Brother Nature at Night: Jack's backyard & kayaking the Huron River

All right, we're giving you a shot of outside and there's a reason for that. I mean, a beautiful view right there, just kind of give you a little bit of a tour. I mean, the Bayview Yacht Club, sunset, you can't get better than this. And the reason we're going outside right now is because I have a bit of a special treat here for you tonight. I love working with Brendan Vrabel, but there are times we get to work with brother nature, Jack Nissen, at night. So we get brother nature at night here on Fox 2 Detroit Live at 830. Jack, how you doing? Turns out there's even nature at night, Aaron. There is nature at night. Who knew? I mean, you get the stars, you get the crickets. I mean, I make the joke with you all the time if it happens outside, it's nature. But to a point, that's kind of true, right? Oh yeah, no, it's kind of the name of the game. And really, it's dusk and dawn. If you ever want to see very active wildlife, nature doing what nature does, you want to hit it when the sun is setting or when the sun is rising. That's kind of your sweet spot, in my opinion. Because if that's what's happening, you're probably going to see. You're probably going to see. You like the super? I think it's rather apt, man. Yeah, you're hitting it right on the right note. Let's go. So you want to start somewhere close to home, literally for you. My home. Your backyard. So let's, take me here, show me what's. My wife took this photo of me. I have finished. Well, I finished in sort of a, I don't know what it really means because I'm always going to do more work to my backyard. But this is one of the happiest moments of my life. This is such a beautiful backyard, too. I finished my fire pit last week on Wednesday night, I think. And the Fox 2 bonfire is this week. And everybody's invited, yeah. Let's go. Come join us on Ardmore Drive, yeah. I basically, the rocks on the left side, I put those in earlier in the spring, and then the fire pit on the right, I did last week. So you did all of this yourself? Yes, this is five years of work, but it's slowly taken on a life of its own. I had to dig up all the grass, and this is sod that's been, that's like probably three times as old as I am. It's very, very old grass, and I know that because the roots were so, well, as deep as grass can be, and they fought me every step of the way. So I'm looking at your garden, too, that you have off to the left there. I see a lot of flowers there. Do you have vegetables growing anywhere, too? No vegetables. Vegetables attract other critters, and then that's when they come for my sweet potato vines, which aren't growing any potatoes, but they do cascade over the rocks, or at least that's my hope. They're actually growing a lot right now, but they will eat, they'll get eaten by everything. And that's actually why I don't put up any bird food, because if I put up bird food, then that attracts squirrels for sure, but I have a groundhog that really likes to invade, and boy, oh boy, is that annoying. So we kind of have the rules in nature going on here from brother nature as well. I would say, if you could take away anything from this photo, it's that you, too, can do whatever you want to do to your yard. It is possible. Honestly, the challenge is just doing it. I mean, I'm gonna get a house around here eventually, and I've been adulting a little bit more and eating more fresh vegetables. Whoa. Like, I've sauteed green beans a couple of times the last few weeks. Oh, my goodness, Aaron. I mean. You're growing up. I am, like, putting spinach in my smoothies and everything, and I'm growing slightly out of my five-year-old palate that I have, but. I'm proud of you, man. I mean, thank you, but I would definitely grow stuff there, just because it would be cool to have, like, something that you grew yourself, and then you get to the reward or reap the. Reap the reward? Thank you, yes. Eat and reap the reward. I will say, there is a raspberry bush in the back, and my wife has raided that thing. It's very happy, too, so it blooms a lot. You know what? Fresh raspberries, like, right off the vine are the best, though, too. They do taste really good. I'm kind of surprised, because I put that thing in a few years ago, and it's just exploded. Really? I will say, if I were to plant something that I could eat, it would be herbs. Okay. Because herbs, mostly, they don't get eaten by other things, like basil would be nice, or lavender would be kind of nice. Just little odds and ends you might add to spice up your life. My mom would grow some kind of tiny, tiny red peppers, and we would chop those up, put them in tacos, and it adds just the right amount of kick to them, as well. Is that their name, tiny, tiny red peppers? That's what I'm calling them, because I can't think of the name of it otherwise. You scientist, you. Exactly. I'm a journalist for a reason here, Jack, but you had an exciting day today, as well. Yeah, yeah. On the water. I don't know. I hope the audio's not coming through. This is raw video. I'll kill it. Yeah, this is raw video, and I'm not, I wouldn't say anything we shouldn't have been saying, it's just that it hasn't been cleaned up yet. It's streamed, there's no rules right now. Yeah, so that's me in the front. We, me and Howard Mitchell, photographer extraordinaire, tackled the Huron River today. This is for an upcoming Brother Nature segment. I was working on it with the Huron-Clinton Metro Parks, and this is one of their interpreters that kinda showed us the way. Okay, so I do love kayaking in rivers and doing float trips in rivers. I'm thinking about doing one in West Michigan coming up soon, but what was the coolest thing you saw in this? The turtles. The turtles? We saw, we saw, I don't know, a million of them. There's Howard. Oh, hey, Howard. Yeah, yeah, he was, so he's using an Osmo, which is like the newest version of a GoPro, I guess. Oh, that's cool. And, frankly. It's a cross between a GoPro and a selfie stick, it looks like. Yes, yeah, it is incredible what this thing does. We mic'd up me, and then we mic'd up Abby, who's the interpreter, way down the road, and you would never have lost your signal. Amazing. And, so, I will say, there was one video we got of a turtle, we got a little close to him, and usually they'll jump into the water, because they're out there, they're cold-blooded, they're warming up in the sun, you get close to them, they'll kind of jump in. One of them, though, got stuck trying to jump in, and he was just like caught in the fork of these two branches, and just kind of like, just sort of flapping, and couldn't go anywhere, and I asked, should we help him, and Abby said no, because nature's gotta do what nature's gotta do. He will also be fine, he'll make it out on his own, but he looked truly, Eric, truly helpless. It was almost kind of funny, but it was also like, oh, your shell is a detriment to you, right? Like, you're not gonna, you gotta figure this out, bud. I could watch this video all day, it looks so peaceful. So, big, big props to Skips Canoeing, they have it down. You essentially will go to Delhi Metro Park, and then you could either start, basically, you'll shuttle up to either Dexter-Huron, or Hudson Mills, the first one's two hours long, and the second one's four hours long, but you don't even have to paddle, the river will take you without you even going anywhere. And honestly, have you, so you love Michigan in general. I love Michigan. Like, pure Michigan. Yes. Have you ever kayaked the Big Manistee River before? I've hiked it, and backpacked it, I've never kayaked it, have you? I have, actually. So, my aunt and uncle live about 15 minutes away from a great launch point, and what we would end up doing is taking the truck with the kayaks, parking it at one end of the river, and then driving another car to the other end, and then just. This is the way to do it. Exactly, yeah, just kinda scoop back, and just scoop everything, but. How many of you were there, then? It was the same deal, so it was my dad, my aunt and uncle, and me. Okay, did you all get your own? Yeah, we did. Vessel? Yep, it was perfect, and we had snacks, we had drinks, we had, I don't think we had music, we just had the sounds of the river, which is all you need. That's a chorus in itself, yeah. And we had, importantly, we had ribs waiting for us on the way, back there, as well, at their house, because they put them on the smoker before we left. Do they live near the Manistee? Yeah, they live just outside Manistee, not far from the casino, actually, as you're going up toward Bear Lake. Dude, I'm jealous. I gotta get family like that. It's the best. I grew up going to Manistee all the time, that's, hands down, one of my favorite places. Arcadia Bluffs, you can't get better. So, where do you wanna go next? Well, I would like to give a shout-out to Chirp Drop. Chirp Drop? Chirp Drop? No, Chirp, not Chirp Drop, Chirp Nook. She is an Instagram influencer all about birding. This is her account, and this is how every video looks, is just birds eating their busy little bodies away. It's pretty aesthetically pleasing, but also, she told me on last week's show that her hope was, with this, is just to kind of give people a little bit of peace, just sort of enjoy listening to birds enjoying themselves. I bet that we can get some good sound out of this, too. I may have put, I may have taken the sound out. All right, hang on, let's listen. Yeah, you did. That was good, that sounded like a bird. That was just the echo off my microphone there, but. I know how sound works, but. I could have thought that was a woodpecker at first, but. Yes, yeah, I. Professional operation going on here. No, I would check her out. She's got a lot of really cool videos, and really, again, it's just sort of proving that, you know, even regular Joe Schmoe. Red Winged Blackbird, there we go. There you go, even you and I, Aaron, can create wildlife and vision and viewing like this that is just so paradisical to look at. Those Blue Jays were like the birds that end up on our bird cam all the time here at Fox 2. They are. Kind of just fighting each other. Oh yeah, they're, according to my parents, they're very mean. They always chase off the Orioles, and they do not like that. Yeah, oh, it's the same. I mean, and you see, and our bird cam's empty right now, but you'll see some of the birds that, I know they're not ravens, but they almost look, their eyes look as intense as ravens on them. The grackle? Yes, the grackle. And like, you know it's getting mad when the feathers just like ruffle up, and it's like, oh boy, it's gonna knock someone off now. Yes. Like that, but that is a cool shot. Shout out to Chirp Note. Yeah, and then finally, I wanna just a little quick shout out to the aviary and to the Detroit Zoo. We are working on another episode about piping plovers. Okay. So I don't know, being a West Michigander, or I guess knowledgeable about it, do you know much about the plover? Not at all. They are these little shorebirds that live only in dunescapes on the Great Lakes, and probably in the early 90s, there were only 12 nesting pairs left. Wow. Since then, with a lot of conservation efforts, including a lot at the Detroit Zoo, they're almost up to 100 now. They live in every state. Usually those last 12 pairs are only found in sleeping bear dunes. It is kind of a remarkable conservation story, and a happy one too, because that's not always the case when it comes to the environment. Not at all. But here, this was, in addition to talking about the plover, which is where they kind of do a lot of research at the Detroit Zoo, Charlie Ramsey, who's the curator of birds at the Detroit Zoo, kind of walked me through and pointed out some of the other fun ones they had in there. So I have to ask, is the Huron Valley and the plovers, are those airing in the same Brother Nature episode or different ones? That's a good question. So this week will be the plover, as well as boxwoods. Do you know what boxwoods are, Aaron? I do not. They are these, they're kind of your green shrub. Okay. They are not all right, apparently. They are being consumed by this invasive moth, and they fight off so many other kinds of diseases like boxwood blight. And they're also a very popular plant to have just kind of around your house, but they're not good. So we're gonna talk about that too. Can't wait to see it. That is Friday at three o'clock. Make sure you join it. It's always a good time on Brother Nature. I mean, last week we talked about the stinkwood. It was the stinkwood. Stinkhorn. Not slughorn, stinkhorn. Not slughorn. Not the professor from Harry Potter. Stinkhorn mushroom. There you go. That's what we talked about last week. That's on fox2detroit.com as well. That was a very entertaining conversation. So was this. Jack Nissen, thank you so much for joining us as always. Thanks for having me, Aaron. And that's Fox 2 Detroit Live at 830. We'll see you for the news at 10 and 11.