Warbler Week (and more)

The first two to three of weeks of May, and possibly beginning a little before, are migration time here in Michigan. During those weeks, many bird species leave their southern winter homes and travel north to breed and raise their young through the spring and summer months. Some of those species call our area home during the summer, but many of them are just passing through, making these weeks a special time for Michigan birders.

Calvin and I planned for this. So as not to miss it when it happened, we started early, and caught some of the early returning species even a week or so ago, like the yellow and yellow-rumped warblers. We also read through our bird guides so that we'd (hopefully) recognize some of the visiting species when we saw them. Our trip to Independence Lake last Sunday yielded no new results, but, determined not to miss anything, we got up early on Monday to go for a birding hike at Dolph. It was the first time we'd planned an early hike, getting out of the house before Jon, even, and before doing any school work, and how fortuitous a decision that was. Unbeknownst to us the bird train had arrived overnight, and when we pulled into the small dirt parking lot, we found ourselves swept up in a tide of binocular sporting enthusiasts. Apparently the first to arrive, having sensed (or spotted) the presence of a multitude of migrators, had texted a group message to the Audubon Club and they were arriving quickly by droves. 

Finding ourselves swept up with the Audubon Club was extremely informative. After our success on Monday (we saw 42 species of bird, 13 of those being warblers, and 19 of them migrators), we repeated our morning hikes every day of the week and ran into lots of Audubon members and other birders every single time. Being relatively new to the hobby, there is a lot for us to learn, and many of the people we met were both nice and helpful. I say many, because amongst the things I learned is the sort of side fact that, for some, birding is an exclusive and competitive hobby. I'm not exactly sure how that works, but there definitely birders who seemed miffed by our presence in the tightly clustered packs vying for views of the trees. But for every snooty birder, there were at least three friendly ones, and one or two really, really nice ones. We especially loved the city ornithologist (who knew the city had an ornithologist?), who spent a lot of time talking to Calvin about species, binoculars, and places to go viewing.

We also learned a lot about what to look for when trying to quickly ID a bird. Mostly I try to take pictures, even if they are quick, blurry shots, so that I can ID birds at home, at my leisure, with my trusty books at hand, but we've learned now to look not just at color, but at shape. And there are specific features that help a lot with identification, too, like placement of color, depth of color, presence/absence of color bands on wings, presence/absence of stripes on the breast, presence/absence of eye rings (color circle around the eyes) or eye bands (color line through the eye), etc., etc, plus location of bird in the forest, behavioral clues, shape of the bird, and, of course, it's song.

But that's a lot of information, and we're still trying to absorb it all and put it to good use. So, without further ado, here is a photographic list of several of the unique species (I left out the standards like Robins, Jays, geese, etc.) that we saw through what I am now referring to as Warbler Week:

Warblers first:

American Redstart (summer resident)

Black-and-white Warbler (summer resident)

Black-throated Blue Warbler (migrator)

Black-throated Green Warbler (migrator)

Blackburnian Warbler (migrator, identifiable by his orange chin)

Cape May Warbler (migrator)

Chestnut-sided Warbler (migrator, possible summer resident on edge of range)

Magnolia Warbler (migrator)

Nashville Warbler (migrator)

Northern Parula (migrator)


Palm Warbler (migrator)

Wilson's Warbler (migrator)

Yellow Warbler (summer resident)

Yellow-rumped Warbler (summer resident)


Vireos and Flycatchers (two other families of relatively small treetop birds):

Blue-headed Vireo (migrator)

Philadelphia Vireo (migrator)

Warbling Vireo (summer resident)

Yellow-throated Vireo (summer resident, identifiable by the strong black line through the eye)

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (summer resident)


Eastern Wood-pewee (summer resident)

Great Crested Flycatcher (summer resident)

Small birds of various other families

House Wren (summer resident)

Lincoln's Sparrow (migrator)

Ruby-crowned Kinglet (migrator)

Larger tree-top birds

Scarlet Tanager (summer resident)

Rose-breasted Grosbeak (summer resident)

Downy Woodpecker (resident, and not rare, but I just learned to distinguish him from the Hairy Woodpecker by the black spots on the white lateral (outer) tail feathers)

Baltimore Oriole (summer resident)

Species that reside in the lower brush

Green Heron (summer resident)

Gray Catbird (summer resident)

Brown Thrasher (summer resident)

Eastern Towhee (summer resident)

Spring birding

If this family/homeschooling blog is beginning to look a little like a naturalist's birding blog, well, it's a temporary but hopefully enjoyable shift. Although we will be spending all summer doing science in the field, over the next few weeks we will be focusing on three ideas—spring wildflowers, wild animal reproduction, and bird migration—and to focus on these things, especially the last one, the next few weeks are crucial as our local birds return and a brilliant rainbow of rarities pass through on their way elsewhere.

Over the next two to three weeks we'll hopefully get out for almost daily hikes in local birding hotspots. Our science goal is to observe bird migrating tendencies, compare male and female characteristics, and hopefully observe mating habits. Another goal is to see as many migrating species as possible (collect them all!), and practice our bird IDing. So far we've already seen about different 50 species, most of them local or winter birds. I'll share our list some time soon.

Dolph Nature Area

Northern Rough-winged Swallow (summer resident)

Wood Duck (summer resident)

Cedar Waxwing (resident)

Scio Woods Nature Preserve

Red-bellied Woodpecker (nesting, resident)

Swamp Sparrow (summer resident; our first unique sparrow ID!)

Field Sparrow (summer resident; our second unique sparrow ID, on the same day as the first. Note the different beak color and lack of distinct eye stripe and head cap)

Painted turtles

Yellow Trout Lilly (one of Michigan's earliest spring wild flowers)

Dolph Nature Area

Tree Swallow (nesting, summer resident)

Eastern Phoebe (summer resident)

Great Blue Heron (summer resident, possible winter vagrant)

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (summer resident)

American Robin (resident; beautiful variation on the color!)

Swamp sparrow (again; summer resident)

Yellow Warbler (summer resident; first warbler to return)

Fox Squirrel

Eastern Kingbird (summer resident)

Eastern Bluebird (summer resident, possible resident)

Cedar Waxwing (again; summer resident)

Deep freeze spring

Of course right after I posted about spring being in full swing, and right after a weekend of beautiful, sunny, seventy-degree weather, we woke up on Monday to snow showers. I love snow, but I love it best in the winter. Right about now I'm done with it.

Snow or no, though, we got our weekly hike(s) in. The forest floor is really beginning to look green, and the bird species are increasingly active. We're still a week or so away from when the migration will really take off (pun intended), but we're seeing plenty of fun flutterings in the tree tops already. Here's a few highlights.

At Independence Lake on Thursday, we bundled up and braved the wind for about an hour and rewarded with a welcome party: walking towards the lake from the parking lot we found hundreds of swallows diving as only swallows do. We observed without disturbing them for as long as we could, but when we got too cold we went ahead and walked through their ranks towards the woods on the other side. We expected them to leave the area, or at least to part the seas, but they kept right on going. There were a few close calls, in fact. The rest of the hike was unremarkable, except for the biting cold, and the Sandhill Crane that was waiting for us at the edge of the woods.

Over the weekend the three of us went together to two preserves that were entirely new to us. On Saturday we spent a couple of hours hiking an old wood/swamp area on the edge of preserved farm land. The entire time we were serenaded by a Brown Thrasher perched high in the tree tops. That was a new one for us, and a very intersting one, too. He's a mimic, and his song was so varied that at times we were convinced he had to be two different birds.

Then on Sunday we went on a guided birding hike with our favorite county parks naturalist. Although it was sunny, it was still pretty cold at 8am, and the hike itself wasn't entirely successful as far as bird species go. We saw one Hermit Thrush, a few Kinglets, and some odds and ends sparrows, but on the way home we stopped to enjoy an American Coot that was floating around in some farm-edge wetlands. That was another new one for our species list.

Independence Lake

Barn Swallow

Sandhill Crane

Black-capped Chickadee

DeVine Nature Preserve

White-throated Sparrow

Brown Thrasher

(photo by Calvin)

Mayapples (photo by Calvin)

(photo by Calvin)

Brauer Nature Preserve

Chipping Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

American Coot

Full swing spring

Though the forecast for the coming week is less than rosy, this weekend we're enjoying delightful spring weather with warm temperatures and brilliant sunshine. And the birds, blissfully unaware of weatherchannel.com, are going on with their usual spring travel plans. The first wave of migrators is here, and on our hike this weekend we spotted our first warblers of the season. Things are really picking up, and we are looking forward to the spring birding explosion over the next few weeks.

American Robin

Painted turtles

six Bufflehead ducks (three male, three female), with one Lesser Scaup (female) right in the middle

Red-bellied woodpecker

Red-winged Blackbird (female)

Red-winged Blackbird (male)

Yellow Rumped Warbler

Palm Warbler

can you find the moth? (by Calvin)

an acorn growing (by Calvin)

feather (by Calvin)

Science in the field

Two more hikes for us this week...so far. This is our new science plan for the next season or two. And there's a science behind that decision, too. I have weekly calendars to keep our school journey on track. I actually started using them about five years ago when we were just getting started with the Five in a Row plan. At the time they were more about art projects than schooling, but they grew and changed quite a bit through the months, and then the years, going from a list of possible craft projects, to a list of books to read and chores to get done, and ultimately to a pretty detailed list of the homschooling things we tackled during a day.

I use the calendar not only for keeping track of where we are going what we plan to do in a week, but also as a means of recording what we have done. On the back side of every calendar I keep a sort of daily journal, tracking the amount of time we spend on subjects, the total amount of time we spent schooling during the week, and even the overall attitude we both have about them.

My initial goal in keeping the calendar and journal was to have, should Michigan homeschoolers ever be held accountable, a record of time spent on school and its subjects. But the calendar had a secondary, unforseen but fortuitous, benefit as well. Having all those details about time spent and, especially, our tempers and focus during that time, gave me a larger perspective that has been very, very helpful in tracking our study trends.

And spring, year after year, has been a terrible time for us to keep to a regular homeschool schedule.

Our usual schedule includes reading, researching, and writing, but in the spring we both struggle to sit long enough to do any of these things. Looking back at my notes ("no focus today!", "sooo grouchy about math!") this was obvious. So this year we formulated a new plan. Beginning with the warming of the earth, we are leaving behind our science books (never text books, always living learning books, but still books), and are entering the field to learn about the earth from the earth. We are still keeping to our other subjects, but on a diminshed schedule, allowing us to really focus on that outdoor science stuff right now: at least two hikes a week, more when we can. During this time we are keeping track of the progression of the spring awakening by visiting our favorite preserve weekly. And we are going to record the species we find during the bird migration. We are relating all of it to species identification, adaptations and evolution, the geology of the earth, and the general science of life. Biology, from several different aspects.

It's an exciting new project for us, and it's off to a great start.

This week, back at the Scio Woods Preserve, the frogs were much quieter, but the birds were much more active. We took a packed lunch and ate it at the pond with a Great Blue Heron, a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk, and a Belted Kingfisher. Later, we saw just about every woodpecker imaginable in our area, and noted an increased number of insects, which coincided with an increased number of snakes and butterflies. We also discussed the difficulty of identifying species in the field. In fact, with better pictures this week we were able to re-ID a species we saw first last week, but blurry pictures of other species provided a different kind of challenge.

My favorite part, though, as much as I love all the birds and the quiet of the woods, was the time spent visiting with my growing son. Sure, we visit all the time—discussion is a big part of our homeschooling plan—but this was a different kind of conversing, a sort of sharing of ideas and excitement, and that added a special warmth to the already bright spring day.

These are actually pictures from both of our mid-week hike days so far, including Scio Woods Preserve on April 14, and Dolph Nature Area and DeVine Nature Preserve on April 15.

Red-tailed Hawk, juvenile

Great Blue Heron

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

American Robin

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Pileated Woodpecker talking to a Downey Woodpecker

Mourning Cloak

April 15, Dolph Nature Area

Common Garter, red morph

Turkey Vulture

Gray Squirrel, black morph

Red-winged Blackbird (in a not so graceful position)

Beaver evidence!

Eastern Phoebe

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

And how about some ID challenges? Not all of the bird pictures I post are in great focus. Have you ever tried to catch a moving target with a long range telephoto lens? To catch some of the birds, the extra zoom is necessary, but with the lens fully extended every shake of the camera shows, and the birds don't hold still long. So sometimes a blury shot is the best we can do, but usually it's better than nothing, even if it's truly a blury mess. We spotted a bird this weekend that I was sure was a unique sparrow, one I've seen at the same park in the past. The size was about right, and the basic color was the same, but once I got the extremely blury photo in front of me, a distinction appeared—instead of a small yellow stripe on either side of his head, this bird's entire top head was yellow. Putting together what we knew we had seen with the blury photo and a migration pattern timetable, we identified our mystery bird as a Golden-crowned Kinglet. So a blury photo is better than no photo at all.

Here are some "outtakes" that we worked with this week:

Here is our Golden-crowned Kinglet. It is one of several blury shots of this little guy that helped us figure him out.

This Belted Kingfisher is pretty easy to identify here, but still not the best species picture we could ask for.

Without both a front and a side shot this handsome fella is hard to ID. Last week all we had was a shot of his back and we named him a Veery, but with this blury yet convincing full frontal, we've decided he's either a Wood Thrush or Hermit Thrush.