I wanted to get up north to look for Kirtland's Warbler (Setophaga kirtlandii) this week but clouds and rain were predicted for most of the time. Only Monday morning looked clear so I decided to drive to Grayling, MI this Sunday afternoon, spend the night, then possibly take the DNR-sponsored Kirtland Warbler Tour in the morning.
I left the house at noon for the 3-hour drive to Grayling. Skies were darkening and severe thunderstorms were being reported in nearby Detroit and Dearborn. Sure enough, as I got onto I-275 North at Sibley the skies opened up; I would need wipers on high-speed and drive with the hazard lights blinking. Traffic was moving at 40 mph.
I-696 West was less rainy; I had the wipers on continuous during the constant downpour. Traffic was going 50 mph. US-23 N saw the rain finally subsiding, and by the time I reached Flint the heavy clouds were starting to show breaks of blue.
I had time to kick around so I took the exit near Roscommon off I-75 N and headed east along county roads and found Hunter Jackson Road just a half-mile west of Hunt Road. Immediately to my left I could see a large stand of young Jack Pines so I knew that I was close.
Sure enough, I rolled down my window and started the Merlin App and heard the first calls of a Kirtland Warbler (Merlin would finally pick it up to confirm).
I reached the south end of Hunt Road just a short distance later and found it to be a seasonal, two-track, sand road. Turning north I drove slowly along the road looking for a place to park so as not to block any oncoming traffic. On either side of the road was large stands of Jack Pines with much taller stands of Red Pine in the distance.
Driving slowly with both windows down I listened for the "Chip-Chip-Sup-Wee-Weep" call of the Kirtland's Warbler and heard calls coming from both sides of the road. I also heard Field Sparrow, Eastern Towhee, Eastern Bluebird and Palm Warbler calls at a distance. No visuals, however.
About a quarter-mile in I pulled off to the side and walked the road to the north. Power lines run along the east side of Hunt Road with the Jack Pine stands about 50' back from the road. They stood anywhere from 3' - 10' tall (estimate).
The west side of the road was similar in appearance with perhaps younger Jack Pines growing in the vicinity (3'-5').
Winds were blowing 10-20 mph so I was happily surprised that I could still hear birds singing in the middle of the afternoon. But, as hard as I tried I could not see any birds. Anywhere. I did not want to leave the road as KIWA are ground-nesting birds the area was off-limits to foot traffic. One of the many signs posted along the road:
I had planned to spend a couple hours on the road so as I walked north I made sure to get some documenting photos of the vegetation and ground cover. Ferns are abundant among the mostly blueberry shrubs and reindeer lichen ground cover.
A young Jack Pine.
Blueberry bush.
Common St. John's Wort.
Occupied jack pine forests tend to be nearly pure, even-aged stands interspersed with openings and scattered clumps of pin oak (Quercus ellipsoidalis), trembling and big tooth aspen (Populus tremuloides and P. grandidentata), black cherry (Prunus serotina), and choke cherry (Prunus virginiana) (Walkinshaw 1983, Probst 1988, Bocetti 1994). Ground cover in these forests is predominately moss/lichen, grass/sedge (Carex pensylvanica), and low shrubs such as blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium), sand cherry (Prunus pumila), sweet fern (Comptonia peregrine), and bearberry (Arctostaphylos uvaursai) (Zou et al. 1992, Bocetti 1994, Houseman and Anderson 2002, Probst and Donnerwright 2003). In 2008, breeding activity was recorded in a red pine plantation with substantial natural jack pine recruitment in s.-central Wisconsin (Anich et al. 2011). Red pine plantations were used historically for nesting in n. Lower Michigan during periods of low population numbers (Radtke and Byelich 1963).
My first bird was a singing Dark-eyed Junco. This male was atop a dead snag singing away despite the high winds.
I found the spot where cars pull off to park (DNR staging location; Hunt Road eBird Hotspot) so I went back to the car and parked at this location. Skies were heavy with dark clouds but gaps of blue could be seen. Temperature was about 60ºF but a jacket was needed due to the wind.
I continued walking north and found a spot where a Kirtland Warbler was singing loudly and close by. This spot on the east side of the road was the general vicinity.
I stood there for 30 minutes and could not see any evidence of a bird or any movement despite my belief that the song location was changing. I kept moving a few feet to the north and a few feet to the south with the hopes of seeing the Kirtland's Warbler responsible for the song. Scanning tops of Jack Pines and the dead tree branches yielded no sign of life. Finally, I spotted a snag in a little cutout and found the Kirtland's Warbler tucked away in a notch. If not for the bright yellow throat the steely-gray warbler would've disappeared into the branches.
Not wanting to leave the road I had to make do with the distant photos using the Sony a1 II + 600/4 + 1.4TC + APS-C crop (1.5X) mode to get record shots. Thankfully, the 51 MP images allow for additional cropping; I was able to get some keepers.
The diagnostic steel-blue-gray body, white eye-arcs, black lore mask and streaks along the flanks were visible even at this distance.
It wasn't until I started reviewing images that I noticed that this bird is banded: blue band over magenta band on the left tarsus,
and red band over silver band on the right tarsus.
The Kirtland's Warbler continued to sing for several minutes before flying off into the underbrush. It would continue to sing, but I decided to keep walking north along Hunt Rd. to see if any other birds might be nearby.
They weren't. I reached Camp Road and walked west along the sand road; I would be nervous driving this road. Along the way the trees got thicker and taller, and the only bird heard was a Nashville Warbler singing nearby.
I walked the road for about a third of a mile before turning around. I didn't see any Kirtland's Warbler habitat (trees too tall) so I headed back to Hunt Road where I walked it to the south. Here is view looking south along the road.
I returned to the Kirtland's Warbler spot and still heard it singing, but this time could not spot the bird to save my life. I did see an American Kestrel perched in a snag several hundred feet away to the south.
A few moments before a Merlin flew across the road and headed to the north. It didn't seem to bother the Kirtland's Warblers (or the Field Sparrows, Eastern Towhees, Palm Warblers or Dark-eyed Juncos) that continued to sing in the distance.
I'd walk across Hunter Jackson Road into the two-track on the other side but didn't see or hear anything in the older Jack Pine stand.
With skies darkening even more I decided to make my way back to the car and drive to Grayling for the night. I'd stay at the Motel 8, watch World Cup Soccer and get some sleep before coming back here tomorrow.
The Kirtland's Warbler (Setophaga kirtlandii), one of the rarest songbirds in North America, was first discovered when Charles Pease shot a migrant on 13 May 1851 on the farm of his father-in-law, Jared P. Kirtland, near Cleveland, OH. The new species was identified by Spencer Baird, who named it for the renowned Ohio naturalist (Baird 1852). The species' wintering grounds were discovered as additional specimens were collected from throughout the Bahamas, but it took 52 years before Norman Woods followed the lead of a graduate student from the University of Michigan and pursued the species along the Au Sable River in northeast Oscoda Co., MI, where he discovered the first nest of this elusive species in July 1903 (Wood 1904, Rapai 2012).
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the Kirtland's Warbler was studied by several of ornithology's finest naturalists, including L. Walkinshaw, J. Van Tyne, H. Mayfield and others, who shared details of the species' life history. Their work laid the foundation for recovery, as the species became the victim of its own habitat specificity, and the conservation movement sought to save declining species.
The 1971 decennial census confirmed the population crash that ornithologists had predicted (Mayfield 1972), documenting the decline in population size from estimates of 1000 individuals to around 400. The large areas of dry, sandy soil with dense stands of young jack pine (Pinus banksiana), upon which the species depended, had declined owing to fragmentation and fire suppression, but the most imminent threat was nest parasitism by the Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater, Mayfield 1960, Walkinshaw 1983).
Owing to its natural rarity and apparent decline, Kirtland's Warbler was included on the first list of endangered species in 1967 under the Endangered Species Conservation Act (Office of the Secretary 1967). Following the enactment of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the Kirtland's Warbler Recovery Team was created, and they produced a recovery plan in 1976 (Byelich et al. 1976). The plan established a recovery goal of 1000 breeding pairs distributed across the original breeding range of the species, and the revised plan (Byelich et al. 1985) identified and prioritized recovery strategies to achieve this goal, including habitat management, cowbird control, annual monitoring, research, and education. In the late 1980's, the population began to respond to the recovery efforts, and by 2012 the population had reached about 4000 individuals.
Kirtland's Warblers are now considered biologically recovered, but the species is dependent on perpetual management to establish the early successional habitat it needs, and to remove the cowbird threat on that restricted landscape. In fact, all five recovery strategies must continue, making the species entirely conservation-reliant (Scott et al. 2010). The Kirtland's Warbler Recovery Team is attempting to develop a public/private conservation partnership to safeguard annual management of the species after removal from the protection of the Endangered Species Act (Bocetti et al. 2012). The species has been above the recovery goal of 1000 breeding pairs for more than a decade, and as long as management continues, its future appears secure. Efforts to secure this rare and unique species may provide a conservation model for other conservation-reliant species as well.
Jun 14, 2026 3:10 PM - 5:49 PM
Protocol: Traveling
1.845 mile(s)
Checklist Comments: Cloudy, windy, NW 10-20mph, 62F
13 species
Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) 1
American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) 1
Merlin (Falco columbarius) 1
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) 2
Common Raven (Corvus corax) 1
Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma rufum) 1
Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) 1
Field Sparrow (Spizella pusilla) 1
Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis) 1
Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) 1
Nashville Warbler (Leiothlypis ruficapilla) 1
Kirtland's Warbler (Setophaga kirtlandii) 4 Banded bird: Blue over Magenta on left leg and Red over Silver on right leg. Photographed from road (heavily-cropped).
Palm Warbler (Setophaga palmarum) 1
View this checklist online at https://ebird.org/checklist/S357532811
This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (https://ebird.org/home)
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