On May 22, after exploring downtown Detroit, I went to Fenton, in Genesee Co., Michigan.?We had a wedding to attend the next day and we stayed at the Holliday Inn. I discovered that?there was?a very nice little park nearby. This was Silver Lake Park on Silver lake. Some of my goals included the Baltimore Oriole, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak and the Scarlet Tanager, not to mention all the Wood Warblers.
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On my first walk I didn't have much time and made the mistake of not taking binoculars. Wow, eastern birding at last! But I was quickly overwhelmed by unfamiliar calls. I found House Wrens, Northern Cardinals and White-breasted Nuthatches. But on this walk it was the Groundhogs that amazed me. This place was full of them. They looked just like Marmots. I was the only person at this park. There was a nature trail in the forest and tons of mosquitoes! A Brown Thrasher landed in a tree above my head.
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On the morning of the Wedding I found time for two quick walks in this park. This time I had my binoculars. I quickly found a Baltimore Oriole, Hurrah! For the rest of my trip these proved to be fairly common. A pair a Gray Catbirds were nesting by the lake. I heard Eastern Wood-pewees calling. The Warblers really were hard but I did get an American Redstart. The Red-bellied woodpeckers were like old friends, I remember them from Missouri when my grandparents had called them "Dominecker Woodpeckers" or Dommie for short! The strangest bird I found was a lone female Northern Pintail waddling on the grass. There were a lot of Vireos. The bird that sent me off back to my hotel was an Eastern Kingbird.
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In the parking lot of the hotel a Killdeer was sitting on four eggs in the gravel.
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The wedding was held at the old hotel in the town of Holly, just over in Oakland County. More Chimney Swifts greeted me.
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to be continued....
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Mark Vernon
Renton, WA
mailto ma_vern at yahoo.com