Birdathon 2023 Highlights!

We are happy to report that the SWMLC Land Larks had a great day at Southwest Michigan Team Birdathon!

documented bird species

"lifers" (species seen for the first time) for our team of four birders

miles driven

hours of birding

dollars raised for trail improvements at Spirit Springs Sanctuary!

documented bird species

"lifers" (species seen for the first time) for our team of four birders

miles driven

hours of birding

dollars raised for trail improvements at Spirit Springs Sanctuary!

Thank you for your support!

SWMLC's 2023 Birdathon Team, the Land Larks: Dave Brown, Mitch Lettow, Ashley Cole-Wick, and Kaleigh Winkler

SWMLC’s 2023 Birdathon Team, the Land Larks: Mitch Lettow, Dave Brown, Ashley Cole-Wick, and Kaleigh Winkler

Snacks packed, caffeine loaded, rubber boots, and optics in tow, the Land Larks departed from Kalamazoo around 4 am, before even the robins were singing in our neighborhoods. With the advent of eBird, an amazing repository of bird sightings from birders around the world, we did our “armchair” scouting for Berrien County ahead of time and started off looking for owls in areas where other birders had documented them.

Unfortunately, the screech owls were feeling shy and, with it still too dark to see the great-horned owl nest, we got skunked on our nocturnal birds. All except for a familiar “peeeent!” we heard from our windows as we passed a wet grassy field, which of course belonged to the morning calls of an American woodcock.

On their way to their first destination, the Land Larks' hopes are high!

Throughout the long day, the Land Larks updated their stats with Instagram and Facebook stories created on the fly! This is Post #1.

As has been our tradition in years past we started our day at SWMLC’s beloved Kesling Nature Preserve, located near Three Oaks, to catch the dawn chorus of songbirds layered into the rich forested floodplain habitat. We were all doing mental gymnastics trying to sort out the beautiful mess of birds calling simultaneously (“couldn’t you guys go one at a time, please??”), but our numbers started ticking up quickly (as did the actual ticks crawling on our clothes!). We were pleased to hear Kesling’s reliable specialties, yellow-throated warbler and Louisiana waterthrush (both are listed as ‘Threatened’ by the state of Michigan), as well as some nice surprises like the brilliantly colored red-headed woodpecker and Blackburnian warbler. Feeling good about the start to our morning with 63 species, we pressed on.

Some light rain and overcast conditions meant that migrating conditions were not stellar for birds, which kept the birds on the ground and in the trees, and the birding steady for the day. We consistently picked up new birds at each stop. Ruddy ducks and other waterfowl at the Three Oaks Sewage Ponds (glorious locale, eh?), and Caspian terns and shorebirds at New Buffalo beach (95 species at that point). We enjoyed a rich birding experience at Warren Dunes which included prairie and golden-winged warblers and yellow-breasted chat; then rounded out our day at the Southwest Michigan Regional Airport, followed by Brown Sanctuary, and Sarett Nature Center – where we had some great additions like prothonotary warbler and olive-sided flycatcher.

The Land Lark's Instagram post #7, created in real time during Birdathon

During a lull in the middle of the day, we were driving down a narrow dirt road with steep ditches on each side when a dull brown bird hopped into the road in front of us. The four of us visually picked apart the oddly marked bird for a long-time, using process of elimination to come to our conclusion – hark! A Lark sparrow! A “life bird” for all four of us, Lark sparrows have been presumed “extirpated” (locally extinct) from Michigan for quite some time, and the nearest sighting in 2023 was northern Indiana. We felt even better about our identification when we learned other birdathon teams had also found the rare bird, and came to the same conclusion (phew!).

Lark_Sparrow photographed by Becky Matsubara, Creative Commons.

Lark sparrow photographed by Becky Matsubara.
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

It underscores an amazing lesson that birdwatching has been providing to the conservation community: witnessing real-time range shifts for some bird species, including yellow-breasted chats, summer tanagers, fish crows, orchard orioles, and others – species that used to be considered rarities and are now regular sighted in southwest Michigan as the climate changes around us and species adapt to it.