Birding in Michigan in September

 Somehow, I found a worse place worse to bird than the Texas Coast in May.

I set out with only middling hopes, so am not to be blamed. There’s a spot near here, Haehnle Sanctuary, that looked decent for birds. I drove the seven minutes it took to get there, listeing to country music and feeling strangely nostalgic for my life just a week ago, when my family and I were driving through the south, trying to  find something on the radio that not country. This time, I didn’t flip the channel, not even when the morning DJ asked people to call in about being lost, and they did exactly that.

I pulled into Haehnle and parked. It is a well-maintained space, with signage and more benches than I have ever seen at a bird sanctuary.

Some sort of a trap, it turns out.

For the moment I stepped from the car, I was completely swamped with mosquitoes. They whirled about me, an irritating, incessantly buzzing swarm landing on the few inches of skin I had left exposed on my hands and face. I immediately sprayed ‘bug spray’ which was in fact some eucalyptus bullshit, which did nothing. Terrified but desperate for time away from humans generally and my family specifically, I set off into the woods.

I reached the top of the hill and saw an immediately spectacular vista of what is to me, archetypically American.

A rolling meadow of grass and fading wildflowers, dotted here and there with oaks, with mist retreating into a forest behind it. The air was cool, the grass moist, with the gentlest of breezes and a fading summer sun, not yet strong enough to poke out from behind the clouds.

The bugling of Sandhill Cranes—of which there are numerous in this part of Michigan—could be heard echoing across this perfect place, as could the sound of at least a dozen species of songbird, calling from excitable foraging flocks near the edges of the forest. I immediately scanned them, chickadees, titmice, a goldfinch, the usual suspects around here.

You could also hear the fucking mosquitoes coming for you like tiny, insectile vampires.

Like the birds, I kept moving, not lingering long in any one stable position. The Eastern Bluebird moved a few branches over? No problem, I’ll do the same. So did the mosquitoes. 

That Common Yellowthroat ducked into the grass? Maybe I can get a better look, let me just scoot on over there, away from the mosquitoes. 

Catbird meowing and looking standoffish inside a bush? Stop standing still, Catbird, it’s dangerous, have you not seen the god damned mosquitoes? 

Wanting to see warblers, but unable to deal with the mass of a blood-thirsty swarm of mosquitoes equipped with emergent intelligence that could seek my dumbass, I set out into the meadow.

A mistake. Despite moving farther from the forest, the mosquitoes did not disappear. There might have been half as many, but half of a fuck-ton is a still a fucking lot. I kept moving.

Despite my best laid plans, the forest trail then plunged into the woods. As if wishing to prove something to their vampiric kin who haunted the fields, the mosquitoes in here became ravenous. More benches dotted the trail here, without mummified remains of people, I noticed.

But there were no living souls either. There were Catbirds and Robins, and not much else. Horrid. It was utterly horrid.

I moved quickly through it until I reached the fields once more.

I hurried, willing a flicker or a woodcock to appear somewhere, anywhere, but neither obliged me. I was back where I had started now, and there were birds—actual birds—ahead of me.

I scanned the branches, finding Eastern Bluebirds and Cedar Waxwings that looked like something had been done to them. The waxwings especially looked awful. Their masks were patchy, their coats ragged. I am used to these birds appearing in Central Texas in the winter, when their winter plumage is one of the most beautiful subtle things in the sky. These one had yet to grow those feathers, and looked like tree-rats. Gross. One of my favorite birds, ruined.

I heard bugling and left the mess of molting birds in the forest.

And for a glorious moment, the mosquitos couldn’t find me. I hurried down a path into the field, found a clearing with a few wild apple trees and like seriously nine benches, and watched some birds.

Field Sparrows called from the meadow. A pair of drab house finches flitted through an apple tree. A downy woodpecker—the tiny mote of red on its head read as flame—scoured for insects. . A Sandhill Crane flew overhead, trumpeting gloriously. Mist clung to the edge of the forest. The sun, still low, bathed everything in yellow light when it succeeded in poking through the clouds. I was alone with the land around me, a land my parents left in the North behind them, alone with the creatures that have lived here for thousands of years.

I slapped myself across the face to kill a mosquito.