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In 2018 Copper Country Audubon conducted a modest spring study of migrant birds at the tip of Pt Abbaye in Baraga County.  This study included a stationary count of migrating raptors and waterbirds and walking transect counts of migrating songbirds.   One of the young scientists we hired was Ellie Roark.  The following year Ellie requested and received our financial support to do another songbird survey in which she used both in-person surveys and the use of audio recording devices.  Her idea was to compare the two counting techniques to see if the recording devices would do as good a job as the in-person technique.  The results of her work that year are presented in the article attached.

Joseph Youngman

​Copper Country Bird Club publishes two birding newsletters each year entitled the Brockway Lookout. The newsletter is produced by Dana Richter with contributions from other members and from the local community. It has a lot of local birding information and is quite useful. Several of the recent newsletters are available on the newsletter subpage to this heading.

Copper Country Bird Club has three web cams in operation,  Web cam access is on the home page. One camera is on the Jutila Center in west Hancock. A pair of Great Horned owls have used the Jutila nest box for the past several years and raised two young each year, except one. Another camera is on the MTU campus on top of the Electrical Energy Resource building and a third on top of the Quincy mine shaft house. We previously had two nest boxes on the portage lake lift bridge in which many young falcons were reared over the years. Those boxes were removed in the spring of 2021 due to bridge maintenance issues.
 
If anyone finds downed falcons or owls around any of the boxes please contact one of the local wildlife rehabilitators listed on the Help resources page or contact the police departments at Houghton (482-2121) or Hancock  (482-3102). If a downed bird is found put it in a warm, dark, quiet box with a towel on the bottom until one of the rehabilitators can respond. Do not offer it food or water.
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The annual Midwest crane count takes place on Saturday, April 17th, 2021 from 6:45 to 8:45 am eastern time. All required information is on the linked Midwest crane count site. If you have any questions please email me at pjquenzi@gmail.com. Also, please let me know where you are counting so I can try to prevent multiple parties from counting the same site. You can view potential count sites here. from the Houghton and Keweenaw county maps. The sites shown are ones previously used. The sites shown on the maps are suggestions only. You are free to choose any site you'd like. The sites are also shown on the savingcranes.org web site under counter information>Crane count site finder.
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You can view Joe Youngman's 2020 Keweenaw swan report here. This information will be added to the research section in the near future.

Here are the Jutila owls having breakfast

shortly after the chicks hatched

Jutila male feeding chick and then being chased away by female

 

2019  by Joseph Youngman and Phil Quenzi

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