Tawas Point Bird Festival 2024

 

I wrote this up back in May but couldn't find the right pix for it.  Finally I've decided to use a combo of my own shots of birds, even though they were not present at the time, and pix taken from the web.  Above:  Baltimore Oriole in my back neighbor's apple tree, May 2015.  This diary entry was one of absolute joy, amazement and delight:  Not only was it the day of our first birding festival, and a major one at that, but it was a grand experience of emergence.

Below:  One of the few images I found of the trail itself, which runs along a narrow peninsula between Lake Huron and Tawas Bay, on the upper east side of Michigan.

image from Tawas Area Chamber of Commerce

2405.18  [May 18. 2024]

What a day!!!!  Err-er-R-R-R-!!! [rooster crow]  Golden Winged Warbler!  Too many Blackburnians!!! [warblers]  Nighthawk on a stick!  Parulas!! [warbler]  BAY BREASTED Warblers, male and female!!  Magnolias!! [warbler]  BTGs!!!  BTB, female!!!  [Black Throated Green and Blue warblers]  WAAAYY too many Redstarts, Blackbirds, and Grackles,...  BOBOLINK,...  Black Bellied Plovers, Dunlin, Nashville [warbler], Tennessee [warbler], HOUSE WREN and many more:  66 species today, 64 at Tawas.

Tawas Point State Park + Birdwatching Festival!!!

Perfect weather!!!!

Kirtland's Warbler    image from Tawas Area Chamber of Commerce

We got there 7:26 am and didn't stop til about 1:30, w/ about 1 potty-break for each of us, and no drinking.  That's how amazing and wonderful and overwhelming it all was:  Incredible, astonishing, record-breaking, beautiful, magical.

American Redstart       photo by Tom Warner/Audubon

 It was more:  For both of us this was a major emergence.  So much time mingling with so many people even if it was outdoors, was in scale quite different from the Party of 12 at Fox Hills [family gathering].  This was CROWDS.  Of perfect strangers, of all ages.  I didn't seek out packed areas, I avoided people, I rarely spoke face-to-face; but even here, masks were almost non-existent;  & what few I saw were for insects.

Tawas Point Lighthouse    image from Tawas Area Chamber of Commerce

I discovered I still had an inner reserve, reluctance, resistance, (refusal!) to breathe completely carelessly.  I could not throw off entirely my hard-won awareness.  The air was still during the morning, w/ all that fog.  But I was no longer avoiding scent-trails, no longer keeping a distance, no longer hesitating to pass, or walk alongside.  Both of us mingled freely and yes spoke with a handful at length.  We were exposed to something like 300 people today -- approaching BreyerFest!!! -- so if we get sick we'll know why and how.  But surely, surely,... (I can say no more, for fear of jinxing!)...  This day marks as far + farther than I've been in 4 years 3 months.  Indeed & truly, 2024 is a year of emergence for us,.... giving our first major birdwatching festival about 4 years' worth of deeper, near spiritual importance and meaning on a personal level.

Everything had a double glow.

Blackburnian Warbler       image from Cornell Lab

 Oh, to finally come home--!!!  --That's what it felt like.  To a home you didn't know you had;  but every part of it was familiar.  I am ONE OF THESE PEOPLE despite my leather binocular strap, & rawhide-&-silver hat, nothing else of which matched or even approached.  Despite my buck's-head shirt, which makes me look like a deer hunter.  {{After killing a deer yesterday, I can no longer claim not to have ever done this!!!  It was by car & totally accidental; an entirely separate story.}}  Oh to find your own tribe,.... AFTER a lifetime of knowing my tribe is Equus Plasticus!!!!  It was a doubling, an enlargement;  As a third language would be for a bilingual person,....  36 years of birdwatching w/ Geo has taught me.  The law of averages, that's all,...

image from Tawas Pt State Park Facebook page

 ....we have always avoided these festivals before, that's all....

Bay Breasted Warbler    photo by Bill Magoros

To say I'm happy is an understatement.  I am still amazed.

Golden Winged Warbler    image from Wildlife Management Institute

2408.06 (present, August 6)  My beloved trip planner and birdwatcher extraordinaire had used every tool at his disposal to find out when the right weekend in May would be for maximum spring migration at a natural warbler trap.  The skill is a combination of analyzing years of bird data and meteorological know-how.  In the way of these things, we landed right on top of a birding festival which had done the same thing.  In hindsight it was almost funny.

Bobolink     image from Cornell Lab

And you will be glad to hear that we didn't get sick.  

Not even at BreyerFest.  

Can't wait 'til next year!!