Berrien and Allegan County highlights - 30 December 2008

[ADAMS KNC]

Adam's email regarding the Red-throated Loons reminded me that in the 1885 edition of the Ornithologist and Oologist volume 10, Dr. Morris Gibbs describes the Red-throated Diver as "almost a yearly visitor to our rivers" (our meaning Kalamazoo). " Usually appears in January or early February and remain until March 30th." Clearly something changed between the late 1800s and when I began birding along the Kalamazoo River in the winters of the late 1950s. It will be interesting to see if any of the Red-throateds come inland. I have long suspected that the contamination from the paper mills changed the water quality or that a couple of harsh winters changed the pattern of wintering on the Kalamazoo River upstream.

By the way, for those of you that haven't ever birded Gull Lake in Kalamazoo County, I was also at 62nd street today in Allegan County and what a treat to look at something besides Ring-billed and Herring gulls that were closer than 1/2 mile away and not in dying light. 

Ray

In a message dated 12/30/08 20:37:15 Eastern Standard Time, byrnea at msu.edu writes:
Greetings, 

Phil Chu and I spent the day working various locations along the 
southern Lake Michigan shoreline.  Quite unexpected were large 
numbers of Red-throated Loons in Berrien County.  At the Lakeside 
overlook on Pier Road, we had 34 Red-throateds.  Down at the Union 
Pier overlook on Townline Road we had another 11 Red-throateds and 
then 6 more off of New Buffalo, bringing us to an amazing 51 for the 
morning.  Most of these birds were seen in flight heading south, but 
there were at least 10 swimming around off the Lakeside overlook. 

While at the Union Pier overlook, a male WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL was 
heard and seen as it flew over the viewing area.  We looked around 
the residential area for awhile, but were not able to relocate 
it.  Lastly, at New Buffalo there was a flock of 12 Northern Pintail 
and a 2nd cycle Iceland Gull. 

At the Allegan State Game Area, Allegan County, we found a 3rd cycle 
Glaucous Gull and an adult Thayer's Gull in a flooded field on the 
east side of 62nd Avenue, between 118th and 116th Avenues. 

Good birding, 

Adam M. Byrne 

_______________________________________________ 

Mich-listers mailing list 
Mich-listers at envirolink.org 
You can unsubscribe or change your options at: 
http://lists.envirolink.org/mailman/listinfo/mich-listers 
delivered to: ADAMSKNC at aol.com 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/mich-listers/attachments/20081230/0225a3c6/attachment.html