A killdeer guards her eggs. (Scot Stewart photo)

“The world’s favorite season is the spring. All things seem possible in May.” – Edwin Way Teale

May in the Upper Peninsula possibly holds the greatest contrast, the most incongruities of all the months. Snow, black flies and mosquitoes, heat, flowers, blizzards, heat, May has it all. This May seems no different as the Upper Peninsula has reached deeply into its bag of tricks, to start off looking more like March roaring in with a lovely snowstorm with flakes the size of baseballs. Some are impressed by the sight of a daffodil wrapped in a flaky bonnet, some not so much. With 60 degree temperatures in the forecast for some areas this weekend, things should return to normal temperature-wise.

Signs of early nesters continue around the area. Along Lakeshore Boulevard in Marquette herring gulls nesting on Ripley Rock in the Lower Harbor have been busy collecting nesting materials for nearly two weeks. Adult gulls have been scooping up beakfuls of grass and soil from the hill side and carrying them back to their nests on the island. Crows have also been seen carrying nesting materials to nest sites.

Even farther along in the nesting process is a pair of killdeers already incubating eggs in a gravel parking lot a short distance from County Road 480 in Chocolay Township. Like other plovers they are ground nesters and create a simple nest scraped in gravel with just a small amount of plant material lining the depression. More material may be added to the nest after the eggs are laid. When danger approaches one or both birds may feign a wing injury, call out loudly and appear to limp away from the nest.

Predators like foxes are often drawn to the adults and by the time they realize there is nothing wrong with the parents, they are unable to find their way back to eggs. Nests often blend in so well observers may have a difficult time relocating them even when they know exactly where they are. Nests built in busy areas like beaches and walk-ways are at risk for getting stepped on because they are so hard to see. For larger animals like cows and horses, killdeer have been known to puff up their feathers and charge the large animals hoping they will change their direction of travel around a nest.

Killdeers typically lay four to six eggs needing 22-28 days to hatch. Newly hatched killdeer are precocial — they hatch fully feathered and as soon as the fluffy buff-colored feathers dry, they can walk, run and generally keep up with their parents. They sleep under a roosting parent.

Sparrows are making their way into the area and will begin to peak in the next week or so. Dark-eyed juncos and American tree sparrows have lead the way, but chipping, fox, white-throated and last weekend, a rare Harris’s sparrow, have made it into the Marquette area.

Harris’s are strikingly beautiful, large sparrows with black faces and bibs and gray cheeks. Their normal range runs through the center core of the U.S. in winter, and northcentral Canada in the summer and is somewhat unique having a summer range only in Canada. They are often found migrating in flocks of white-crowned sparrows, so it is worth a second look at busy flocks foraging in the yard to see what species might be present in the group.

On the ponds and lakes in the area duck diversity has also widened. On Teal Lake in Negaunee horned grebes and lesser scaup were the recent highlights on the water. At the sewage lagoons in Gwinn there was also a good variety of waterfowl, including gadwall, American wigeon, American black duck, lesser scaup, wood ducks mallards Canada geese, and “dozens” of bufflehead and ring-necked ducks.

Some other migrants of interest recently have included a yellow-headed blackbird in AuTrain, a whip-poor-will near the Crossroads of County Road 480 and M-553, an osprey looking to claim a nesting site on Lake Levasseur in Chocolay Township and several indigo buntings. The yellow-headed blackbird is notable as it appears only during migration in the U.P. and is a species more often found south and west. Historically they did nest in the Thumb area and still nest in the Horicon Marsh and other wetlands in Wisconsin and farther west. Three species of swallows were seen in Escanaba on Monday — tree, cliff and rough-winged. The south end of town is also a great spot to occasionally see the ever rarer purple martins, and they should be arriving soon too to the area.

Whip-poor-wills are another insect eating species like nighthawks, swifts and swallows currently in decline and becoming harder to find in the area during the summertime. Many long-term residents can remember hearing them in the spring as they passed through the area and some as they nested in more remote areas away from residences. Today those experiences are extremely limited across the entire U.P.

At Whitefish Point loon migration is picking up with a couple red-throated loons being seen most days and numbers of common loons reaching 202 on some recent count days. The point will really ramp up soon for hawk, loon, owl, shorebird and songbird migration as will many other sites in the area — but especially points as birds cross and prepare to cross open water. So get out and see them in action!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Scot Stewart is a teacher at Bothwell Middle School in Marquette and a freelance photographer.