Group on a June walk at North Point Park, Onekama. Photo by P. Stinson.
By Brian Allen
I love the look of wonder on someone’s face when they experience something in nature for the first time and you see that look of interest click on, like a switch. I see it most often when I am leading bird hikes.
In addition to the very popular Arcadia Marsh Preserve boardwalk, my other favorite location for leading and doing bird hikes is at North Point Park in Onekama Township. Thanks to the organizational skills of Michelle Ervin, of the Onekama Township Parks and Recreation Commission, I have had the good fortune of being able to lead well-attended birding tours at North Point for the past couple years.
North Point Park particulars
What makes North Point so unique? There are so many public lands and parks in the Manistee area, but I find none that can compare with North Point Park. This struck me several years ago when I first heard about it and explored the three trails there. The habitat is not exceptionally diverse, but there is a cedar/pine forest, a poplar/cottonwood wetland, some open grassland and a great amount of what I would call juniper/cherry savanna. The park occupies the middle of a peninsula that points southward into Portage Lake and is very near the shore of Lake Michigan. This geography makes the park attractive to migrating songbirds that rest there in spring and fall, as they avoid the open water of Lake Michigan and Portage Lake.
In the storm’s wake
A few years ago, in the peak of spring migration, I arranged a birding tour for a group of birders from Leelanau County who wanted to check out the Manistee area. Unfortunately, we had to cancel as a strong thunderstorm rolled across the area and a rain-filled morning was forecast. As is typical, the storm passed more quickly than predicted and by mid-morning the sun came out. I asked my wife Maripat if she wanted to join me exploring the park, and she agreed to come along. As we parked in the lot and opened the car doors, it struck me that this could be one of the best days I might experience for birding.
There were birds everywhere, and the trees were full of birdsong and call notes! We walked the outer loop trail and then decided to head back on the paved trail, as it was still very damp. Maripat is not a birder like I am, but she appreciates birds and loved seeing the Indigo Buntings, Warblers and Scarlet Tanagers that morning. I was able to show her more than 20 brilliant Scarlet Tanagers in just about an hour there.
The sky turned blue with the bright spring sun, and the towering receding thunderclouds seemed to make the newly leafed-out trees even more emerald green. I was able to pick out dozens of warblers of more than 20 species that day, in what we birders call a “dropout.” When conditions are just right, the migrating birds will pause in their flight and wait out a storm, and we had just happened upon it. There are far fewer birds now than I experienced 20 or even 10 years ago, so it was a delight to see this many again, and Maripat and I appreciated this increasingly rare spectacle.
Lengthening the birding list
Later that year I often returned to North Point and noticed that what made it easy to show birds to Maripat that day would make it easy to show groups that wanted to learn about birds. The paved paths make it possible to avoid risks like ticks, the open park-like savanna makes it easy to spot birds and show them to a group, and the abundant wild food ⸺ including juniper berries, wild cherry and wild grapes ⸺ brings the birds in late summer and fall.
In the last few years, several other birders and I accumulated a bird list at the park of nearly 150 species, which is excellent for a place with no marsh or shoreline. We found rare birds like the Olive-sided Flycatcher and more common but just-as-exciting birds like Red-shouldered Hawks and Blackburnian Warblers.
Thanks to Michelle Ervin and the Onekama Township Parks and Recreation Commission, the trails and birdhouses continue to be well maintained and new native plants are being added to the arboretum. Dozens of people have joined me to walk the park’s trails, and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing that look of wonder many times on the faces of people who are really seeing birds for the first time. I hope you, too, can join us some day, or get out on your own and explore the best place I know to learn about birds.
Map of the park: https://www.onekama.info/copy-of-glen-park
Read more stories by Brian Allen HERE.
