Chequamegon Bird Club Blog

Pershing is a 7900 acre State Wildlife Area, divided into Northern and Southern Units.  The DNR manages for three distinct habitat types - wetlands, brush-prairie and forest.

Pershing is located in Taylor County in North-Central Wisconsin.  To find Pershing, from the intersection of Hwys 64 and 73 near Gilman, go north on Hwy 73 about 6 miles to Hannibal.  Turn left (west) onto County Hwy M and go about 3.5 miles to East Loop Road on the right (north), access to the North Unit.  To reach the South Unit, take a left onto Gilman Road 2 miles West of Hannibal, and follow it south to Rued Road, the south border of the property.

Pershing is the best place in Wisconsin to see Sharp-tailed Grouse and April is the best time to visit.  The South Unit has two blinds that can be reserved by calling the Ladysmith DNR office at 715-532-4369.  There is no fee but it is first come, first serve.  Reservations can be made any time after the first of the year and the last two weeks of April are usually the peak period for displaying grouse.  Short-eared Owls can be observed here at dawn and dusk and Northern Harriers, Sandhill Cranes, Clay-colored Sparrows and Swamp Sparrows are common.  Large ponds and small lakes attract Ring-necked Ducks, Common Loons, Horned Grebes, even White-fronted Geese and the occasional Trumpeter Swan.  Monson Flowage is known as a productive shorebird spot in later spring.  American Woodcock and Wilson’s Snipe can be seen doing their sky dance in spring and LeConte’s Sparrows can be found in the wet meadow areas.  Some other birds found here include Sora, Black Tern, American Bittern, Osprey, Rough-legged Hawk, Bald Eagle, Common Nighthawk, Alder & Olive-sided Flycatcher, and during migration many warbler species.  In winter you can find Northern Shrikes perched in trees in the savanna areas.

This blog is intended for usage by CBC members or others who have been approved for posting to the CBC blog.  As with most blogs, this one is intended to be a forum for users to express their ideas, opinions, observations and other musings as they relate to bird and or nature subjects.

Blog messages are posted with the most recent blog items on top and are available for anyone to read.  Messages are also organized by category or archived by the month the message was posted.  Only writers with posting privileges can write or post comments to this blog.

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After successfully logging in, the two main areas that bloggers will be using are the “WRITE” and “MANAGE” areas.  Generally you will be “writing” a new “post” - which is a normal blog message.

Writing  a new post consists of entering a TITLE for your post, entering the body of the blog message, selecting an appropriate category for the message, and Saving the message.  Note that after a message is Saved, it will not show up on the blog until it is actually “Published”.  The Save option gives you the opportunity to start working on a blog message and saving it for later retrieval, but not actually posting/publishing it on the public blog until you have completed it and clicked on the “Publish” button.

We have created some “categories” that we think will meet most of the CBC bloggers needs, but we can add additional ones if desired.

The other option you will be using regularly is the MANAGE option.  In this area you can manage YOUR posts (editing and deleting) as well as managing any images YOU have uploaded to the Media Library.

Feel free to explore other areas of the blog.  You might want to experiment with some of the formatting options that are available through the blog editor.  You are welcome to include images with your blog postings, but please size down the images before uploading them.  Probably a width of 300 pixels is sufficient for most blog postings (and 72 ppi is all that’s necessary for web publishing).

If there are other points of confusion that you come across when using this blog, feel free to ask and I’ll write instructions or clarifications to this message.

Have fun and feel free to show your creative side.  That is what blogs are for.

Greg

P.S.  Since the blog apparently doesn’t indicate which author posted them message.  I guess we’d better sign at least our first name (unless you prefer to be anonomyous)