1 April 2019, Delta County Michigan

I could think of no one I would rather kick off my absurdist’s journey of this day of fools than my good friend, loon biologist, arch-conservationist and one of the luckiest birders I’ve ever known, Joe Kaplan. And there is no place I would rather start my sixty days of migration than at my favorite birding spot of all, this little lighthouse at the north end of Green Bay, here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan called Peninsula Point. Some of my dreamiest days of birding have been right here at Peninsula Point so of course this is where I will began the great gonzo migration tour of spring 2019!

It was pretty dead………

Perhaps this is one of those silver lining moments we grasp for to mitigate the pain and suffering that is an utterly birdless boreal winter. But when spring migration starts up here the Upper Peninsula, some years you are starting from a sum total of zero birds (I mean, there were barely even any Chickadees this year in the woods!). So when you start seeing some birds in late winter/early spring, you know they are true migrants returning to the north country.  It feels fresh, pure. You are tapped in to this glorious moment of the crushing defeat to the ending of a long hard winter. And its because few things look as beautiful as that first (oh, let us pick a…) Pine Warbler of the spring. That drab by comparison to nearly every other warbler on every other day of the year is meaningless compared to the joy of that first spring bird. There is just something about that first of spring sighting of each species of bird that really riles me up. As a kid birder, birding adventures with my  grandmother always peaked in the spring with annual trips to Point Pelee and campouts at Tawas Point. That was birding season! Over time I grew to appreciate the effects of all seasons on birds, but still to this day, each “F.O.S.” I get takes me back to my original joy I got from wandering the trails at Pelee marveling at the animated picture book that is a fallout of neotropical songbirds in the shrubbery.

Yeah so today was certainly not that day. Peninsula Point was locked in snow and ice. A distant opening of water held some early season ducks like Common Goldeneye, Long-tails and Red-breasted Mergs. In the woods, a few Golden-crowned Kinglets whispered to each other, but with southwest winds blowing and a lack of anything but refrigerated ducks, we decided to head over to the nearby Garden Peninsula to poke around for ducks in flooded farm fields.

The waterfowl scene was definitely lacking on the Garden too, but as we suspected, the southwest winds were making favorable conditions for a few migrant raptors with Turkey Vultures, Bald Eagles, Red-tailed Hawks all moving around in decent numbers and a good look at a young Northern Goshawk. But our birds were short-lived and a wet rainy/snow front was moving in so we packed up and called it a day. Not exactly the most exciting of opening days!

 

So here it is, the first week of April, and like the last several Aprils in a row, the UP has been particularly reluctant to give up winter’s clutches and make room for spring. And for the last several Aprils, I had been running the spring count programs at Whitefish Point Bird Observatory and whew!, they had been kinda grim waiting for real spring to finally explode in the North Woods. This year, I had already made the decision to take a spring off from WPBO and had plans for a tour, but it got cancelled and I was suddenly left with a block of free time in April with zero desire to stare at a frozen Lake Superior for yet another spring before needing to be at the Biggest Week in Birding guiding for Wildside Nature Tours.

So thus I started to think and plot. What should I do? Who doesn’t love the Texas coast in spring and clearly it would be a real treat to return there. But I had also missed out on my annual winter Florida run, and really wanted to see some buddies down there so I was a little torn as what to do. The problem with having nothing but crazy people for friends is I have no one to check my worst impulses. Why not both?? Tickets were surprisingly affordable, I had the time and buddies to stay with, really there was nothing to fear but fear itself! And that’s when it started to get weird.

Just as I was about to grab my plane flights, an old friend from my rock band days wanted to know if I wanted to come out to visit him in Portland. Oregon in April? Heck yeah! Then I knew something more than the sum of its parts was taking form. In a more recent former life then my rock star daze, I used to work as a seawatch migration counter, most recently in Monterey Bay California. And late April along the coast of Oregon can be simply stupendous with tens of thousands of Pacific Loons, Surf Scoters and alcids migrating north. and it had been a couple years now this I had witnessed this spectacle of bird passage… YES, this was the vision I had been casting about for and that was a gonzo migration extravaganza! With a side of jamming with my old band! Indeed. This was going to be awesome.

And then I realized amusingly, as I started to sketch out my plans, I might as well be listening to some Greatest Hits compilation. The Keys, High Island, Boiler May, Magee Marsh, Whitefish Point; it reads like an awesome track listing* and they are all just fantastic places to hit in spring migration. I suppose I have been in a bit of a pop music place this winter.. And I do enjoy a good production and it would be something fun to blog about as I traveled. So clearly this “album” needed a title to go with it’s vision of purpose, thus the 60 days of Migration was cast forth!

I had a few more days after returning home from that opening round of spring birding to start getting myself ready for this near-spontaneous adventure. Weather wasn’t great, but then right before I was set to leave the UP, something rather unexpected happened. It was a dang thaw! And oh so very obvious being that the days, weeks and months before there had been no birds, now there were birds in the boreal landscape, foraging on the edges of the snow pack, and moving along the coastlines. A quicky run to the farm country around my home town of Marquette yielded some fun things like Rusty Blackbird and a rather uncommon county Red-shouldered Hawk. But I needed to focus and get on the road the next day so I said no more birding till I get to Florida! But of course on my final day in the UP for the next several weeks as I was busied packing, cleaning and loading my car, a classic April fallout of early season short-distance migrants (species that overwintered in the southern US as oppose to the neotropics), occurred.

A favorite day among many Yooper birders for the spring, it is absolutely a joy to go from no birds, to a couple robins and blackbirds to a day with hundreds of juncos along with flocks of flickers, Tree Sparrows, Hermit Thrushes, and Winter Wrens. I worked all day and then based on the day’s efforts of our resident Cape May ex-pat Chris Vogel, I stopped for one last evening of UP birding at Seul Choix Point along Lake Michigan. There were birdeses everywhere! It was so dang delightful. And I had a quarry in particular. Nearly everything that would pass through in April I had either seen further south earlier in the winter or would still be around come mid-May. But there was one species who’s short window of migration would mean if I didn’t get it that night, I was going to have to wait till October to see a Red Fox Sparrow. It took me a while to kick some up, but upon finding them, I thoroughly enjoyed watching these robust colorful sparrows doing the hop-scratch under the cedar boughs.

Ok so yeah, fun stuff, but I had a moment of doubt as I got back in my jeep and started to head south to cross the Mackinac Bridge. Was I making a mistake leaving the UP just as songbirds decided to push on into the north country? Lets check the weather forecast just to see…

Yeah, no. I need to get to the Gulf of Mexico and fast. They got them Black-whiskered Vireos down there and lots of pretty pretty warblers. The Yoop will be here when I get back. Hawks will still be migrating. Neotrops will just be arriving. And I betcha, I will still see some piles of snow.

Please, feel welcomed to check in back here at Borealis Birding for updates to the 60 Days of Migration. I’ll try to post updates as often as I can. And even more hopefully, I’ll see you out on the trail sometime this spring.

Peace, Love and Tanagers

~Skye

*Of course, I realize no greatest hits compilation would ever be 100% accurate without that fatal missing great hit song. I know there are friends out there that are gritting their teeth to see Cape May Bird Observatory not part of my itinerary. I know, I know, it is fantastic, but one can only fit so much in. But if you have the chance, while not as well known for migration as it is in the fall, Cape May has recently started a Springwatch! Amazing numbers they have been getting, check out their data or better yet, go see migration at Cape May if you can!