Magee Marsh

We've been having a great time with the bird migration. We've gotten out and on the hiking trails more than usual and, while seeking out rare bird sightings, have really enjoying the outdoor time in our beautiful spring weather and the first blushes of spring in pretty little blooms on trees and plants everywhere.

We're really fortunate to have a lot of parks and preserves nearby. We're just ten minutes from some of the best birding and hiking spots in southeast Michigan, and our county parks system is pretty rich in beautiful lands. But in Ohio, an hour and a half away on the shore of Lake Eerie, is Magee Marsh, a wildlife preserve that is famous in the birding world—as in drawing birders from all over the country during migration week famous. Being so close, Calvin and I decided it was worth a one day field trip, so on Thursday, May 14 (historically peak bird activity date), we packed school work for the car ride and lunches for after the hike and headed down there.

I laughed with Calvin because there is definitely a difference between biridng in our little parks and birding in a world famous park. One difference is the camera power. Around here my 70-300mm zoom is amongst the top dogs, down there Calvin and I decided it was more like a pocket camera next to the big guns most people were toting around. Another difference is the level of knowledge—not that birders here aren't knowledgable, but at Magee, everyone knows (or thinks he knows) a lot, and it was common to hear birders spouting rare facts or engaging in (usually) friendly debates about an ID. Which brings me to another big difference: the level of competition among birders. I've mentioned this before, but if it surprised me on the trails here in our little parks, its extent on the boardwalk in Magee totally threw me. And the aggression with which birders sought IDs and sightings ("Where did you see that one? When? When??? Which way did it go??? Where can I find it now???). It was an education in and of itself.

Our trip was great fun. One of the great things about Magee is the number of species that fly through the area on their way north for the summer, another is the sheer number of individual birds, but the best thing about it is their accessibility. The park has a boardwalk that goes right thorugh the brush, raising birders enough to put them at eye level with a lot of the birds, and close enough even to the tree tops to get good views of those rare species. Apparently it's so popular that the boardwalk can become almost too crowded to be passable, especially on peak weekend, but on Thursday morning towards the end of Big Week, it was relatively quiet, though there were enough other birders there to help us locate and identify species as we walked along. For all the competition, there's also a heck of a lot of comeraderie—a person would ID a bird, announce it, and help everyone else find it. Whether it was for bragging rights or not didn't matter, it helped Calvin and me find four species we had never seen before on this one trip alone.

Northern Waterthrush

Ovenbird

Gray-cheeked Thrush

Tennessee Warbler

Pine Warbler (female)

Pine Warbler (female)

Northern Parula

Black-and-white Warbler

Chestnut-sided Warbler

Baltimore Oriole

Blanding's Turtles (an endangered species)

Warbling Vireo

Yellow Warbler

Bay-breasted Warbler

Nashville Warbler

Week 19, in pictures

May 7: Towering
by Calvin

by Cortney

May 8: Change the scenery
by Calvin

by Cortney

May 9: Tucked in
by Calvin

by Cortney

May 10: Purple
by Calvin

by Cortney

May 11: Bottoms up
by Calvin

by Cortney

May 12: In nature
by Calvin

by Cortney

May 13: Edible
by Calvin

by Cortney

Mother's Day (weekend)

I got the greatest gift for Mother's Day this year. I loved the birding and fairy tale books my son got me, and the adorable picture he painted for me. And the elephant print scarf from Jon is my new favorite, plus the brunch he made me on Sunday was fantastic. I loved all of these things—they are all really thoughtful, considerate gifts that show how much they were really thinking about me for this special day—but none of these was actually my favorite gift of the weekend. No, the best gift I received was two full days of family time in the great outdoors—wonderful time spent together, enjoying each other and the world around us.

Because Saturday was Big Bird Day, the day when ornithologists and hobbyist birders all over the globe hit the fields to do species bird counts and record them on ebird. Right in the middle of migration and mating season, it's a great excuse to get out and go birding, and being Mother's Day weekend that's what I asked for from my guys. They both love hiking and wildlife, so the hardest part of that gift was probably the 6am wakeup call on both Saturday and Sunday, but they both got up willingly and their enthusiasm added a lot to our expeditions.

On Saturday, up at six and breakfasted, we decided to hike the Arb. I hadn't been there since I was a college student and I had forgotten what a hidden gem it is right in the middle of Ann Arbor's urbanish life. We managed a forty minute hike, on which we saw almost nothing, before it started to rain on us. I was pretty feeling pessimistic about the whole thing, but the boys convinced met to wait it out in the car for a bit. Twenty minutes later the rain abated, and on our second trip into the park we were greeted by sunshine, birds, and deer. We even managed to spot a warbler species we hadn't yet seen this year (though he was too high in the trees for great pictures).

The Arb wasn't our only stop on Big Bird Day. We actually spent the whole day hiking. On our way home for lunch we stopped to make a full trip around Dolph. And after lunch we joined a guided hike at County Farm Park where Calvin got to hold a tiny baby bluebird while the county naturalist checked the nest box to count the chicks and make sure they were free of parasites (they do this frequently, I guess). Then the celebratory nature of the weekend warranted a stop at Dairy Queen, after which we needed to kill time before dinner, so we did a tour of Eberwhite Woods before picking up pizza on the way home.

And as if Saturday wasn't superlative enough, Sunday rivaled it for perfection: up at 6 and breakfasted, we checked the weather report and headed to Independence Lake. The thing about spring weather in Michigan, though, is that it's unpredictable. We had checked the weather for home, and by the time we arrived at the park it was raining. Heavily. The thing about new technology, though, is that it is fairly accurate minute to minute as long as it knows where you are, so we could see that the storm was slated to pass through. And, after a thirty minute nap in the car, it did. Patience pays off. When the rain let up we hiked the park's two mile open field nature trail. It was our first time on the trail, and because of the long grass we came home soaked to the knees, but the trip was amazing. We spotted three bird species none of us had ever seen before, and because it was mostly open fields, we got some good practice with the binoculars. Back at home, Eggs Benedict, sweet and thoughtful gifts, then a little shopping with our growing boy (for summer shoes), and dinner with the grandparents to honor the other mothers in our lives, too, and let them know we love them. See, perfection again.

Arb in the rain

Mute Swans

Eastern Wood-pewee

Indigo Bunting

Arb not in the rain:

Eastern Bluebird

Black-and-white Warbler

Bay-breasted Warbler

White-tailed Deer

Blackburnian Warbler

Dolph Nature Area

Swainson's Thrush

County Farm Park

Veery

Tiny baby bluebird

(Horace's?) Duskywing

Independence Lake, after the rain

Bobolink

Orchard Oriole

Eastern Kingbird

Common Yellowthroat

Yellow Warbler

Eastern Towhee

Eggs Benedict

Warbler Week (and more)

The first two to three of weeks of May, and possibly beginning a little before, are migration time here in Michigan. During those weeks, many bird species leave their southern winter homes and travel north to breed and raise their young through the spring and summer months. Some of those species call our area home during the summer, but many of them are just passing through, making these weeks a special time for Michigan birders.

Calvin and I planned for this. So as not to miss it when it happened, we started early, and caught some of the early returning species even a week or so ago, like the yellow and yellow-rumped warblers. We also read through our bird guides so that we'd (hopefully) recognize some of the visiting species when we saw them. Our trip to Independence Lake last Sunday yielded no new results, but, determined not to miss anything, we got up early on Monday to go for a birding hike at Dolph. It was the first time we'd planned an early hike, getting out of the house before Jon, even, and before doing any school work, and how fortuitous a decision that was. Unbeknownst to us the bird train had arrived overnight, and when we pulled into the small dirt parking lot, we found ourselves swept up in a tide of binocular sporting enthusiasts. Apparently the first to arrive, having sensed (or spotted) the presence of a multitude of migrators, had texted a group message to the Audubon Club and they were arriving quickly by droves. 

Finding ourselves swept up with the Audubon Club was extremely informative. After our success on Monday (we saw 42 species of bird, 13 of those being warblers, and 19 of them migrators), we repeated our morning hikes every day of the week and ran into lots of Audubon members and other birders every single time. Being relatively new to the hobby, there is a lot for us to learn, and many of the people we met were both nice and helpful. I say many, because amongst the things I learned is the sort of side fact that, for some, birding is an exclusive and competitive hobby. I'm not exactly sure how that works, but there definitely birders who seemed miffed by our presence in the tightly clustered packs vying for views of the trees. But for every snooty birder, there were at least three friendly ones, and one or two really, really nice ones. We especially loved the city ornithologist (who knew the city had an ornithologist?), who spent a lot of time talking to Calvin about species, binoculars, and places to go viewing.

We also learned a lot about what to look for when trying to quickly ID a bird. Mostly I try to take pictures, even if they are quick, blurry shots, so that I can ID birds at home, at my leisure, with my trusty books at hand, but we've learned now to look not just at color, but at shape. And there are specific features that help a lot with identification, too, like placement of color, depth of color, presence/absence of color bands on wings, presence/absence of stripes on the breast, presence/absence of eye rings (color circle around the eyes) or eye bands (color line through the eye), etc., etc, plus location of bird in the forest, behavioral clues, shape of the bird, and, of course, it's song.

But that's a lot of information, and we're still trying to absorb it all and put it to good use. So, without further ado, here is a photographic list of several of the unique species (I left out the standards like Robins, Jays, geese, etc.) that we saw through what I am now referring to as Warbler Week:

Warblers first:

American Redstart (summer resident)

Black-and-white Warbler (summer resident)

Black-throated Blue Warbler (migrator)

Black-throated Green Warbler (migrator)

Blackburnian Warbler (migrator, identifiable by his orange chin)

Cape May Warbler (migrator)

Chestnut-sided Warbler (migrator, possible summer resident on edge of range)

Magnolia Warbler (migrator)

Nashville Warbler (migrator)

Northern Parula (migrator)


Palm Warbler (migrator)

Wilson's Warbler (migrator)

Yellow Warbler (summer resident)

Yellow-rumped Warbler (summer resident)


Vireos and Flycatchers (two other families of relatively small treetop birds):

Blue-headed Vireo (migrator)

Philadelphia Vireo (migrator)

Warbling Vireo (summer resident)

Yellow-throated Vireo (summer resident, identifiable by the strong black line through the eye)

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (summer resident)


Eastern Wood-pewee (summer resident)

Great Crested Flycatcher (summer resident)

Small birds of various other families

House Wren (summer resident)

Lincoln's Sparrow (migrator)

Ruby-crowned Kinglet (migrator)

Larger tree-top birds

Scarlet Tanager (summer resident)

Rose-breasted Grosbeak (summer resident)

Downy Woodpecker (resident, and not rare, but I just learned to distinguish him from the Hairy Woodpecker by the black spots on the white lateral (outer) tail feathers)

Baltimore Oriole (summer resident)

Species that reside in the lower brush

Green Heron (summer resident)

Gray Catbird (summer resident)

Brown Thrasher (summer resident)

Eastern Towhee (summer resident)

Week 18, in pictures

April 30: From a window
by Calvin

by Cortney

May 1: Happy May Day
by Calvin

by Cortney

May 2: Outlined
by Calvin

by Cortney

May 3: With flowers
by Calvin

by Cortney

May 4: Pause
by Calvin

by Cortney

May 5: Where I stand
by Calvin

by Cortney

May 6: Adorned
by Calvin

by Cortney