Belated Muskegon County Trip Report

October 10 Email:

This is a late trip report, but I found some spare time right now to type it up.  It includes various stops we made in Muskegon County on October 1.  I will include some pictures.

We entered Muskegon County with the intent of heading over to Pere Marquette Park first.  We instead got stopped for a few minutes as we watched a flock of 11 turkeys in someone's yard off Lincoln St.

As soon as we pulled up to Pere Marquette's parking pot, we were presented with a juvenile Bald Eagle in a dead snag, but he wasn't alone.  A nearby flock of American Crows wasn't all that happy about his presence, and they made it known.  They kept mobbing the poor eagle who had its wings out to make itself look as big as possible, but the crows were relentless.  They ended up driving it away, in which he focused his attention on the beach, where a flock of gulls sat. The gulls flew up, and he dove into the water to attack one! He missed, and the gull got to live another day. It wasn't long before the crows decided enough was enough, and they chased him off the beach too. Clear over to one of the lighthouses. That's the extremes that eagle had to go to to escape the crows. 

On the pier railing a couple Belted Kingfishers fought and perched. We had a Sharp-shinned Hawk flyby. These were the highlights as everything else was pretty normal. 

We headed over to the Muskegon Channel while we were there, to check the duck levels. The only ducks in the channel were Mallards, but we did have some swans farther down. We concluded them to be Mutes. While we were parked, a flock of gulls, mostly consisting of Ring-billeds, flocked outside around out car.

As we headed in the direction of the Wastewater, we passed by Pere Marquette Park again and had a flyby Merlin.

We happened to stumble upon a cool looking boat launch which eBird calls the Grand Trunk Boat Launch Ramp, and we decided to bird it for a few minutes.  It did present us quite a few birds, both on and off the lake, in which the highlights were White-crowned Sparrows, a Catbird, two Pied-billed Grebes, and some Tree Swallows. 

We spent four hours at the Muskegon County Wastewater System that day, and tallied an impressive total of 61 species.  I'll include highlights, but a lot of the normal stuff was seen as well.

Peregrine Falcon - 3

Tree Swallow - 200 (congregating)

Eared Grebe - 1 (oddly close to the corner of the lagoon)
Ruddy Duck - 2500 (showing impressive numbers, congregating)

Cliff Swallow - 7
Northern Pintail - 4
American Pipit - 23
Sanderling - 1

Merlin - 1
Willow Flycatcher - 2
Cape May Warbler - 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler - 8
Eastern Meadowlark - 4
Sandhill Crane - 42 (exact count; all flying in a V behind us)
Lapland Longspur - 4 (Lifer!)

- Lizzy Kibbey (Magical Duck Wizard)