We did a little trip up to the Graying to get Kirtland’s warbler. Went with our friends Barb and Ellen. Good thing we did. They introduced us to Cops and Doughnuts, a great little doughnut place in Claire. The place is a historic, from scratch bakery, started in 1896. It’s now owned by the nine Claire police officers who stepped in to keep it open. Yes, there was a cop in there when we went in.
Cops and Doughnuts.
Cops and Doughnuts is the home of the “Squealer”, a doughnut with maple icing and bacon on it. If they would tone down the sugar in the icing a bit it would taste like eating a plate of French toast. No word on a scrapple version yet.
The squealer.
The trip was great. We got to see Kirtland’s warbler. They summer in Michigan’s jack pine barrens and winter in the Bahamas. Which isn’t a bad gig when you think about it. The jack pine system was heavily dependent on fire coming through the area periodically. When Europeans started suppressing fires the jack pine stopped reproducing and Kirtland’s habitat deceased. No surprise, so did the warblers. They almost went extinct a couple years ago. Once the dependency was figured out the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Michigan DNR started implementing management that increased warbler habitat. The warblers responded in kind.
Kirtland’s warbler. Taking food to a nest.
Kirtland’s were also nailed pretty hard by cowbird parasitism. Cowbirds are native to the Great Plains where they followed buffalo herds around. They didn’t bother building nests, choosing to lay their eggs in other species’ nests. Then the host parents would hatch and raise the cowbird chicks. Bird species in the Great Plains evolved with this behavior and adapted strategies to cope. Then after we cut down the great Eastern forests, cowbirds expanded eastward into the now open areas. Unfortunately the bird species in these areas have not evolved with the cowbirds. They end up raising cowbird babies at the expense of their own offspring. To counter this threat to the Kirtland’s, cowbirds are trapped throughout the Kirtlands nesting area. Several thousand cowbirds are trapped each year.
Male brown-headed cowbird.
Cowbird eggs in a warbler’s nest. Note the larger sized cowbird eggs. They out compete the warbler chicks, starving them.
Cowbird trap.
We got some other good species too including; upland sandpiper, clay colored sparrow, black-billed cuckoo, winter wren, black tern (for Lise), Lincoln’s sparrow – lifer for both of us, and a young Northern goshawk on a nest. The goshawk was a lifer for Barb.
We are well into the nesting season now. In some cases broods are already fledged and are chasing Momma around for food. In something reminiscent of my childhood we have seen five young ones whining for food chasing after a harried mother.
The range of nesting styles is interesting. Everything from the fortress built up in a tree by the goshawks to the pile of stones in a park entrance driveway the killdeer use. Most birds hide their nests or make them difficult to get at. Not the killdeer. I can’t believe how prolific killdeer are given their tendency for dangerous living.
Young goshawk.
Tufted titmouse nesting in a hole. There were young inside because it kept going in with food.
Kirtland’s warbler nest. Down in that well camouflaged hole was a mother and several young. All we could see was an eye and a beak with binos.
Killdeer eggs. The nest, such as it is, is in the gravel of a park entrance road.
Our counts now stand at 276 for me, 238 for Lise, and a combined count of 280. We had to remove one from our list. We mistook the summer tanager call, thinking we heard it up here in Michigan. Highly unlikely.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 