9 October 2025

On Tuesday meteorologist Ross Ellet posted on Facebook that the water level in Lake Erie will drop 5 inches in the next month according to the U.S Army Corps of Engineers. Click on this embedded image to see his message on Facebook.

In case you’re not on Facebook, Ross Ellet went on to explain:

A 5″ drop on Lake Erie over a month is impressive and would equal about 850 billion gallons of water lost. It would also be the lowest water level since March of 2015.

— meteorologist Ross Ellet Facebook post

This sounds astonishing until you realize that Lake Erie’s water level fluctuates seasonally and is normally at its lowest in winter. You can see it on this GLERL graph comparing this year’s water level (2025 YTD in blue) to last year (2024 in red).

Notice that the record maximums and minimums, shaded in pale blue, differ by 6.4 feet! Lake Erie has ranged about 3 feet higher and lower than it is today.

You usually experience these fluctuations only at the beach but I do remember flooded roads at Magee Marsh during high water in May 2019.

(water levels an Lake Erie beach at Long Point Provincial Park, Ontario from Wikimedia Commons at these links: low water wide beach in 2017, high water no beach in 2019)

Looking at the historical averages for the last five years, Lake Erie has been going down overall.

But right now it’s at the 1918-2024 Long Term Average, so there’s nothing to worry about.

p.s. Speaking of worry, I remember when Lake Erie was very polluted in the early 1970’s. Fish died all the time and we did not wade or swim in it.

While looking for photos for this article I found a file photo from June 1973 with the caption: “WHITE CITY BEACH SIGN [Cleveland, Ohio] WARNS AGAINST SWIMMING IN POLLUTED LAKE ERIE. TO REDUCE POLLUTION LIFEGUARDS POUR CHLORINE INTO THE WATER ONCE EVERY HOUR.”

Water pollution was so bad in the U.S. back then that it prompted the Clean Water Act of 1972. Only a year after the law was passed, Lake Erie was still in terrible shape because it took a long time to clean up.

Nowadays we take clean water for granted, but if the Clean Water Act is weakened we will slip back into the easy path of draining and dumping all kinds of yuk into the water.

Meanwhile it’s good to remember that “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.” — lyrics from Joni Mitchell Big Yellow Taxi

3 October 2025

This weekend I’m visiting family at Cape Cod and looking forward to catching up with the fiddler crabs that live at Wellfleet Bay.

Fiddler crabs are any one of 107 species in the family Ocypodidae that are found on the coasts of the Americas, the Indo-Pacific, West Africa, and a small south-facing region of Portugal.

The males, pictured above, are the only ones with a “fiddle” claw while the females have two small claws, below. The males sometimes use the fiddle to fight each other but I see this so rarely that I took a lot of photos.

Since the fiddle is too large to eat with, the females can eat twice as fast as the males.

This 2018 video from PBS NOVA explains why the males have such a large claw and what they actually use it for.

To see the fiddler crabs I’ll have to pay attention to the tides. They only come out at low tide and at my favorite viewing spot at Wellfleet Bay a marker in 2017 indicated that Goose Pond and Try Island Trails would be underwater at high tide.

This year’s map shows it gets inundated. I’d like to see the marker at high tide too but then I’d miss the crabs.

11 September 2025

Skuas are predatory seabirds that eat fish, offal and carrion in the non-breeding season, other birds’ eggs and chicks during the breeding season, and steal food from others at any time of year.

Of the seven skua species, brown skuas (Stercorarius antarcticus) live only in the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica.

Every other bird gives brown skuas a wide berth and attack thems if they get near their nest. These Gentoo penguins are not happy to see two brown skuas at once.

In several respects brown skuas seem to be the crows of the Southern Ocean. They work together by hunting in groups at penguin nesting colonies, they gang up on other birds to steal their food and, like crows, they recognize and occasionally bond with individual humans such as Father Kirilov, the Eastern Orthodox clergymen at Trinity Church in early 2015.

Kirilov says he has also made friends with three large brown skuas, Antarctic scavenging birds often seen hovering outside his doorstep, waiting for the priest to toss them fresh fish.

“Since 2008, I constantly meet them here and talk to them,” the priest says, recalling the time a skua tried to make off with his pointed monk hat. “Sometimes they become naughty,” he smiles.

— Pravir.com, March 2015: Russian priest feels closer to God in serenity of Antarctica

That’s the upside. The downside is that if you band their young at the nest, they learn who you are and specifically attack you, just like crows. See a video of it at this vintage article.