Copper Country Audubon
Our Latest Projects
We now have a modest article available on the Porcupine Mtns State Park page under our "Research" page. It gives some of the details of the raptor count done at the Porkies in 2019 by Ryne Rutherford.
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We have both of our planned Keweenaw Motus sites up and listening for radio tagged migrant birds. One is at the Calumet sewage ponds and the other on the Phoenix cliffs. The sites were up and running this spring. By fall we had 4 "hits" of birds detected by our receivers. We had a Woodcock and Swainson's Thrush in spring and a Short-billed Dowitcher and Semi-palmated Plover in fall.
We still have a link to the continent-wide Motus project.
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In 2020 we conducted a two site waterbird migration count during the month of October. We were lucky to hire Tim Baerwald and Alison Vilag to do the counts at the eastern tip of Manitou Island and at the AuSable lighthouse in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. We knew that there was a significant difference in abundance of certain species in the fall movement between the western and eastern portions of Lake Superior. By comparing the data from Manitou and AuSable AND the data that the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory collects every fall we hope to strengthen our knowledge. The data isn't all crunched and analyzed yet but we hope to have a full report up on our Manitou Island and AuSable pages by early 2021. There is a report and some photos.
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Joseph Youngman conducted a survey of Trumpeter Swans in the Keweenaw in 2020. A few photos and a link to a report are in our Research section.
Here are links to two birding resources for the Copper Country and Upper Peninsula.
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Laurence Binford's book
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Birds of the Keweenaw Peninsula
Scott Hickman's Checklist of Birds of the Upper Peninsula
Laurence Binford's list of
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Birds of the Keweenaw Peninsula
At right, is Tim Baerwald conducting his waterbird count at Manitou Island in October of 2020.
