Gallery

Eastern kingbird

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.'

Tree swallow

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.

American goldfinch

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.

Cedar waxwing

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.

Savannah sparrow

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.

House finch

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.

White-throated sparrow

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.

Belted kingfisher

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.

Wood duck

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.

Great blue heron

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.

Cliff swallow

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. But, noise complaints notwithstanding, the colony seems to be thriving. Parent swallows wheeled around hunting and returned to their nestlings with beakfuls of bugs every few minutes. Still: a kinder world would have a quieter place for them.

Blue jay

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.

Eastern wood-pewee

Contopus 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.

Indigo bunting

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.

Loggerhead shrike

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.

Downy woodpecker

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.

Bobolink

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.

European starling

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'.

Pine grosbeak

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.

Northern yellow warbler

Setophaga aestiva

This warbler wasn't interested in giving unobstructed views, but was interested in playing peek-a-boo with this stick.

Song sparrow

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.

Red-winged blackbird

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.

Killdeer

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.

Mourning dove

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.

Mute swan

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.

White-tailed deer

Odocoileus virginianus

These twin fawns were browsing quietly in a brushy, shaded part of Bird Hills. Their mother didn't seem to be nearby, but the two of them stuck close together, rubbing their chins along each others' back and generally being irresistably cute.

Great crested flycatcher

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.

White-breasted nuthatch

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.

Great gray owl

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.