Saturday, June 6, 2009
Beaver Trail CG, West Branch, MI: May 15-18
We stopped by the post office in St Helen to pick up a couple of Netflix we had had sent to General Delivery there, only to find that the postmistress had sent them back. A rather heated discussion ensued in which she claimed that our usage of General Delivery was inappropriate unless the post office had prior notice. Naturally I asked if she could show me the regs for that, since we'd never encountered this issue before & wanted to know if it could be an on-going problem. She phoned her boss, who said she had never heard of any such policy, and (we suspect) told her never to do such a thing again, so she grudgingly apologized for the misunderstanding. We continued, Netflix-less, to Beaver Trail CG, which fills up every weekend with campers who build large, smoky fires, play loud music, and ride ORVs around, even just to go the bathroom, which we were
right next to.
At any rate, we weren't there much of the time since the sole reason for our being there at all was to attend the Kirtland's Warbler Festival, a one-day celebration held in honor one of the world's rarest songbirds. In 1987 there were fewer than 200 "singing males", which is how they count KWs. Last year there were just under 2000, so the recovery efforts have been very successful. KWs will only nest in jack pine forests that are 5-15 years old, and Michigan now has over 200,000 acres of land set aside for KW habitat. A larger issue introduced within the last 100 years is the cowbird -- a nest parasite that lays its eggs in other birds' nests. Their offspring hatch earlier & are larger & more aggressive than the host's chicks, and since birds instinctively feed the larger, more aggressive chick, cowbirds tended to thrive at the expense of KW chicks. Efforts have been underway to trap & destroy cowbirds in KW habitat, and although the number of cowbirds seems to remain fairly constant, the incidents of nest parasitization have dropped dramatically.
The evening before the festival there were a couple of field trips nearby, which we attended. The first was at the Margaret Gahagan Nature Preserve in Roscommon, one of the many nearby small towns. This was a delightful place and the trip was led by a very interesting & knowledgable person who was the education director and a retired professor from Kirtland College, which sponsored the festival. We should have stopped after this one, but we decided to go to the second walk, which started at 7 pm. It stays light so late at this time of year that you can go out hiking & birdwatching until at least 9 pm. We drove about 20 miles to a Forest Service area called Wakeley Lake. It was a nice enough area, but the leader was uninteresting and the hike longer than we were up for. We got home so late that we decided to skip the early morning birding on Saturday.
The weather during the festival was cold, rainy, & windy -- the worst possible conditions for birding. We went on two tours looking for KWs as well as going out by ourselves, but were unsuccessful. We then heard about tours in nearby Grayling sponsored by the US Fish & Wildlife Service that had a high success rate. And best of all, they're free and usually have small groups. We dragged ourselves out of bed early (for us) & got to Grayling in good time for the 7am tour. The guide had only had one wash-out in the last two years, and that's twice/day, 6 days/week, but we're notorious for bringing tours bad luck, so it was our bad luck pitted against his good luck. Fortunately, his good luck won out. We got good looks at 2 males & a female, and went home happy.
right next to.
At any rate, we weren't there much of the time since the sole reason for our being there at all was to attend the Kirtland's Warbler Festival, a one-day celebration held in honor one of the world's rarest songbirds. In 1987 there were fewer than 200 "singing males", which is how they count KWs. Last year there were just under 2000, so the recovery efforts have been very successful. KWs will only nest in jack pine forests that are 5-15 years old, and Michigan now has over 200,000 acres of land set aside for KW habitat. A larger issue introduced within the last 100 years is the cowbird -- a nest parasite that lays its eggs in other birds' nests. Their offspring hatch earlier & are larger & more aggressive than the host's chicks, and since birds instinctively feed the larger, more aggressive chick, cowbirds tended to thrive at the expense of KW chicks. Efforts have been underway to trap & destroy cowbirds in KW habitat, and although the number of cowbirds seems to remain fairly constant, the incidents of nest parasitization have dropped dramatically.
The evening before the festival there were a couple of field trips nearby, which we attended. The first was at the Margaret Gahagan Nature Preserve in Roscommon, one of the many nearby small towns. This was a delightful place and the trip was led by a very interesting & knowledgable person who was the education director and a retired professor from Kirtland College, which sponsored the festival. We should have stopped after this one, but we decided to go to the second walk, which started at 7 pm. It stays light so late at this time of year that you can go out hiking & birdwatching until at least 9 pm. We drove about 20 miles to a Forest Service area called Wakeley Lake. It was a nice enough area, but the leader was uninteresting and the hike longer than we were up for. We got home so late that we decided to skip the early morning birding on Saturday.
The weather during the festival was cold, rainy, & windy -- the worst possible conditions for birding. We went on two tours looking for KWs as well as going out by ourselves, but were unsuccessful. We then heard about tours in nearby Grayling sponsored by the US Fish & Wildlife Service that had a high success rate. And best of all, they're free and usually have small groups. We dragged ourselves out of bed early (for us) & got to Grayling in good time for the 7am tour. The guide had only had one wash-out in the last two years, and that's twice/day, 6 days/week, but we're notorious for bringing tours bad luck, so it was our bad luck pitted against his good luck. Fortunately, his good luck won out. We got good looks at 2 males & a female, and went home happy.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 7:47 AM 
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