The Latest Word From Leelanau’s Shores and Skies? “Vagrant” Bird Sightings, Flourishing Falcon Populations & A New Plover Predicament

Look to the skies next time you’re outside; you might just spot a bird species you’ve never seen before.

That’s the advice of local birding and environmental experts, who say that climate change, severe droughts in other parts of the country, habitat changes, and a variety of other factors are driving new species to the state and the region – and redefining what the term “rare bird” means in local birdwatching circles.

The shifts are happening everywhere, including the Leelanau Peninsula. Just ask local birder Nate Crane, also a co-owner of the aptly named Rare Bird Brewpub in downtown Traverse City and Leelanau County’s official compiler in the 121-year-old Audubon Christmas Bird Count, a.k.a. “the longest-running citizen science project in the world.” Crane’s passion for birding started at age 10, when he befriended Leelanau County resident Leonard Graf, another legendary birder.

When the Leelanau Ticker caught up with Crane, he was on his way downstate to the town Saline, Michigan, with hopes of catching a sight of the state’s first documented roseate spoonbill. Known for its distinctive vibrant pink coloring, the roseate spoonbill is far from a Michigan native. In fact, according to the National Audubon Society, the roseate spoonbill is mostly common in coastal regions of Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and Mexico; Crane calls the prospect of seeing one in Michigan “insane.”

But the presence of a normally far-flung bird like the roseate spoonbill in Michigan is also illustrative of the broader situation in the bird world right now. Birders have come to expect certain patterns, trends, and “rules” for locating certain birds; now, those rules are getting flipped on their head. And while those subverted trends are making for exciting and unpredictable times in the birding community, they’re also symptoms of something more sinister – namely, global environmental trouble.

“It’s this double-edged sword,” Crane explains. “Selfishly, as a birder, I love seeing this cool stuff. But the frequency of vagrants [the term birders use to describe birds traveling outside of their normal range] showing up is, I think, cause for concern.”

In Leelanau County, Crane says one of the biggest trends has been an in-migration of birds that have historically been much more common in the western United States. The prevailing theory in the birding community, he explains, is that “severe drought conditions out west” are sending these birds looking for different habitats – specifically, ones with plentiful freshwater sources – which is driving western birds to Michigan. As a result, Crane says birds like the western meadowlark and the dickcissel have “really moved into the area in the last several years,” despite being “essentially, totally unknown [in northern Michigan] 10 years ago.”

It isn’t just birds flocking to the Great Lakes region to escape drought, either. On the contrary, while Michigan waters may be a safe haven from climate change for some birds, other recent developments in the birding world are offering sober reminders that even the Great Lakes State is not immune to hotter and drier shifts in climate.

“Last fall, myself and a handful of birders got a bird species called an ash-throated flycatcher, which is a bird of such arid conditions that they don’t drink water,” Crane says. “Their requirements for hydration are achieved just eating insects. And one of them showed up in Traverse City, which was unbelievable. But we keep seeing this with regularity: These birds showing up that, historically, were never here.”

All the vagrant species make for incredible theater for northern Michigan birders like Crane, who are checking birds off their must-see lists that they never would have bet on finding so close to home. Just last week, Crane says he heard word that someone nearby had spotted a swallow-tailed kite – a Florida bird, dubbed by the Audubon Society as “our most beautiful bird of prey,” that is only rarely seen outside of the deep south. 

Long-term shifts in bird populations and migratory flightpaths aren’t necessarily a new thing. Vince Cavalieri, a wildlife biologist with Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, notes that species like cardinals and red-bellied woodpeckers weren’t really in the area at all “40 or 50 years ago” but are now relatively common here. If climate shifts are expanding the ranges of some birds into Michigan, though, then it’s also fair to assume that other bird species which have historically been common in the area could be driven away by climate change.

“For instance, the common loon is species that everybody loves,” Cavalieri says. “A lot of climate change modeling, for predictions of bird ranges, shows the common loon range contracting out of this area and farther north. Ruffed grouse is another one. That’s a huntable species in Michigan, and theres some concern that climate change could gradually reduce their range.”

Growing populations of some species could also impact other more historically “native” Michigan birds, by changing the dynamics of the food chain. For an example, Cavalieri cites the merlin, a small but fast type of falcon that feeds in part on small songbirds and shorebirds. As the merlin population in Michigan has grown, it’s affected shorebirds along Great Lakes coastal areas – particularly in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Those effects could be exacerbated if migration patterns of shorebirds start to change due to climate change.

“We’ve seen the population of merlins greatly expand in Michigan in the last 20 years – probably by 200 percent,” Cavalieri explains. “And that’s great for merlins: They were nearly extirpated from the state in the ‘70s and ’80s, but now they are adapting to living in human areas, so they’re actually more numerous now than they were historically. But the merlins are really efficient bird predators, and we’ve actually seen them become an impediment to the recovery of the piping plover, which is a big conservation effort in the Great Lakes – especially here [at Sleeping Bear], which has roughly half the entire Great Lakes population.”

He notes that the fear is with less shorebird migrants in general, “there are a lot less species that these merlins are going to go after. And if the plovers are sitting out there as one of the only shorebirds on the beach, that could mean trouble for them.”

Crane concurs with Cavalieri, noting that the piping plover is likely the Michigan bird most at risk due to the shifting trends of climate, bird migration, and habitat. And unfortunately, he says environmental factors are already putting the northern Michigan plover at a higher level of risk than anyone in local birding or wildlife conservation circles is comfortable with.

“With the piping plovers, another concern [in northern Michigan] is fluctuating water levels, which have been really impactful,” Crane says. “Particularly out on North Manitou Island, which I think has the largest concentration of Great Lakes piping plovers in the world. The last couple years, with some of the water levels, it’s almost eliminated breeding [of plovers] out there. And with less breeding, all it takes is a hurricane in Florida, and you could wipe out a significant population of plovers.”

Piping plover image courtesy Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.