Photo of the Week: A Morning for Cliff Swallows

A small brown bird with outstretched wings, short square tail, buffy-orange rump, and white head patch pauses over dried brown mud nests in a corner of a gray concrete portion of a street bridge.

As a birder, sometimes you need to remind yourself to look at things other than trees, bushes, yards, and fields to see birds.

Like bridges—this one is over the Huron River at Gallup Park in Ann Arbor, Michigan—where you see Cliff Swallow nests as you look up from the trail.

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Photo of the Week: Another Roseate Spoonbill Finds Its Way to Michigan

Large pink wading bird stands on one long reddish leg looking down to the ground on the shore of a pond. The bird has a whitish head with long spoon-shaped bill. A nearby Common Merganser, a brown duck with cinnamon-colored heard, tucks its head under its wing. Green foilage and tangled brown branches in the background.

In summer 2021, the birding community in Michigan and nearby states were delighted to view a Roseate Spoonbill in southeast Michigan.

I know, I was one of them!

The pink wading bird seen in Saline, Michigan for several days in July 2021 was a first state record.

And two years later, another Roseate Spoonbill has turned up in southeast Michigan.

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Photo of the Week: Rainbow at the Airport

Multicolored pink, yellow, green, and blue rainbow stands out against a blue-gray sky. Below the rainbow is a line of green-leaved trees with a white vehicle on the road next to the trees.

When I was a child, after every summer rainstorm you could find me searching the sky for a rainbow. I rarely found one, but when I did it felt like magic! After rainstorms moved through our area a few days ago, I went birding at one of our smaller local airports. I thought the rain… Continue reading Photo of the Week: Rainbow at the Airport