A Canada warbler looks on. (Scot Stewart photo)

“If you save a heat wave, would you wave back?”

— Steven Wright

Nothing like a warm stretch of weather in the Upper Peninsula in mid-May to bring out spring in its fullest and turn it into the start of summer. Just four days in the 70s and 80s did it. Barely open tree buds burst into small leaves filling in the canopy in many forest glades. Spring peepers wandered into those now shady forests and eastern toads began their trill-filled choruses. American ladies, cabbage whites and spring azure butterflies began their busy lives pollinating early flowers and starting new cohorts. Dragonflies livened things up too as they brought pond edges to life too, as darners and others began their patrols along the water edges and finding mates.

Bird did their job as well, literally lighting things up across many parts of the U.P. turning trickles of bright neotropical species into torrents. Many of the later arrivals of spring migrants travel greater distances in the spring, returning from their winter ranges in the tropics — parts of the Caribbean, Central and South America. These songbirds are called neotropical birds — from the tropics of the New World. They include many of the area’s most colorful summer residents — Baltimore orioles, scarlet tanagers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, ruby-throated hummingbirds, and most of the warblers. They are some of the most beloved birds in North America and are of real importance during summers here because so many are insect eaters.

Last Saturday saw the beginning of this great push of birds into the northern U.P. with many birders able to find indigo buntings and rose-breasted grosbeaks at their feeders, hummingbirds looking for feeders and fresh flowers and plenty of warblers in the trees. It was probably one of the best days to watch warblers this spring, as the leaf-out has progressed rapidly, making it much more difficult to see them foraging through the upper parts of the tree canopy. It requires the skills to know at least some warbler calls to help with identification.  

Many of the local summer warblers are already singing away — ovenbirds, northern parula, common yellowthroats, American redstarts, Canada, Nashville, yellow-rumped, yellow, black-and-white, chestnut-sided, black-throated blue and black-throated green warblers. 

That’s twelve species right there! There are about 26 species of warblers usually seen in the U.P. during the spring. Some warblers with more northerly summer territories do have small populations that remain here to nest in Michigan. The Canada warbler has a summer range through much of southeastern Canada, but small numbers remain in the northern Lower Peninsula and the U.P., nesting in woods with both deciduous and conifers with a mossy forest floor. A few are being seen in mixed flocks of migrating warblers.

Several sites had species counts in the upper seventies to mid-eighties over the weekend. Presque Isle yielded a count of 78 on Saturday, and 85 species were found in the Stonington Peninsula at Peninsula Point in Delta County. This latter site is well known as a classic stopping point for migrants island hopping up Door County islands in Lake Michigan into the southern U.P. Among the birds seen there in May are some songbirds overextending their northward flights, like an orchard oriole seen there Saturday.

Citizen science platforms like ebird and a tremendous network of excellent birders in the U.P. can help describe a more unusual number of vagrant migrant visitors moving through the area than is normal. Occasionally Wilson’s phalaropes are seen in the U.P. in spring, but this year there seem to be more than usual. Pairs have been seen at the Gwinn and Chatham Sewage Lagoons among other places recently. Elegant, small shorebirds, they are somewhat usual shorebirds. Females are more brightly colored than males, with bright peachy-chestnut-colored necks and darker blacks.

This color alignment is paired with an unusual parental role reversal. Females generally mate and lay a clutch of eggs, then leave the incubation of eggs and care of the young to the male, as they seek other males. Since the males are incubating eggs on the ground nests, their drabber plumage helps conceal them.

Other sandpipers and plovers have also begun to appear in good numbers coinciding with elevating numbers of midge hatches on the Great Lakes. Both yellowlegs, dunlin, least sandpipers, semipalmated and piping plovers and even a willet have been seen on inland pond edges and on the Great Lakes shores.

Another species with some higher numbers of sightings this spring in the Marquette area is the green heron. A small brownish-olive heron, they occasionally nest along the Dead River in Marquette. They have been seen there and in the mitigation ponds near the Bog Walk at Presque Isle. The green herons have been part of the high species counts at Presque Isle where a great variety of migrants are usually seen. Warblers, flycatchers, thrushes and waterbirds can all be found there during peak migration. Blue-gray gnatcatchers, summer and even western tanagers, and blue-winged warblers are just a few of the vagrants that can be found there in May.

Another highlight this May continued on Saturday with large flocks of blue jays continuing to move though the U.P. Over 200 were seen at the Stonington, and over 600 were found at Presque Isle. Lingering numbers have continued through the area this week. Great weather, lots of birds, and plenty of flowers beckon, heed the call!

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