Birds of Michigan

Michigan is water on three sides of each peninsula, and the lakes shape everything you hear. The Michigan Bird Records Committee had 456 species on the state list as of January 2023. The Lower Peninsula's south is farm country and suburbs with cardinals, robins and Red-winged Blackbirds. Its north is jack pine and aspen with Ruffed Grouse and Kirtland's Warblers. The Upper Peninsula is boreal, a land of loons, ravens, swans and bogs that sounds more like Ontario than Ohio.

For most people, the state is a yard in Grand Rapids or a subdivision outside Detroit, and that means jay, chickadee, robin, cardinal, dove and crow. Those six lead the album.

The Michigan album

These are the 100 birds people report most often in Michigan, ranked by how frequently they turn up. The common and uncommon ones are shown; the rare and legendary cards stay face down until you catch them in the game.

Backyard birds you will hear first

The Blue Jay leads the album, screaming from the oaks and imitating hawks. The Black-capped Chickadee is second, with its whistled fee-bee from February and the chick-a-dee-dee call all year. The American Robin runs the dawn chorus from March into summer, the Northern Cardinal whistles from the spruce in every month, and the Mourning Dove coos from the wire.

The Red-winged Blackbird sings conk-la-ree from every cattail ditch, and the American Goldfinch bounces overhead calling as it goes. At the feeder, Downy Woodpeckers whinny and White-breasted Nuthatches honk, and on the pond, Canada Geese and Mallards argue all winter wherever the water stays open.

The regions, by ear

Southern Lower Peninsula

Farms, woodlots, suburbs and the Detroit and Grand Rapids metro areas. This is the cardinal and robin belt, with Baltimore Orioles whistling from the cottonwoods in May, Sandhill Cranes bugling over wet fields, and Wild Turkeys gobbling from the hedgerows in April.

Northern Lower Peninsula

Jack pine plains and lakes. The Kirtland's Warbler nests in stands of dense young jack pine, mostly in the northeast of the Lower Peninsula, arriving in early June and singing a loud chip-chip-chip-too-too-weet-weet that carries more than 400 meters on a still morning. The population fell to 167 singing males in 1974, reached 2,365 in the 2015 census, and the species came off the endangered list in 2019. Sleeping Bear Dunes on the Lake Michigan side has loons, mergansers and Trumpeter Swans on the water and Piping Plovers on the cobble beaches.

Upper Peninsula

Boreal forest, bog and Lake Superior. Seney refuge, 95,238 acres of marsh, swamp, bog and forest set aside in 1935, has more than 200 species with Trumpeter Swans, Common Loons, Ospreys and Bald Eagles. At Whitefish Point, birds stack up before crossing Lake Superior: hawks and eagles past the dune in spring, owls in the nets at night, and 18,000 to 21,000 Red-necked Grebes past the point each fall, a quarter or more of the continent's population. After dark in the U.P., the Barred Owl asks who cooks for you and the Common Raven croaks over the clearcuts.

Best months to listen

May is the peak in the south, with warblers moving up the lakeshores and residents on territory. June is the month for the north: Kirtland's Warblers in the jack pines, loons on the lakes, thrushes in the U.P. woods. Fall is long and quieter, hawks and songbirds in September, grebes and loons past Whitefish Point in October, ducks into November. Winter in the north is ravens, chickadees and, in some years, owls down from Canada.

Places worth the drive

• Seney National Wildlife Refuge, eastern Upper Peninsula: 95,238 acres of bog and marsh, Trumpeter Swans and loons, visitor facilities open mid May to late October.
• Whitefish Point, on Lake Superior: raptors in spring, owls banded at night, grebes and loons streaming past in fall, more than 300 species recorded.
• The jack pine plains near Grayling and Mio: Kirtland's Warbler in June.
• Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore: Piping Plovers on the beaches, up from 17 pairs in 1987 to more than 80 across the Great Lakes in 2025, loons and swans offshore.

You do not need any of it to fill the album. A feeder and a maple in Lansing hand you the first 20 cards in Warble before the ice goes out.

Listen before you go

Three of the common Michigan birds, so the first songs you hear outside already ring a bell.

Canada Goose song

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Recording by Chase Harris, CC0, via iNaturalist.

Wood Duck song

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Recording by Chase Harris, CC0, via iNaturalist.

Mallard song

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Recording by Fionn Ó Marcaigh, CC BY 4.0, via iNaturalist.

Questions people ask

Nearby albums

Album data: public bird observations aggregated through GBIF, ranked by report frequency in Michigan. Updated September 30, 2026.