As you may have guessed, I was successful in the trip goal of seeing this life bird.  I know many know how nerve-wracking it can be to plan a trip that is date sensitive to seeing the bird and knowing that you will arrive just a bit early of the guaranteed date.  Every book or research site I visited on the Internet told me that a guaranteed sighting of this bird would be after May 20 and before they left in the early fall. Our day to find this bird was May 15 and May 16. I was afraid that we would travel all the way from Tennessee to upper part of the lower peninsula just to find the bird was running late this year.  Glad these birds don't read books! We found it on May15!

We took the guided Kirtland's Warbler tour offered by the U.S. Forest Service and the Mio Ranger Station in Mio, Michigan.  This was an extremely good tour and I highly recommend anyone who travels to see this bird to take. As I said we were a bit early, in fact we were on the first guided tour of the season (which is why it probably was so good), and there were only 4 of us waiting to go.  We gathered in a meeting room at the ranger station and they showed us an educational video to enforce the sensitivity of the habitat and management procedures of the Jack Pine forests.  After the short video we lined up in our personal vehicles to follow the ranger to the breeding grounds.  The first stop provided us with an excellent look at our life bird.  On our way to our next stop and in a corner turn, we heard an odd buzzing sound that we made a priority as soon our was over and marked our spot (see below).  The next stop showed us why there has been lot of success in managing the Kirtland Warbler habitat. Not only do they do burns in selected areas which is critical for this bird and have contingency measures in place if the burns get out of control, they also trap and remove Brown-headed Cowbirds which have been proven to severely handicap the success rate of nesting.  Brown-headed Cowbirds are parasitic nesters and lay their eggs in the nests other birds.  The cowbirds eggs hatch earlier than the Kirtland's Warbler eggs and these large chicks either knock out the other eggs out or cause the other hatchlings to not survive by taking all the food or smothering the smaller chicks.  Cowbirds have their place in bird populations, just not when your managing for an endangered bird.  Also we are largely responsible for the cowbirds population explosion over the past few years as we clear and fragment large forest tracts.  Big cages are set up with Cowbirds inside because they are social birds and will attract other cowbirds. Once in they can't get back out.

As an added bonus and just a good walk down the road from where we spotted the Kirtland's Warbler we found another life bird that we weren't expecting so soon - Clay-colored Sparrow! We actually heard this bird driving behind the Forest Service tour guide and doubled back after the tour was finished to locate it.

Wonderful bird and very oddly sounding, the Clay-colored Sparrow was a joy to see and hear.  

• 29/10/2009 09:23 - Are we losing our warblers?
• 14/06/2009 23:04 - Springtime in Michigan
• 23/02/2009 11:42 - Golden-cheeked Warbler
• 30/08/2008 19:50 - Nesting Kirtland's Warbler return to Petawawa