2021 Michigan Trip - Michigan and Horicon Marsh
Our destination and fourth stop of this trip was Michigan. There were a lot of warblers in Michigan’s upper and lower peninsula. Most of the landscape in both places was forest, whether coniferous, deciduous, or mixed. This was perfect for the kind of birds we hoped to see. We also did a quick visit to Horicon Marsh and the surrounding area in nearby Wisconsin, which had some unique birds of its own. Shoutout to my Great Aunt Karen and her family for showing us around Michigan. Many thanks!
Anywhere there are trees, there are chipmunks, and Michigan was no different. Though there were less of them than in other places, there were still a lot of them climbing around in the trees and causing a general ruckus. In my opinion, the call note of the Eastern Chipmunk (Tamias striatus) also sounds quite a bit like a birds’, so not just did we have to try and tell birds apart from each other, but also chipmunks.
Dragonflies were quite common in Michigan, and this particular one, a Common Whitetail (Plathemis lydia), was photographed at Grass River Natural Area. I felt a bit bad for the ones on the boardwalk because they liked the wood and whenever they felt us moving towards them, they’d fly a bit farther down the trail, and then we’d come through again causing them to fly a bit farther, and so on so forth.
As always, there were Common Yellowthroats (Geothlypis trichas) in every marsh. They live in basically the entire US and don’t vary a lot in coloration throughout their range. This particular individual was a male.
Though, we have Song Sparrows (Melospiza melodia) in San Francisco, they are of a different subspecies than the ones here. The ones we have are darker with thicker stripes. Also, here, we had Swamp Sparrows, a close relative of the Song Sparrow, but the Swamps liked to stay in the reeds and were harder to photograph.
Here we have a young Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) poking its head out of its nest box. At first, I was unaware of these nests at Horicon, but a dive-bombing parent swallow soon alerted me to its presence. They were a tad incensed that I was investigating the bushes near their nest, letting out indignant squeaks whenever they dove past my ear. There were also nesting Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica) and Purple Martins (Progne subis), but they were a lot more calm about our presence.
No place is free from the ravenous Canadian Geese (Branta canadensis) swarms. The Canada Geese had lots of young teenage goslings in flocks with multiple groups of parents protecting them from possible predators. Behind these geese, you can see the building that the Barn Swallows were nesting in.
The only tern we saw in the whole of this area was Forster’s Tern (Sterna forsteri). This bird just flew by, possibly hunting for fish, but not doing much besides that. I was expecting to see their closely-related cousin, the Common Tern (Sterna hirundo), but they did not show up.
After finding an eBird report that Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea) had been seen just South of Horicon, we went there to investigate, and we did find them. Although there weren’t many, they were relatively loud and easy to find, but not easy to get to see, as we had to wade through a small mostly dried-up marsh that mainly consisted of mud and decaying trees. It wasn’t very fun to go through that stuff without boots, but we ended up seeing the birds up close, so in the end it was worth it.
My Aunt Karen was rehabilitating a young Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) that had fallen out of its nest when we got there. A crow had raided the nest, taking one bird, and leaving the other two to fall underneath the tree. She fed both of them for a while and one of them was taken back in by the parents. However, this one stayed, and we were able to feed it a few times. When hungry, the grackle would fly down from the tree to beg on the ground, or if it really needed food, it would fly onto a fence on the porch and scream at the door for sustenance. Once it was done eating, it would go up high into a tree and sit contently on a branch. Although it mainly relied on Aunt Karen to survive, while we were there, it did attempt to catch a few bugs.
Here is the grackle being fed wet food from a syringe.
Birds actually have two eyelids: the normal one, and a second one that I believe helps birds protect from detritus of weather and water. In this photo, it makes the fledgling look a bit like a demon.
Here is the bird again being fed, but still with one eyelid closed.
As this species is rare and rapidly declining, we didn’t think we’d see any Golden-winged Warblers (Vermivora chrysoptera) this trip, but by chance, we saw one near the Sunset Trail Road in the lower peninsula of Michigan. It first alerted us with its buzzy song, and then we were able to locate it after nearly 30 minutes of searching. Golden-winged Warblers are very closely related to Blue-winged Warblers (Vermivora cyanoptera) and a recent study seems to show that they may be the same species, despite looking pretty different. Most of the DNA between the two is identical, but a few genes seem to account for the differing colorations. The two species also rampantly hybridize when their ranges intersect, which they didn’t used to that often, but do now due to logging. I believe there are two main different hybrids, Brewster’s Warbler and the rarer backcross Lawrence’s Warbler. Also, there has been a verified report of a warbler that turned out to be a hybrid between Brewster’s Warbler (which, mind you, is already a two-species hybrid) and Chestnut-sided Warbler (Setophaga pensylvanica), a warbler in a completely different genus. This new tri-species hybrid was dubbed Burkett’s Warbler, after the person who recently found it.
Speaking of Chestnut-sided Warblers, here is one, a male. This warbler was one of the most common birds we saw and heard. They are one of my favorite birds, as they look like little clowns, with their poofy yellow cap and red chest markings. They also are really friendly and pose for pictures quite nicely, unlike the Golden-winged Warbler we encountered.
The main target bird for this trip was Kirtland’s Warbler (Setophaga kirtlandii). They were relatively endangered and were declining across their range for a long time, but now have made a resurgence in recent years. They only nest in young Jack Pine forest that is only about as tall as an average person. When we arrived at the location for them, we heard a plethora of them singing, but only a few were brave enough to venture out of the dense brush to pose for photos.
