Great Horned Owl Takes a Dip in Lake Michigan

by Laura Geggel, Staff Writer | December 05, 2014 07:00pm ET

A great horned owl went for an unexpected swim in Lake Michigan this week, after two peregrine falcons forced it into the water, according to Chicago birders who saw the territorial skirmish firsthand.

Steve Spitzer, a birder and photographer who lives near Chicago, filmed the owl's athletic water strokes shortly after the bird entered the lake, he told Chicago station WGN-TV.

Owls are known for their nearly silent flight, but it's not unheard of to see one go for a dip, said Julia Ponder, the executive director of The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota.

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Conservancy buys Lake Mich. bird stopover island

November 27, 2013 11:57 am • By JOHN FLESHER

The Nature Conservancy said Wednesday it has bought most of an uninhabited Lake Michigan island that provides crucial stopover habitat for migratory birds, assuring it will remain permanently undeveloped and protected.

St. Martin Island is part of a chain stretching between Wisconsin's Door Peninsula and Michigan's Garden Peninsula in the northwestern corner of the lake. More than 7 miles from the nearest mainland, it features wetlands, cobblestone beaches, bluffs and thick vegetation. It sits northeast of Washington Island in Michigan waters.

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Botulism seen in Upper Peninsula water bird deaths

GULLIVER, Mich. (AP) — Authorities say they've found the bodies of about 700 water birds along a stretch of northern Lake Michigan shoreline in the Upper Peninsula.

The Mining Journal of Marquette (http://bit.ly/PQ1Gun ) says authorities suspect that the birds died of Type-E botulism.

The 694 dead birds were found in Schoolcraft County near the unincorporated village of Gulliver. They include 247 common loons, 152 horned grebes, 98 red-necked grebes, 73 long-tailed ducks and 64 white-winged scoters.

Authorities say there also were smaller numbers of ring-billed gulls, double-crested cormorants, red-breasted mergansers and herring gulls.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources says Type-E botulism bacteria cause a toxin that paralyses birds and fish. Similar die-offs happened in the Upper Peninsula in 2007 and near Sleeping Bear Dunes National lakeshore in northern Lower Peninsula in 2006.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/science/article/Botulism-seen-in-Upper-Peninsula-water-bird-deaths-4007586.php#ixzz2BMIZ9vQw

Bird Die-Off Hits Region

It looks like another bad year for avian botulism in northern Lake Michigan. In the last week or so, hundreds of dead loons have washed ashore from Sleeping Bear Dunes north to the Upper Peninsula.

Conditions Right
Warm water temperatures and low lake levels are associated with outbreaks of avian botulism. And there have been both of those conditions this year.

“This is looking to be a very intense year,” says Dan Myers at Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council. He tracks reports of dead birds in Emmet County.

One volunteer who walks a beach near Harbor Springs found 40 red neck grebes and 33 loons washed ashore in one day.

Tec Cummings says the sight was disturbing.  “It’s heartbreaking to find them, that many birds, because I’m only walking three or four miles of shore,” Cummings says.

Continued:  http://ipr.interlochen.org/ipr-news-features/episode/bird-die-hits-region/2012-10-19

Birding In The National Parks: Rare Bird Shows Up At Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

Picture: RSPB

So, you’re a birder looking to add a nifty pelagic species like the Great Shearwater to your list. Where do you go? Most of us would head to the Atlantic coast, charter a boat, and float around a few miles offshore.

I can’t think of anyone who would go to Lake Michigan and stand on the beaches of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore expecting to see shearwaters. It’s a bird of the open ocean that plunge-dives for squid. There aren’t any squid in Lake Michigan.

Michigan birder Alice VanZoeren knew all of that and wasn’t expecting to see a Great Shearwater from near the mouth of the Platte River in Sleeping Bear Dunes, but that’s exactly what she saw and photographed on September 8th from that precise spot.


Continued: http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2012/09/birding-national-parks-rare-bird-shows-sleeping-bear-dunes-national-lakeshore10574

More on the great shearwater (Puffinus gravis):

http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=3932

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/g/greatshearwater/index.aspx