The sun paints it own tones across the summer landscape, highlighting each shade in bright, unclouded moments, dampening all the colors, especially the greens and reds, on cloudy days, and warming every inch of leaves, trunks petals, fur, feathers and eyes as it breaks and settles along the day’s horizons. In summer the sun can set the mood of the day much more than in the other seasons, painting all with excitement and anticipation in its clear, pure light, softening and melting colors with gray highlights with its clouds.

The brightness of the most colorful birds begins to wane as summer progresses, dulled by the wear and tear of storms, hunting for food and occasion tussles with challengers and predators. The changes are subtle, but by migration time most songbirds will appear noticeably different from their May arrival pictures.

Birders love rarity and surprises and got both in one bird on the Fourth of July. Last November birders were shocked to find a fork-tailed flycatcher along M-35 just north of Menominee. It was only the second record of the species in the state — the first a male in Alger County in October of 1983. It remained along the shore of Lake Michigan feeding on insects and dogwood berries for about a week before disappearing.

On the Fourth another fork-tail was found about half-way down the Stonington Peninsula. With lots of open country, it is a good habitat for flycatchers. When observed on the second (and last) day, July 5, it was being harassed by a smaller eastern kingbird. The fork-tailed flycatcher is just slightly bigger, but has a huge tail, giving males a total length of 16 inches. The normal range of this species is from southern Mexico to the southern tip of South America. Some theorize the birds reaching North America are from the southern parts of South America and have had extreme navigation difficulties, dropping them here. A mid-summer arrival here though is more difficult to explain unless it has been on a northward trek since spring migration.

Scot Stewart

From July 2 to July 5, another wanderer, a white winged dove, was found in the town of Rudyard in Chippewa County. This vagrant’s summer normal range stretches across five southwestern states and has a winter range along the eastern Gulf Coast. Slightly heavier looking than mourning doves, they can be identified by the ridge of white along the other edge of their wings. In their primary range they feed heavily on the pollen, nectar, seeds and fruit of the saguaro cactus, the classic large cactus of the Arizona desert.

While most of the recent rare birds have been mostly black, white gray and brown, the locals continue to shine in the summer brilliance. It seems to have been a particularly good year for the bright yellow Nashville warblers. The jack pine plains of the Yellow Dog and around Gwinn are great birding sites and Nashville warblers can be heard all along the way through them.

While the plains can appear very repetitious, especially in areas where the trees were planted in long rows, they can include a number of great summer species besides Nashville warblers, especially if the jack pines include pockets of serviceberry, white pine and aspen in older hollows or places where the jack pine aren’t found. White-throated sparrows are still singing in thicker areas of these pockets with eastern towhees and clay-colored sparrows sing on the jack pine edges. Other warblers like rare palm warblers also occasionally nest in the jack pines. Open areas where the jack pines are absent altogether may host upland sandpipers around Gwinn and common nighthawks may occasionally skim the treetops there.

Rare spruce grouse are found in both areas too. Also known as “fool hens,” these tame grouse, are darker than ruffed grouse, and the males have red combs over their eyes. Their nickname comes from their relative tame nature. They can often be approached to within a few feet making them easy targets. Due to low numbers, they are not game birds in Michigan, and their habit of feeding on pine and spruce needles make them taste a bit like their own food.

Many young birds are beginning to fledge — finding their wings and leaving the nest to find their way in a new world. Watchers in the Houghton-Hancock area have been watching a family of peregrines nesting on the lift bridge over the Portage Canal between the two cities. Three young falcon fledged earlier this week and one immediately got into trouble, severely injuring a wing, possibly from flying into a barbed wire fence. It was taken to a vet where it was determined the injuries could not be completely reversed. Ultimately and unfortunately the bird was euthanized. From studies of banded birds, it is believed about 60 percent of young peregrines don’t survive their first year.

So head out, there are plenty of young birds, flowers and shining lake reflections to provide the colors for your daily palette.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Scot Stewart is a teacher at Bothwell Middle School in Marquette and a freelance photographer.