What you looking at? by Watermark Photography
Jeff Simonis has been sharing some absolutely stunning photos & video of a family of loons from a lake near Traverse City lately! Here are a few, but you definitely want to check out more including this video of this little loon being fed breakfast! Follow Watermark Photography on Facebook for his latest and view & purchase his work on his website.
More loons on Michigan in Pictures.
Red-Headed Woodpecker by Michigan Nut Photography
MSU Extension’s Michigan Natural Features Inventory lists the Red-headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) as a species of special concern and says Red-headed woodpeckers are residents of open woodlands with widely spaced mature trees. This species typically avoids closed-canopy forest. An original inhabitant of oak and oak-pine savanna systems, red-headed woodpeckers will readily utilize golf courses, country parks, recently burned woodlands, open floodplain forest, and even rural yards with suitable nesting trees.
All About Birds has all kinds of photos & bird calls and shares that the Red-headed Woodpecker is so boldly patterned it’s been called a “flying checkerboard,” with an entirely crimson head, a snow-white body, and half white, half inky black wings. They add some interesting facts:
John captured this chonky Jellycoat in Montcalm County. Follow Michigan Nut Photography on Facebook and for sure visit the Birds & Wildlife gallery on his website to view & purchase many more amazing pics!
American Kestrel by Kevin Povenz
MyNorth shares that northern Michigan cherry farmers are turning to the tiny American kestrel to protect orchards from pests:
In 2010, Dr. Catherine Lindell, an avian ecologist and associate professor at Michigan State University, began hearing that Michigan fruit farmers struggled to manage the birds that fed on their crops. “Because American kestrels search for already-existing cavities to nest in, it’s possible to lure them to specific places in the landscape, like orchards, by putting up nest boxes,” Lindell explains. A small wooden box, properly placed, can reshape an ecosystem.
In Leelanau County, farmers have installed these nestboxes along the orchard’s edges for more than a decade. The idea is simple: Give this native bird of prey a home, and it will manage the smaller birds, mice and voles that peck and spoil ripening fruit. Cherries define summer in NoMI—from farm stands along M-22 to slices of pie cooling on windowsills. When damage drops, profits rise. Protecting the fruit protects a way of life.
Read on for lots more & it’s always good to see the Michigan Agricultural College making farming better!
Kevin took these photos way back March of 2015 at the Outdoor Discovery Center in Holland. You can see a lot more great photos in his Birds of Prey gallery. For sure follow him on Flickr or at Kevin Povnez Photos on Facebook for the latest!
PS: If you want to learn more about the American Kestrel aka the Sparrowhawk, there’s a Michpics post featuring another of Kevin’s fantastic photos!
Return of the Loons by Dani Fegan
The Seney National Wildlife Refuge shared a report by Damon McCormick of Common Coast Research & Conservation that provides a passionate look at the World’s Oldest Loons battling over breeding territory:
On Saturday morning, April 25, a female loon on I Pool beheld a relatively frequent spring sight: two males battling, with beating wings and stabbings bills, for control of the breeding territory. The observer was Fe, who was first color-marked as an E Pool mother in 1990, and who will thus turn at least 40 this summer. The hostilities were brutal but brief, and after only a minute one of the combatants discerned that this was not his day, after which he shortly took flight for less perilous waters. With the challenger vanquished, Fe and the unbanded victor, who was likely but not certainly her mate from 2025, initiated a circling round of bill dipping and jerk diving, aspects of courtship involved in forming, or re-forming, a pair bond for the season.
Concurrently on nearby H Pool, Fe’s former partner of 25 years, ABJ, was engaged in scouting for potential nest sites with his current companion, Aye-Aye, with whom he bred unsuccessfully on H last year. Although ABJ, who will turn 39 this June, hatched a record 32 chicks with Fe, since their split in April 2022 he has failed to produce further offspring, and she remains the only mate with whom he has ever sired young. Along with the broader Seney loon population, which includes color-marked adults who are embarking upon their 24th, 27th and 33rd Refuge seasons, ABJ and Fe and their respective partners will spend the next few weeks engaged in territorial defense, habitat assessment, copulation and nest building ahead of 27-29 days of egg incubation that, with luck, will culminate in the emergence of one or two downy fluffballs in early-mid June.
You can follow along with the saga of the oldest known loons with highlights like “The World’s Oldest Loon Divorcees” on the Seney Wildlife Refuge Facebook.
Hoping you are reflecting beautiful things.
I featured this amazing photo from cncphotos 9 years ago but figured most of you haven’t seen it, so here you go. See more in their Birds gallery on Flickr & follow them for their latest!
More about Great blue heron on Michigan in Pictures.
Killdeer Reflecting by Craig Sterken Photography
On April 22, 1970, University of Michigan students & environmental activists created Earth Day with the simple mission to activate the global environmental movement through education & connection. 56 years later we are seeing the health impacts, extreme weather, and resource wars organizers warned us of a half a century ago, but in many ways from the massive 180 the US has taken on green energy initiatives to the astonishing impacts of a spring snowmelt like none in memory, it feels like we haven’t moved at all. What do you think about how we are meeting the goals of Earth Day?
I doubt that this particular bird is thinking about our progress on environmental issues or the fact that as All About Birds shares, that the Killdeer is a shorebird you can see without going to the beach:
Killdeer are graceful plovers common to lawns, golf courses, athletic fields, and parking lots. These tawny birds run across the ground in spurts, stopping with a jolt every so often to check their progress, or to see if they’ve startled up any insect prey. Their voice, a far-carrying, excited kill-deer, is a common sound even after dark, often given in flight as the bird circles overhead on slender wings.
Killdeer get their name from the shrill, wailing kill-deer call they give so often. Eighteenth-century naturalists also noticed how noisy Killdeer are, giving them names such as the Chattering Plover and the Noisy Plover. The Killdeer’s broken-wing act leads predators away from a nest, but doesn’t keep cows or horses from stepping on eggs. To guard against large hoofed animals, the Killdeer uses a quite different display, fluffing itself up, displaying its tail over its head, and running at the beast to attempt to make it change its path.
Craig caught this amazing shot of a killdeer looking at its own reflection. View & purchase his photos of wildlife & birds & many other things on his website.
Wood duck in the Autumn by Bill VanderMolen
Michigan Public shares that Governor Whitmer signed legislation last week naming the Wood Duck Michigan’s state duck. The legislation was sponsored by Representative Alabas Farhat (D-Dearborn) & passed both the Michigan House and Senate by wide, bipartisan margins.
The Wood Duck joins a whole bunch of Michigan’s state symbols that are detailed on Michigan in Pictures!
You can see a lot more pics of Wood ducks that Bill has taken over the years. Follow him on Flickr, Facebook, or Instagram for his latest!
Bald Eagle Cam by Spring Lake Township
Spring Lake Township’s Eagle Camera is officially up and running on YouTube, offering you a chance to watch a pair of local eagles in real time as they nest, soar, and raise their young! One of the eagles was sitting on the branch looking the other way right before I shared this so be sure to tune in!
If you’d like to tune in on the discussion & see some dynamite closeups by Suzi Hackney Mccabe, head over to Visit Grand Haven.
Yogi the Piping Plover at Cumberland Island by Dan Vickers
Michigan in Pictures features almost exclusively photos from Michigan, but every so often there’s one that will have me reaching beyond our borders. Such is the case with this photo of Yogi the Piping Plover from Cumberland Island all the way down in Georgia that was recently shared by the Great Lakes Piping Plover Recovery Effort. Yogi hails from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, but his preferred nesting site is the wild and busy Silver Lake State Park.
They explain that the Piping Plover is a small shorebird that is listed as an Endangered Species and nests in three separate geographic populations in the United States and Canada: The Northern Great Plains, the shores of the Great Lakes, and along the Atlantic coast. Birds from all three populations winter on the southern Atlantic and Gulf coasts in the United States & in the Caribbean.
Regarding the distinctive bands, they say: Great Lakes Piping Plover chicks are banded between five and sixteen days of age. Since shorebirds are precocial (Like chickens, Piping Plover chicks begin running around, feeding themselves within hours of hatching), these chicks have well developed legs, which makes it possible for us to band them with adult-sized bands at a young age. The bands we use are made of either plastic or aluminum, and they are very lightweight. Every sibling in a plover brood gets the same color and arrangement of three or four bands (depending on the band color-pattern used). This is called a “brood-marker combination”. There aren’t enough possible combinations available to give every chick their own unique identifier from hatching, but by giving the chicks from the same family, or brood, the same combination we can study such things as parental success, fledging rates, and return success.
Here’s a few more Piping Plover pics – visit greatlakespipingplover.org for more and to help support their work!
Bohemian Waxwing by Sheen Watkins Photography
Sheen recently shared her winter encounter with Bohemian waxwings that says (in part):
Often mistaken for their more familiar cousins, the Cedar Waxwings, Bohemian Waxwings differences are quite noticeable. Slightly larger, with muted gray bodies and warm cinnamon accents beneath their wings, tail and on their lores. Their soft, almost melted waxy looking plummage complements winter’s softer light.
…They arrived the way waxwings always do—suddenly and together. A flock descended on a cluster of trees heavy with berries, moving with a quiet, choreographed urgency. Waxwings are communal feeders, virtually overtaking a tree before moving on. They arrive, thrive, and leave—often as quickly as they appeared.
That fleeting time of when then move south combined with their behavior is what makes these encounters feel so rare. Seeing Bohemian Waxwings each winter is never a guarantee. Some years they pass unseen. Other years, luck and timing intersect, and I find myself standing in the cold, bundled and unmoving, watching bird life unfold just feet away.
Read on for much more & for sure follow Sheen Watkins Photography on Facebook & check out her website for more work!
More birds on Michigan in Pictures.
