinghies attached to my ankles and I'm going to have one cannonball on my back in a ruck pack for my dad who was a World War II combat veteran so hopefully my dad is going to be kind to me and not try to drown me. I have a lot of time to think when I'm swimming Jack and over the years I've done quite a few different events that are tied into big anniversaries like last year with the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald and so we did the Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Swim so with this being the 250th birthday of America I thought we've got to do something and the one thing that really stands out in my mind is that we've got every reason to celebrate 250 years of freedom I mean what an incredible thing but how can we celebrate 250 years of freedom without at the same time honoring all those who fought to win and preserve that freedom and so that's kind of when I came up with this idea of the Cannonball Swim and the Cannonball Memorial Cannonballs to me represent there's a lot of symbolism there, it represents the weight of war I will physically be pulling that weight but this is symbolic of the weight that the combat veterans felt on the battlefield and I'm not making a comparison I would much rather swim than be dodging bullets, they're true heroes but they felt the weight of battle and then a lot of the veterans also continue to feel that weight when they return home to civilian life when they come home with post-traumatic stress and so there's a lot of symbolism with the weight of the Cannonballs So that was Jim Dreyer his swim is actually coming up on August 7th it looks like but also Eric Hansen has his own swim coming up this one's up near the Mackinac Bridge take a look First and foremost thing that they definitely can expect is they're going to be swimming alongside the mighty Mack for roughly four and a half miles alongside the eighth wonder of the world so that's about the only thing they can for sure expect water temperatures, wind conditions currents underneath you know there's two and a half billion gallons of water that flows under the bridge a day so that brings amongst a lot of water changes and current 2022 I decided to get my feet wet and try it with 30 swimmers so ever since then we've been just about doubling our numbers in swimmers every year since 2022 so it's really grown extremely quick about 99.999% of the people have always crossed the bridge from the top side the view underneath as you're swimming it's a whole other version of the bridge it's something the reason why I do the swim now and put this on is I don't forget the first time I crossed it when I actually finished it the emotional attachment I got to the mighty Mac but the views and swimming alongside it underneath really gives you a perspective of the enormity and the beauty of this bridge I don't know how else to ask it but how hard is it to do this? the currents out here, there's times when you have to swim straight west in order to go north so there's a lot to it, there really is, there's a lot of training involved, I tell people to train for six miles, four and a half miles swim you can never swim a straight line out there like you're in a swimming pool you just can't a pool swimmer, open water swimmer when you're getting these waters here it puts us all on the same level playing field almost because you just don't know what you're going to expect the Mackinac Bridge Swims funds that are actually being raised for that event go to the Mackinac City and St. Ignace first responders, it's a big boost to their budget and what a cool way to actually enjoy your summer but swimming along the bridge, alright so the other cool thing that actually happened this week way down here, the Ford House actually installed and finished the restoration of their new shoreline, now it's fully accessible to people that want to walk along Lake St. Clair but it's actually much more significant for the brother nature reason in me, that's because 99.9% of the shoreline along Lake St. Clair on the US side is armored, you really can't access the river or the lake at all on our side, now that's kind of a difficult thing for us although there's reasons for it, protects us from a lot of the hard wave action that gets kicked up by the shipping channel as well as those storms but also you're actually really installing a whole lot more habitat for the fish that like to grow and breed and be born along the shoreline if you actually have that there that attracts a whole lot more other wildlife and the ripple effect can be rather significant you check out Canada's side, they already have that kind of thriving business going on so hopefully this might stir a little bit of momentum and maybe we'll have a little bit more growth on our side as well alright, got a really cool interview coming up after this segment, stay here for a whole lot more alright, we're back in brother nature, I'm here with Bob Barnes he's with the, is it Walleye Foundation do I have that close enough? well, the organization I'm with is the Lake St. Clair Fish Cleaning Foundation gotcha, alright, before we dive into that Bob sent me a really cool video take a look at him cleaning this fish you made pretty quick work of that thing, tell us, what exactly were we watching there? well it's just me cleaning the fish, I mean there's different ways of doing it obviously but using an electric knife, doing one side at a time that was one of the fish I caught that day specifically to film for the show cleaned both fillets got both fillets off the bones, skinned them and zippered them which is a cut on each side of the fillet to take that center bone out of there good stuff, good eating what kind of fish was it? that was a walleye that was a walleye, could you describe to me what does a walleye taste like? wow, it's better than cod, and it's far better than tilapia it's outstanding, a nice white fillet good quality fish, mild tasting primarily the fish I target so when it comes to cleaning fish I don't know how that process seems pretty clean but I can imagine it's not always the cleanest process tell me a little bit about what it takes to actually clean a fish well obviously what I like to do is bleed them while I have them on the boat in the live well which is make a cut to bleed them and get the fillets nice and white makes it taste a lot better then obviously you need to take them to a cleaning board in your house or on your tailgate of your truck and go through the cleaning process which is not a hard thing to do what is a hard thing to do is get rid of the carcasses when you're done I take mine and freeze them and throw them out on my garbage night which is Sunday some people don't have that luxury and they'll take them dump them in a dumpster or dump them in a gas station that's one of the reasons we're trying to get this fish cleaning station built on Lake St. Clair so tell us a little bit about the effort behind this how long has it been underway we've been working on this since 2021 it's been 5 years myself and Jim Foggenauer the president we're fortunate to have $100,527 donated by the Great Lakes Fisheries Trust and we currently have a fundraising campaign going through the Michigan Economic Growth Corporation our goal is $45,000 if we raise $45,000 they match that dollar for dollar which means we have $90,000 and we're building this fish cleaning station the only catch is we need to get this campaign completed by July 31st why is it so important to have one of these facilities ready for someone to use well currently there's no fish cleaning stations on Lake St. Clair and it would be the first of it's kind and open the door for more it's a great thing for the community a great thing to leave a legacy for our kids and our grandkids to have a place they can go and clean their fish and not have to worry about the guts I'm going to guess there would be a disposal site for the guts as well then right? yeah there's a grinder that's going to be on site there cleaning boards, hoses to rinse everything off, basically you take your fish there, you clean them, you bag them clean up after yourself, hose things down and you're done and this is free, you need to have a recreational pass to get into the facility which is the Clinton River Cut-Off affectionately known as the Crocker Launch on Lake St. Clair in Harrison Township across from Eddie's Drive is there going to be you had one of those really cool, is it an electric knife? I don't know what exactly the name was that you were using in the video, would that be available as well? no, you have to bring your own knives there ok besides walleye, anything else people might expect or be able to use at this area or I guess to clean and cut up there? anything that they catch you know, that's a legal species to catch in season, they can clean there at this facility. gotcha any training options as well? I mean, I don't know if there's a good way to learn how to actually clean a fish well you can look at my video don't get much easier than that also it's a great thing that's going to happen we need to make this happen to get some donations to make this happen by July 31st by July 31st, ok where can people go to learn more about this? you can visit our website which is fishcleaning.org and there's all the information there that you'd need to donate that goes directly towards our campaign alright, well Bob, thank you so much thank you alright, that's everything for this week on Brother Nature