Miscellaneous

THE 2013 NORQUIST BIRDING REPORT

         

I’m pretty certain there is someone out there who wonders why I (DN) waste space on a birding report. If that’s you, please skip it. On the other hand, some have complained when I neglected it.

               Every year, I keep a list of the bird species I find in the Marquette County. This year, I had a new personal record for this county of 160 species, 161 if you count heard-only birds. (I heard a Marsh Wren across the river from Negaunee Cemetery.) My previous record here was 146 in 2011 (if you only count seen birds) or 148 in 2012 (if you count heard-only birds plus one identified as to genus but not species). I think the improvement comes partly from me getting a better sense of strategy as to where to look, and when. But weather may also have been a factor. The cold, late spring meant migrating birds had fewer leaves to hide behind, for one thing. But to put all this in perspective, for years in Traill County, ND, I seldom had a list as low as this year’s. My record there was 172 in 2003. It’s possible I’ll catch up to that here someday.

               By far, this year’s most spectacular bird was a Slaty-backed Gull in Marquette. Spectacular to a birder, that is. Most people wouldn’t notice the difference from all the other gulls, and even the birders (many came to see it) had to look carefully. This was, I think, only the third record for the U.P. and the fourth for Michigan. Usually, the closest this gull gets to us is extreme western Alaska. So, Woohoo!

               Also very interesting were a few Eurasian Tree Sparrows, also in Marquette. They were not quite as lost as the name makes it sound – there is an established, introduced population in Missouri and southern Illinois. But it’s still very rare away from there, and this was the first time I’d seen one in the U.S. (In 1999 I saw some in Denmark, where they are native.)

               I had one other local lifer. (“Lifer” is what birders call a new bird we’ve never seen before.) This was a Black-backed Woodpecker on the Peshekee Grade. I’d spent perhaps 15 hours in unsuccessful search for that species during our vacation in the eastern U.P. Then I came home and found one in my home county the next week, when I wasn’t really even looking for it.

               My USA.-and-Canada Life List stands at 412. Besides the above-mentioned birds, I added Red-throated Loon, which I saw at Whitefish Point while on vacation.