If only my own mother were so tender . . .
Just about 45 miles away from where we were staying on Michigan’s Garden Peninsula is the gargantuan Seney National Wildlife Refuge. I’ve been wanting to go there for some time, but since it’s only open from May 15th to October 15th, I’ve always just missed that small window of visiting opportunity. But not today, Seney will not be missed, no sir, Seney will not be missed.
The official Edmund Fitzgerald puzzle — a lifer for us both
Today we were finally on our way to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Our stated objective was the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory to try to pick up some late migrants, but the unstated real objective was the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, which is located at the exact same place.
We both managed to see CHIMNEY SWIFTS in our respective neighborhoods, about a week apart. As usual, Pole saw it first. End of transmission.
Today was another unbearably hot day. Perhaps not quite as hot as hell (I refer to, of course, the great state of Texas), but nasty, sticky, and windless. Scrubb and I decided to see if we could add any more warblers to our list, and we traveled to Beverly Shores in Indiana and Warren Dunes State Park in Michigan. Everyone else there was cooling off at the beach by the refreshing sixty-degree waters of lovely blue Lake Michigan, but no, we had to sweat to death in the nearby steamy woods and algae-covered swamps, by smelly, barely-moving sludgy brown rivers. We’re birders, dammit, and we go where the birds are, or in our case, aren’t. (They were probably hanging out at the lake, as any smart bird — or human — would.)
Watching for the MacGillivray's maybe
Back to the Magic Hedge today to see if we could find the female MacGillivray’s Warbler that’s been reported there. It’s a western bird, a rarity that would be very far from home. As soon as we arrived, we saw a group of about 10 people watching the hole on the north side of the hedge. That’s where they’d been seeing the MacGillivray’s. A few warblers were darting in and out of the bushes, and the first one we saw was a BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER.