Tyrannus tyrannus
Whenever I see a kingbird I think of Kingbird Highway by Kenn Kaufman, the legendary book he wrote about his 1973 attempt to see as many birds as possible in a year. It’s one of my all-time favorite birding books (admittedly, not the most competitive category) and I often come back to it in the dead of the Michigan winter. In birding, these projects are called Big Years and they’re about listing, which is less a matter of appreciation or gratitude or being in touch with nature and more about seeing and hearing as many different birds as possible in a given time: it’s a numbers thing, an optimization problem. As a society, we have a pathological thing for optimization, so it’s not surprising to me that the most popular mainstream birding media are always about Big Years - Kenn’s book, the recent cult classic Youtube documentary Listers, the David Frankel film with Jack Black literally called The Big Year. I see the appeal, because I too love some structure and a goal and constraints. But the quote I like the best from Kingbird Highway is this one, from an older birder to a young Kenn at the peak of his listing competitiveness: 'Here’s what’s different about it, though. The list total isn’t important, but the birds themselves are important. Every bird you see. So the list is just a frivolous incentive for birding, but the birding itself is worthwhile. It’s like a trip where the destination doesn’t have any significance except for the fact that it makes you travel. The journey is what counts.'
Tachycineta bicolor
Someday I'll manage a decent photo of a swallow in flight, but in the meantime, this beautiful adult was happy enough to pose near a set of busy nestboxes. Maybe taking a much-needed break from the kids.
Spinus tristis
I’m always happy to see a goldfinch. They’re common suburban birds in this part of Michigan, but no less interesting and beautiful for that. Once I started to notice them, I saw them everywhere - little flashes of color between bushes on my commute to work, chasing each other around a tree outside the kitchen window. They stick around through the winter and adopt a more muted look for the cold months. It’s always a sign of spring to see a male like this one, fully kitted out in his breeding regalia.
Bombycilla cedrorum
This cedar waxwing was part of a small flock busily hopping from tree to tree near Trinkle Marsh in Dexter. All of them were loath to sit still long enough to be photographed, but this one, maybe scouting out some nearby berries, paused just long enough.
Passerculus sandwichensis
Luckily for me, this sparrow had a clear favorite singing perch in Staebler County Farm Park. He sat here for the better part of half an hour, singing frequently, before abandoning his post to chase down a nearby female.
Haemorhous mexicanus
Ubiquitious dwellers of parking lots and alleyways from New York City to San Diego, house finches are rarely the focus of anyone’s attention, but I like them. They’re chatty and social and resourceful, and they're native to the Americas, which is more than can be said for fellow urbanites like the House Sparrow and the European Starling.
Zonotrichia albicollis
Every winter morning, at least two or three white-throated sparrows can be found picking through the undergrowth behind our house. In particularly cold weather, they puff up so much that they become nearly spherical, like little feathered tennis balls. Their song is one of my favorites. Lots of places online will stylize it as ‘O Sweet Canada’, but I’ve never liked that transcription; to me it’s clearer and more haunting than that, a little mournful, a bit like a clarinet playing a bar of an elegiac song.
Elanoides forficatus
Swallow-tailed kites are not Michigan birds, or even 'anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line' birds. They like South America, Mexico, and at their most northern, the Gulf Coast. But that hasn't stopped them in the summer of 2026, when they've been spotted all over the place in my state; St. Clair County, Van Buren County, and finally on August 12th in Washtenaw. In less degraded days, these kites used to nest as far north as Minnesota, so maybe their vagrancy is a promising sign that they're finding their old homeland hospitable once again. Maybe it's the blistering weather or wildfires driven by climate change. Maybe it's both. In any case, it's a spectacular bird and I was thrilled to see it no matter why our paths may have crossed. The Michigan birder chat claims that the last record of this bird in Washtenaw County was in 1924, when Calvin Coolidge was president and World War I was still the Great War. Little documentation of that 1924 bird still exists; given the number of people with massive cameras at the kite spot (myself included), this 2026 bird will be documented for posterity from all angles. The bird was remarkably cooperative from a photographic perspective, wheeling around in deft circles as low as ten or fifteen feet up. Someone said they saw the bird eating bees. It's a long way back to the south, so I hope the bird can get all it needs from Michigan to fuel up for the trip.
Himantopus mexicanus
The legs on this bird are truly ridiculous. And the color scheme! You could put this bird front and center in a ballet and it would fit right in. I’d had black-necked stilt on my wishlist for months and gave myself a tension headache squinting through my binoculars at the mudflats of Pointe Mouilee, scanning acres of birdless waterlilies in breathless anticipation (it was also very hot, which may have contributed to the breathlessness). Finally, after what felt very much like a nature-coded Where’s Waldo, I spotted one tucked in near a copse of dead trees. The one in the photograph here was busy supervising its gangly cotton ball of a baby, which can be seen just to its left. New birds never get old. Somehow, no matter how much I’ve built up anticipation for a particular bird, seeing it in person is always even better than I’d hoped. I could’ve watched this graceful pair pick their way across the marsh all day.
Tringa flavipes
Like any good community, birding comes with a lot of unapproachable jargon. ‘Lifers’; ‘fluddles’; referring to birds by their four-letter banding codes instead of their names (PIPL for piping plover, etc.); inscrutable nicknames for beloved birding spots that don’t appear on any map. As a rule, these linguistic contortions serve mostly to make things confusing for non-bird people, and for us to be able to identify each other. Classic in-group out-group stuff. One notable exception to this is the universal birder habit of referring to shorebirds as “shorbs” which is, obviously, delightful, and a net gain of good to the world. The yellowlegs is a quintessential Michigan shorb. Don’t ask me how I know that this one is a lesser yellowlegs and not a greater, because I have no idea and no advice except to surround yourself with people who are good at shorebirds, so they can do the ID for you.
Hydroprogne caspia
The great joy of photographing Caspian Terns in flight is that they fly relatively slowly and mostly along predictable trajectories, which is a particular blessing for me because my camera has no fancy functionality for tracking subjects in motion. We saw several dozen Caspians on this day in mid-August (no common or black terns, alas), mostly in a flotilla in Mouilee’s Cell 3 but some out and about. This one was very patient and kept circling back over our convoy, giving me plenty of opportunities for a decent shot.
Megaceryle alcyon
From some angles, belted kingfishers look faintly ridiculous, being approximately 75% head and beak and 25% everything else, but I think this view is a flattering one. There were two of them fishing along this stretch of Ford Lake. They were busy and active, rattling back and forth to each other and diving for fish (to the delight of a little girl on the boardwalk). Their call sounds more mechanical than biological and it carries a long way. I can always tell when there’s one around even when I’m nowhere close to the water.
Aix sponsa
In my personal opinion, wood ducks are probably Michigan’s most beautiful native bird, and that’s coming from someone who thinks that every bird is a stunner. So it makes sense that wood ducklings are almost unfairly adorable en route to being breathtaking adults. You can’t see them all here, but there were four young ducklings and another slightly older quartet nearby, all being supervised by two females - a veritable wood duck elementary school.
Ardea herodias
These herons are one of the six or seven birds that even non-birders can reliably name (along with your classic robins, blue jays, bald eagles, etc.) - a sort of ambassador species. I row on Argo Pond with the Ann Arbor Rowing Club, and even when we’re in the middle of a tough workout and everyone should really be focusing on the boat, there’s always a moment for someone to say, “Look, the heron!” and for everyone else to check him out. A picture of him accompanies our weekly water temperature email report. He is a minor celebrity. This one is almost certainly a different individual than our Argo mascot, but no less mascot-worthy. There seemed to be a lot of little fish around and he seemed to plan to eat them all. He was still hunting when I left.
Petrochelidon pyrrhonota
To my delight, a colony of cliff swallows decided to post up right across from my house to nest this summer. Cliff swallows aren’t the most common swallow in my area - it’s usually much easier to see a tree or a barn - so I was pleasantly surprised to come across these new neighbors. Their chosen home is an overpass directly above a set of busy train tracks. As I watched them on a warm summer evening I wondered if they mind the constant blowing of the horns through the night. I know I do, and I live inside sound-insulating walls. The colony seems to be thriving; still, a kinder world would have a quieter place for them.
Cyanocitta cristata
Is it still called an ugly duckling stage in a blue jay? This scruffy adolescent was trying their best to get their nearby parent to feed them, but their parent wasn’t taking the bait. I love how you can just see the beginning tufts of that iconic blue jay crest coming through on this fledgling. I imagine it won’t be long before he or she is fully feathered out and screaming along with the adults.
2 photosContopus virens
I find wood-pewees difficult to distinguish in the field from a half-dozen other small grayish birds, but this one was singing so loudly that there could be no doubt. I heard his song first and spent a long time standing on the side of the trail, scanning the treetops dumbly, before realizing that he was more or less right in front of my face. He was seemed awfully downy for an adult - maybe a recent fledgling.
Passerina cyanea
Indigo buntings are so preternaturally vivid and beautiful that it seems ridiculous that you can find them all over the place in Michigan in the summer, but you can. This male was part of a noisy community occupying a wooded area in Ann Arbor’s Dominican Meadows Preserve. The privilege of seeing him and his compatriots was well worth the dozen deer fly bites I accumulated on my hike out.
Lanius ludovicianus
It's always a particular privilege to see a bird that was once a common resident of the area but is now a rare and lucky find. Loggerhead shrike populations overall are down some 75% since the 1960’s (almost certainly due to our extravagant habits with chemical pesticides), and they’ve practically been extirpated from my part of the country. This one was probably the same individual spotted in this area last year and had drawn a small crowd of admirers when I was there late in the afternoon on the day it was found. One of the best things about chasing rare birds is that you get a chance to hang out with people who also want to talk about the plight of the loggerhead shrike, and there's usually plenty of time to chitchat while waiting for the bird to reveal themselves. I was especially lucky today to grab a few shots while the bird was perched on this exposed branch near the roadside - shortly after this, the bird took off and still hadn't been refound by the time I had to leave. I hope he or she finds safe pastures.
Dryobates pubescens
This woodpecker was quietly working on expanding his cavity nest when I noticed the motion in the tree. He couldn't seem to decide whether to stay inside or try his luck further up the tree and was popping in and out the whole time I watched him.
Dolichonyx oryzivorus
Bobolinks sound a little like R2D2 and look a little like a balding, kinder blackbird, and they're not particularly common in my part of Michigan. They're grassland birds and their population is on the decline for all the usual tired reasons. But the population at Staebler County Farm Park is energetic and cheerful - hopefully some baby bobolinks will join the party shortly.
Sturnus vulgaris
Starlings get a lot of hate, some of which is fair enough: they’re voracious crop-eaters and sometimes nest saboteurs of cuter and more popular native birds. But it has always seemed strange to me to direct the vitriol about invasives to the organisms themselves, as if they meant to be here, as if it wasn’t our fault. I can’t fault the starlings for their hunger, any more than I can fault any other invasive for being alive where they've found themselves. They’re just trying to do what all living things are trying to do: to bloom where they are planted. Would it have been better if they’d been left in their native environments? Of course, but they’re here now. There’s no easy answer to any of this, but it feels saner and kinder to me to see a starling and feel something more nuanced than 'ugh'.
Pinicola enucleator
Easily my favorite grosbeak, with apologies to the rose-breasted, the blue, and the evening. This flock was another lucky find during the Michigan Audobon Winter Birding trip.
Sitta carolinensis
Always a pleasure to see a nuthatch with a snack. Although this one did hurl the bit of food in his beak to the ground shortly after this photo was taken, so maybe not such a good snack after all.
Setophaga aestiva
This warbler wasn't interested in giving unobstructed views, but was interested in playing peek-a-boo with this stick.
Melospiza melodia
Song sparrows have a voice that belies their small size and nondescript appearance. This one was feeling particularly vocal - a sign of a good day for him, but not so much for us, because he was so loud he drowned out the quieter calls of the cerulean warblers we were trying to find.
Agelaius phoeniceus
The sound of red-winged blackbirds is the sound of the summer in my part of Michigan. They're everywhere, they're loud, and they've been known to chase me down when all I'm trying to do is take a peaceful riverside walk. The signature red patches here remind me of the epaulets on a military uniform.
Charadrius vociferus
We live near a popular killdeer nesting area in Ann Arbor, so our spring and summer evenings come with a constant soundtrack of their keening calls. They're shorebirds but are often in distinctly non-shore places, like the gravel shoulder of Ann Arbor'strain tracks, and the way they run reminds me a bit of Wily Coyote - all skinny legs furiously pumping while the rest of the body levitates along.
Zenaida macroura
This mated pair were regular visitors to our birdfeeders in the early spring, and I was lucky to be near my camera when they began a courtship display right outside our windows. They spent a long time gently preening each other and touching beaks in the semblance of a kiss. Touchingly, they do a lot of these displays with their eyes closed, as if blocking out the rest of the world to focus only on each other. Their efforts were rewarded: later in the season, they were joined at the feeders by two recently fledged chicks.
Cygnus olor
Love was in the air for these two residents of Ann Arbor’s Gallup Park - appropriately enough, taken shortly after Valentine’s Day.
Bubo scandiacus
In a certain sense, a lot of birding is about delayed and uncertain gratification. You set out looking for a bird in the woods and the entire forest is quiet that day; you follow a rare bird alert and pull up to the spot just to find that the bird flew away five minutes ago, never to be seen again. Sometimes you spend months looking for something only for it never to materialize anywhere. I like that aspect of it. There's a lot of instant gratification in modern life, a lot of smoothing away of friction. The value of doing any given thing is measured chiefly by its outcome and how little time and effort it took to achieve that outcome. Maximize efficiency, maximize productivity, and on and on and on (can you tell I work in tech in the age of AI?). Finding this owl was no efficient operation, and thank god for that. We spent hours trundling along the rural roads of Chippewa County, seeing only ravens, squinting painstakingly at every roof, fencepost, and tree. It was a bright day and the entire landscape was blanketed in snow; the blinding whiteness made every oddly shaped drift of snow look like an owl. Owl or no owl, there's something very human and satisfying about spending time with other people doing nothing but paying close and undivided attention to the natural world, just looking at stuff and thinking about it and talking about it together. Even if the journey is fruitless in terms of good sightings or showoff pictures, there's something there, at least for me. Of course, sometimes the process does produce, and we got lucky that day. When someone pointed out this stunning adult male resting atop a travel trailer, we were looking at his back and I would've sworn he was just another mound of snow. Eventually he turned to face us, and - oh my god, after hours and hours of nothing - a snowy owl. Snowy owls have these beautiful clear golden eyes and I watched him watch us with a growing sense of wonder. Having spent so long looking for him, finding him felt like a minor miracle in a way that it wouldn't have if the sighting had come more easily. Efficiency and productivity can give you many things, but they cannot put you in touch with awe or appreciation or gratitude. Shoutout to delayed and uncertain gratification, and to every cliche about the journey, not the destination, being the point.
Myiarchus crinitus
I first saw this flycatcher at Point Pelee in Canada, so it was a treat to add one to my Michigan list. These birds have a distinctive, piercing 'WEEP-WEEP' call and are common in wooded areas Southeastern Michigan in the summer.
Strix nebulosa
This owl was an incredible find at the very end of a long, cold day of birding in the UP with a Michigan Audubon group. It was an unusually wintry winter that year. Snowbanks drifted up hip height everywhere and windchill temperatures were deep in the negative teens for the entire trip. We trooped around Chippewa County by car caravan, binoculars pressed to the windows, heaters on high, and saw all kinds of things - Bohemian waxwings, evening grosbeaks, sharp-tailed grouse. I hadn’t been able to feel my feet for hours and everyone looked tired, but when our guide said that there had been Great Gray sightings nearby and we could go check it out if we wanted, no one hesitated to get back on the road. We hadn’t been looking long when the guide accidentally flushed the owl from a pine thicket, and we relocated him quickly atop a nearby tree. If you’ve never been in a group of birders who have all just found a rare and beautiful bird together, I really can’t recommend the experience enough. There aren’t many places in modern life where you can stand together with people you just met the day before, totally united in uncomplicated wonder and awe and gratitude - gratitude that we are alive and the owl is alive and we are all here together, in spite of everything. The owl is so vanishingly rare that one of our guides - a professional birder - had never seen one before. We stood there for a long time as the sun went down and the temperature tipped to polar. Eventually, long after my fingers were too stiff to manipulate the buttons on my camera, we decamped to the indoors, exhausted and freezing, grateful and lucky.
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