New Year’s Day Birding

Bufflehead on the Grand River

Winter is a great time to enjoy our seasonal guests as well as the many resident birds of Michigan.  For most of the past 20 plus years I have made my annual birding trip on January first.  I have a route from my home to Allendale, then to the west end of the Bass River Recreation Area. From there to the Grand River at four different parks or access points including the boat launch in Grand Haven.  Then on to Lake Michigan and down towards Holland for several stops. Many of my favorite stops are at or near open water since water fowl and any wading birds will congregate in the open water surrounded by ice.  The basic route has remained the same over the years with a few deviations and changes, adding and eliminating stops to make the trip as productive as possible.

This year some stops did not yield a single bird.  Those that would normally be iced in were open and Lake Michigan was calm enough for large flocks of water fowl to be out in the open lake. These included Mergansers and Goldeneyes which needed the spotting scope to view at the Port Sheldon bubbler. I also noticed the trees have grown up considerably over the years, which is why the Bluebirds were not in the usual place or anywhere else along my route this year.  With abundance of open water there were no eagles to be found near the openings.

Common Redpoll

The first bird of the day was a Common Redpoll at my feeder as I was preparing to leave. While out the birds on the list began to add up, one, two or three here and there. There was even a cold and slow Great Blue Heron with some Mallard Ducks in a small stream. There were Golden-crowned Kinglets, Tree Sparrows and Chickadees at Bass River and an active Red-bellied Woodpecker along the Grand River. Even with the total numbers of birds down, I still managed to identify 29 different species in the nearly five hour and 100 miles logged.

As I finish this post, a Cooper’s Hawk was just at my bird feeders. I guess that answers the question, where did all the birds go?