An enlightening moment for me was when my wife Ginny and I attended the annual mid-May Tawas Point Birding Festival in East Tawas several years ago and seeing the amazing amount of folks who took bird watching quite passionately. Michigan is located smackdab in the middle of both the Mississippi and Atlantic Flyways and countless songbirds flying north while following the shoreline of Lake Huron, are literally given a “right hook” at Tawas Point, which abruptly turns them south, and they perform what is known as the Great Fallout, and the birds land in mass to rest and feed for a spell. It is truly a phenomenal sight to experience featuring a multitude of songbird species, some of which are quite rare and not usually seen in Michigan. For whatever reason, some birds get a bit sidetracked during their migratory journey.
Some of the bird watchers, also known as “birders,” I witnessed were not only passionate about their pastime, but quite serious. I saw cameras equipped with long lenses I’m sure cost more than my Jeep! The goal is to capture and record the countless songbird species and it is considered identifying rare to see species as being a “lifer”.
Well, folks, I do enjoy bird watching, but it is a hit and miss affair while I’m doing other activities, so I don’t consider myself a dedicated birder by any means. I also have only one camera, a compact and rugged Pentax which is waterproof (it can take underwater photos) and has experienced joining me in a couple canoe rollovers in rapids, and why it is often attached to my person with a lanyard. It also has telephoto abilities, to a certain extent anyway, and I have managed to photograph a couple “lifers” due to being in the right place at the right time and being real lucky making it happen. I have found photographing songbirds is usually very difficult because the little rascals are constantly on the move, so I usually perform a “spray and pray” technique and hope for the best that I get at least one good “hit”.
My two lifer sightings occurred while I was indoors and sitting on the couch working on my laptop computer in front of our living room bay window. A real blessing to this setting is the multi-trunked white mulberry tree directly in front of the bay window, which was “planted” on that spot by visiting songbirds. It has turned out to be a splendid shade tree which has become a regular “songbird magnet” from mid-June through August due to a steady and massive supply of mulberries the birds thoroughly enjoy. The vigorous feeding activity of birds causes excess mulberries to rain down to the ground, and we keep a broom handy for sweeping the walkway clear, otherwise tracking “jam” into the house can be an issue.
Birds do feed on berries on the ground, but due to the massive amount, there is a fermenting process taking place which in turn draws flies. While this might sound unpleasant, it is another drawing factor for other birds such as flycatchers and catbirds, to name a few. In mid-July of 2017, Ginny spotted an unusual bird in the mulberry tree and brought it to my attention (I was writing with my laptop, as usual). At first, we thought the bright yellow bird was an escaped exotic, but soon realized that it was rare sighting of an unusually colored robin, in the company of a large flock of robins feeding in and under the mulberry tree.
Yep, folks, I’ve learned to keep my camera handy for such moments and was able to take a multitude of pictures, some of which were quite close due to “yellowbird” feeding on a branch that was almost touching the window. My saving grace was the fact that the window was offering a mirror image to the bird, causing me to be left unseen. The robin featured a brilliant yellow breast and tail, and everything else was snow-white. Its legs, feet and bill were white with a tinge of pink, as well as it had pink eyes, stating that it was some form of albinism. Where this unusual robin came from, I have no idea, but it was obviously on the move, because we had never noticed it before, and it was a real standout in the flock of other robins. Yellowbird hung around for a couple weeks, because it sure loved a steady diet of mulberries, and then suddenly disappeared, and we wished it well. We have never seen it since.
On June 24, 2024, I had my second lifer moment while I was on the couch writing, and my peripheral vision picked up something small and bright yellow landing on a tree limb a few feet away from the bay window. It was the yellow breast of some sort of flycatcher I had never seen before, and I soon had my camera ready, but then the bird flew higher up in mulberry, but fortunately it landed where I had a clear shot through the dense leaves. However, this required me to go “telephoto”, and shooting offhand with my type of compact camera is not the steadiest proposition to attempt.
Yep, folks, I went into the spray and pray mode and clicked off a half dozen pictures before the bird took off. I then transferred the pics to my laptop for a closer examination and discovered that only the last two came out quite well, a simple case of getting lucky versus possessing any sort of photography skills. The bird was perfectly posed for figuring out its identity, and I contacted naturalist Myles Willard of Mayville, who came right over to check matters out. He has written books on the topic, is a great wildlife photographer, and is my go-to person on everything nature.
Upon viewing the picture on my laptop, I saw Myle’s eyes widen, and then he brought out a magnifying glass for a more critical examination. He then let me know I had most likely documented the first (male) dusky-capped flycatcher to ever reach Michigan. Its normal range is from southern Arizona and Texas all the way down into Argentina. Myles forwarded my pictures downstate to a highly skilled birder who agreed with his assessment. Myles then went outside and used his big-lensed camera to capture more photos of the bird, and did so, but they weren’t as good as my two “lucky shots” because the bird was always on the move chasing and catching flies associated with the fermenting mulberries, which was certainly a holding factor for it staying around for a couple weeks.
The only time I ever saw that little flycatcher at rest for any extent of time was when I took his picture. I have a feeling he needed a slight rest after a long and arduous journey, and something tells me he might have had a hurricane for a tailwind which put him way off course.
Yep, folks, those “lifer moments” in birdwatching are certainly unforgettable, and getting lucky over being good sure works for me!
than 40 years and has had his weekly radio show, “Tom Lounsbury
Outdoors” for more than 20 years. Tom grew up on a farm in
Michigan’s Thumb, and it is where his first outdoor adventures began
as a kid accompanying visiting pheasant hunters into the field during
the “pheasant hunting heyday” of the 1950’s and 1960’s. It is a passion
he still has to this day and being the 4 th generation to own the family
farm, he has put most of it into conservation programs with a focus on
wild pheasants, which in turn helps all wildlife.
Being an outdoor communicator, Tom appreciates all the outdoor
adventures he experiences in different places, and especially the
people he meets in which to share them.
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