My Spark Bird

A lot of birders have a “spark bird,” the one that first ignited their interest in birding. I have an entire family: Parulidae, the New World warblers.

I was on a hiking and backpacking trip somewhere near the Pigeon River, in northwest Lower Michigan. As I walked along the river with my girlfriend (now my wife), I kept catching these brilliant, sneaky flashes of color: tiny, vividly plumaged birds flitting through the bushes. I knew the general idea of warblers, but I’d never seen anything like the number or variety I saw there.

A mixed flock of warblers goes by a few different collective nouns, but my favorite is “a confusion of warblers,” because that’s exactly what it was. The whole hike turned into “oh, what was that?” … “that’s cool, look at that one” … “oh, what’s that over there?” … “THAT ONE’S ORANGE, LOOK AT HOW ORANGE IT IS!”

I didn’t know it at the time, but warblers are mostly migrants. They make fantastic journeys from Canada and the northern U.S. down south, some as far as South America, depending on the species. What I was watching was one of nature’s great secret migrations. In Michigan there are usually only a few weeks each year to catch such a dazzling array of birds in their spring finery. (There’s a second migration south in the fall, but by then the plumage is dulled and muddled.)

The good news is that this isn’t some inaccessible spectacle. In Michigan, if you know when to look (especially during spring migration) and where to look (along wooded trails, river corridors, and the migrant traps near the lakeshore), you can go see warblers for yourself.