GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – North America’s largest hawk was spotted this weekend in Michigan, about a thousand miles from its home.
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Caleb Putnam, a longtime Kent County birder and co-founder of Real Birding, said that when he finally found the rare bird: “It was bliss.”
The female ferruginous hawk, normally native to the western U.S. and Canada, was discovered last month in Ontario. It was only the ninth recorded time this type of bird had been found in the region. The bird was injured, but scientists from Birds Canada provided medical attention and successfully rehabilitated her. On May 20, she was released with a tracking device.
Nicknamed Erieau, after the town nearest the road where she was found, the bird spent 10 days along the Canadian shores of Lake Eerie before crossing into Michigan.
This presented a rare opportunity for Michigan birdwatchers, who could track Erieau’s whereabouts by county with data from Canadian researchers. That narrowed the possibilities—but how could birders pinpoint her exact location?
One birder knew exactly where he’d go if he were a ferruginous hawk: the Old River Lake Muck Flats, a four-mile field that resembled the hawk’s native landscape in the Plains. Putnam had the idea after tracking data located the hawk in nearby Newaygo County.
“We expected this to be a flop—that we would go searching and not find it,” he told MLive.
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Joined by a group of friends and colleagues, Putnam set out to test his hypothesis. Sure enough, Erieau was found perched on a telephone pole in the Muck Flats. “I just found the bird, everybody!” Putnam said on the Real Birding livestream. “Yes, baby! I can’t believe it! I cannot believe we actually found this thing.”
Will Keller, another member of Putnam’s search party and co-founder of Real Birding, said this discovery would become one of the top moments in their birding adventures.
“The pure odds of this going to plan, they were so extremely low,” he told MLive. “It’s like winning the
lottery. We did everything we were supposed to do, and it worked.”
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