Kirtland's Warbler Could Become Michigan's New State Bird

Kirtland's warbler to soon come off the endangered species list, could replace the robin as Michigan's state bird.

By Associated Press, Wire Service Content July 29, 2019, at 1:05 a.m.

BY NEAL RUBIN, THE Detroit News

DETROIT (AP) — Any week now, the Kirtland's warbler will come off the endangered species list. Therein flies some problems.

The escape from federal protection, mind you, is good news. The Kirtland's warbler has been considered endangered since 1967, even before the passage of the Endangered Species Act.

But the warbler, which nests almost exclusively in the pine barrens of northern Michigan, is not out of the woods yet.

There's money involved, some $300,000 a year. There's gentle tweaking yet to be done with the bird's very precise habitat.

With human help, however, it has overcome the two greatest perils to its existence — a preponderance of brown-headed cowbirds, and a lack of forest fires.

It's still adorable. Still a tourist attraction. Still a far better choice than the boring ol' robin as Michigan's state bird, its fans will tell you, and they might soon try to make that official, The Detroit News reported.

But it's not a bald eagle.

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Endangered Bird Gains New Support in The Bahamas

Published by surfbirds on May 6, 2019 courtesy of American Bird Conservancy, surfbirds archive

The Kirtland’s Warbler — one of the rarest nesting migratory songbirds in the United States and Canada — now has additional support, thanks to the establishment of an avian ecologist position geared to executing conservation activities on the bird’s wintering grounds in The Bahamas. Scientist Bradley Watson has been hired by the Bahamas National Trust (BNT) as part of the plan to keep the Kirtland’s Warbler population growing after its expected removal from the U.S. endangered species list this spring.

Watson, who is Bahamian, holds a Master of Science from the University of Nebraska-Omaha, along with a Bachelor of Science from the College of Charleston. Prior to accepting the new position, Watson worked with the Cape Eleuthera Institute and The Bahamas Reef Environmental Education Foundation. He has contributed to multiple studies on terrestrial ecology, while his graduate research focused on carbon sequestration in prairie systems.

On the verge of extinction, the Kirtland’s Warbler numbered only 167 breeding pairs in 1987. Today, the population is approximately 2,300 breeding pairs, thanks to science-driven management by state, federal, and nongovernmental partners, supported by protection and funding through the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). However, the species will require long-term habitat management and ongoing support to continue to thrive after ESA protections are removed.

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Recording lures endangered bird to Wisconsin woods

By Kaley Fech | October 10, 2018

By Kaley Fech

Every day the love song of a Kirtland’s warbler calls throughout the Bayfield County Forest in northwestern Wisconsin.

But it isn’t coming from a bird.

It’s a recording created to lure the endangered species to the forest.

“We had a handful of birds on the landscape, but none of them were finding each other,” said Nick Anich a conservation biologist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “We thought this technique would be a good way to get all the birds to focus in basically on the same spot.”

He got the idea from Michael Ward, an avian ecologist for the Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ward has done a number of projects using audio playback to lure species from one area to another.

The technique is referred to as conspecific attraction, meaning it is used to lure the same species to a new location using cues relevant to that species.

Anich took the idea a step further. He lures Kirtland’s warblers hundreds of miles away from their main population centers.

Wisconsin’s biggest population of Kirtland’s warblers is in Adams County in the lower center of the state.

The recording has been successful in drawing birds from there to other parts of the state, Anich said.

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Kirtland's Warbler: could this rare bird be nesting here?

By Jim Williams

APRIL 2, 2018 — 11:40AM

Is it possible that America’s rarest warbler could be nesting in Minnesota? Birders will begin searching this spring, starting in Pine County. Volunteers are wanted.

The bird is Kirtland’s Warbler, until 10 years ago found exclusively in areas of jack pine in Michigan’s the upper and lower peninsulas. Since then, the species has expanded in small numbers to Wisconsin and Ontario. 

The birds have had success in Wisconsin. The first nesting was found in Adams County, 200 miles east of Minneapolis.

The Minnesota search project will be discussed April 9 from 7 to 8:45 p.m. at the Southdale library, 700l York Ave. S. The meeting room is on the second floor.

The bird’s necessary jack-pine habitat is found in abundance in north-central and northeastern Minnesota. The tree likes poor, sandy soil. Pine County is considered a good place to start.

Kirtland’s is a very particular specialist. It nests on the ground in grass under the lowest branches of jack pines less than 20 years old, preferring trees 16-20 feet high. 

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Watch tiny geolocator map rare bird’s round-trip migration

By Elizabeth PennisiMar. 3, 2017 , 10:45 AM

Fifty years ago, the Kirtland’s warbler seemed to be on its last legs. Fewer than 400 of these Michigan songbirds, which weigh less than an empty soda can and are only slightly taller, were left, so the species, Setophaga kirtlandii, became one of the first beneficiaries of the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Today, its population has increased 10-fold, making it a poster child for conservationists and bird lovers alike. That improvement came from planting more jack pines, which the bird needs to nest in, in its summer home in upper Michigan. Even so, only about 40% of the birds survive the annual migration to the Bahamas and back. To learn more about this journey, researchers outfitted 50 warblers with tiny geolocators (weighing just 0.5 grams—at the time, the smallest ever developed for an animal), which recorded the light intensity every 2 minutes, data indicative of sunrise and sunset that can be used to calculate latitude and longitude. In the fall, the warblers first headed east over Ontario to the coast, then turned southward to the Bahamas, the team reports this week in the Journal of Avian Biology. The warblers took a different route in the spring, flying straight west and stopping off in Florida for a week or so before turning north toward Michigan. Each way, they travel about 4500 kilometers in about 16 days. This was the first time anyone has tracked this species over an entire year, and though not much was learned about what it does en route, the locations of stopovers is a starting point for improving its protection, the researchers say. 

Watch video and Source

Hundreds of birders flocked to Chicago's Montrose Harbor over the weekend in hopes of catching a glimpse of a species so rare that it nearly went extinct.

The Kirtland's warbler has been on the federal endangered species list since 1967, was once known to nest only in a small area of Michigan and has been seen in Illinois just a few times in the past two decades.

Kim Ainis, of Chicago, learned of the sighting Saturday through the Illinois Birders Exchanging Thoughts email listserv. When she saw the bird was still reported to be present Sunday at the harbor's Magic Hedge, she grabbed her binoculars and headed out.

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US grant aids tree-planting to aid endangered bird

BAGLEY TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — The U.S. is giving a private nature protection group $171,000 to expand habitat in northern Michigan for the endangered Kirtland's warbler.

WCMU-FM (http://bit.ly/1a5QFxA ) says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife grant goes to the group Huron Pines. It's based south of Gaylord in Otsego County's Bagley Township.

The group has matching funds so that more than $300,000 to plant 2 million jack pine seedlings in Kirtland's warbler management areas.

Huron Pines project coordinator Abigail Ertel says the aim is to maintain a habitat of jack pine trees from 5 to 15 years old for the nesting songbirds.

Ertel says the program started in July and runs through September 2014.

http://www.westport-news.com/news/science/article/US-grant-aids-tree-planting-to-aid-endangered-bird-4733370.php

DNR: Kirtland's warbler a 'conservation success story' in Michigan

LANSING, MI - The population of the Kirtland’s warbler – a bird that breeds in northern Michigan – continues to bounce back.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources said last week a recently released annual survey shows the bird’s population is at a record high.

Researchers and volunteers in Michigan counted 2,063 singing males during the official 2012 survey period – up from 1,805 males a year ago. That’s the largest single-year increase since 2007.

The lowest numbers were documented in both 1974 and 1987, when 167 singing males were found.

Only males sing. The DNR figures that each male has a mate with him, so the breeding population is generally considered to be twice the count of the singing males.

Michigan has made special preservation efforts to help the warbler, which is considered endangered.

Read more:  

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/10/kirtland_warbler_michigan.html