Rare Sighting Draws Flock of East Lansing Birders
15-year-old Newt Wheeler spotted a rare Western Tanager from their East Lansing home on April 23 sitting at the family’s bird feeder. They immediately posted the news of the rare bird spotting to social media app Discord.
“My mom saw it and told me she saw a rare bird at the feeder but she didn’t know what it was,” Wheeler said. “So I walked out to the feeder and saw it and I recognized it.”
East Lansing birders began to flock to the house on Marshall Street to see the bird.
“I really liked meeting a lot of new people [who came to see the bird], that was fun,” Wheeler said. “And just connecting with other birders over this.”
The Western Tanager is native to western conifer forests and is commonly seen in southeastern Alaska and western Canada to southern California. Their migration routes follow western United States, so spotting one in Michigan was quite the sight.
For East Lansing resident and five-year birder Michelle Detering, this sighting was a “lifer.”
“If you’re a birder, you keep track of what birds you’ve seen every year and then throughout your life,” Detering said. “So sometimes you’ll only see a bird once in your lifetime. This bird, because it’s not from around here, I’ve never seen it before and who knows if I’ll ever see it again.”
The news of the Western Tanager spotting spread to the popular birding site, Ebird, and people from the area began to crowd around the bird feeder to get a look at the rare bird.
“That night, when my husband got home, we decided to go back and see if we could see it again,” Detering said. “And it was still there, but on the other side of the street in a tree. The next day, it was gone. That’s how it goes with birds, they’ll come and they’ll stay for a few days and then they’ll go.”
Detering and her husband both love birding and have been doing so for about five years. The couple loves being outdoors, hiking and observing wildlife.
“There’s thousands of different birds, it’s kind of an adventure to see what you’re gonna see, especially this time of year because they’re all migrating,” Detering said. “What happens is sometimes birds get blown or they somehow end up off course or not in the normal range when they’re moving, so you’ll get something like this bird that’s usually out west, California, Utah, that ends up showing up by itself.”
Detering and many community members love birding because it gets them outside and allows them to truly take the time to appreciate nature.
The East Lansing Public Library (ELPL) has a birding club that meets once a month. The club brings together amateurs, experts and everyone in between to meet other bird enthusiasts, share stories and learn about available resources and identification strategies.
Eric Birling, ELPL STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) director, leads the program. The meeting following the spotting of the Western Tanager was filled with many patrons sharing their excitement about the bird being in East Lansing.
“The Western Tanager itself is an absolutely beautiful bird,” Berling said. “The male that was in the East Lansing area had a very striking kind of orange, red head and then a nice strong, stocky body. They’re fairly large for a songbird.”
Although only one member of the club was able to see the bird, excitement still filled the room at the meeting for the Western Tanager to be spotted so far from home but in the community’s own backyard.
“It was pretty far from its usual route of migration and its usual breeding ranges,” Berling said. “They usually sort of have a breeding population that stretches across the western coast of the US and Canada during the spring and summer. Their migration route usually cuts through western Texas up through western North and South Dakota, so to see one all the way here in Michigan, while not unheard of, was a pretty cool and special moment.”