submitted by Kay Charter, Executive Director: Saving Birds Thru Habitat www.savingbirds.org

Again this year, the festival committee has made changes.  

To facilitate more web traffic, we have changed our name to Leelanau Peninsula Birding Festival, although we have maintained the same website address: mibirdfest.com.   The name change will improve our ranking on the Internet. We are very pleased that the historic Fountain Point Inn has again offered to be headquarters for the festival. The Inn’s central location, its wonderful facilities and grounds, and its beautiful place on Lake Leelanau make it the perfect place for our event. Other changes include a daily registration fee of $15.00, rather than $35 for the entire festival, with a maximum of $40.00 for the entire event.

There are two new field trips. One will be a bus trip from Fountain Point to a location west of Kalkaska for an exclusive look at the Kirtland’s Warbler. The bus will make two other stops, one at the restored Flowing Well Trout Farm in the hope of seeing Golden-winged Warbler, as well as both Louisiana and Northern Waterthrush. After that it will be off to Hartwick Pines State Park in search of nesting Red-shouldered Hawk and Evening Grosbeaks. The other new field trip will be “Birding for Beginners” at the Suttons Bay Wetlands. A third field trip, “Birding by Ear,” has both a new location – the Leelanau Conservancy’s Teichner Preserve – and a new leader – Doug Cook from Manistee. 

Our keynoter will be Brian Allen, one of the premier birders in Michigan. Brian will give a PowerPoint presentation centered around a Big Year in Michigan. He will offer tips and recommendations on how have your own big birding year.  Brian Allen leading last year’s highly successful Otter Creek Outing

Friday evening’s speaker will be Jerry Weinrich, retired from Michigan Department of Natural Resources in 2003, where he worked as a biologist for more than thirty years. Jerry is a specialist on Kirtland’s Warbler recovery efforts and spent three winters in Antarctica while conducting studies on Adele Penguins. Jerry will talk about his experiences with the birds in Antarctica. We will also have a special Saturday afternoon seminar on digiscoping with Wayne Pope, professor of photographer at Lansing Community College.

The rest of our field trip offerings are the same as in, except that the pontoon trips on Lake Leelanau to Cedar Creek will only be offered in the mornings. That change resulted from high winds in the afternoon that created safety issues for the boat crew and participants last year when heavy rains andstiff winds resulted in cancellation of some activities, including the Lake Leelanau pontoon trips. Let’s all hope the weather is more cooperative for this year’s event.

Go to mibirdfest.com to find out more about our 2013 event, or to register for field trips.