Two Brown Birds Sing Distinctive Songs on Mackinac Island
Nature Notes By

Patricia Martin

People sometimes say to me that they never see any or many birds on the Island. I don’t know where they were looking, but I can almost never go to the woods without at least hearing a great variety of bird songs and calls, and I usually see a number of them as well. Today, in fact, while on a ride, I heard crows mobbing another bird, perhaps an owl or hawk, then the call of a Black Capped Chickadee, a Black-throated Green Warbler, a Cardinal, an Indigo Bunting, and a Pileated Woodpecker. One of my favorite calls I usually hear in the woods, is one of the most beautiful of all bird songs. It’s made by a bird known as the Veery.

The Veery is not a showy bird like the Cardinal or the Indigo Bunting. It’s a thrush and it’s the least spotted of North America’s brown-backed thrushes. Its back is a tawny reddish brown and its breast is buff-colored with pale tawny brown spots. The underparts of the bird are white and it has an indistinct grayish eye ring. The upper pill is black and the lower one is pink with a black tip. The Veery is about seven inches long with a wingspan of 11 inches.

Veery

The most distinctive thing about this bird is its song. It’s a rolling series of rapid flute-like note that drop down the scale. The song has been described as a pleasant liquid descending “verr-u, verr-u, verr-u,” with each note being sung lower, repeating frequently with variation in phrasing. It is from this song that the bird gets its name. When I hear the song, it almost sounds like it’s in an echo chamber. It is such a distinctive song that it’s hard to mistake it once you’ve heard it. At twilight, a chorus of Veerys can often be heard and it’s truly a haunting sound. During the day, the song can also be heard, but more often signally.

Ovenbird

The Veery spends its summer in deciduous forests and prefers wetter habitat than most other thrushes. It haunts shaded woodland with dense to scattered understory, where its coloring helps it fade into the background. On the Island I often hear them along Fern Way (Old North Bike Trail), Juniper Trail, and Tranquil Bluff.

These birds are found either solitary or in pairs, though they’re somewhat shy and retiring. For food, they forage on the ground and in trees and often swoop down from low perches to take prey on the ground. Their preferred food is a variety of insects, caterpillars, spiders, berries, and fruit. Their nests are either on the ground or less than six feet off the ground in low shrubs or trees. The nests are made of grass, bark, weeds, twigs, and moss.

Another rather plain brown bird that I find interesting, which can also be found in the same areas of the Island, is the Ovenbird. This bird is a small warbler. It’s only about six inches long with a wingspan of about nine inches. Its back is olive-brown. It has a brownish orange stripe edged in black over its head from its bill to the nape of the head. Around its dark eye is a white ring and its underparts are white with dark brown splotching. Like the Veery, its coloring helps hide it from predators.

This is one of the birds that is again more often heard than seen. It sings a loud and repetitive “TEAcher, TEAcher, TEAcher,” rising and become more emphatic. It is repeated about 10 times. This call is often heard on the Island in the same sorts of areas as the Veery. They like deciduous woods and are often found on the forest floor in the leaf litter. The other day I actually saw one on the ground, just off Sugarloaf.

The name Ovenbird was given to these creatures because of the type of nests they make. The female Ovenbird builds a small oven-shaped nest with a side entrance in a small depression on the forest floor in the leaf litter. The nest is made of leaves, grass, stems, rootlet, mosses, and hair and will usually contain three to six small white eggs with brown or gray flecks.

These birds, unlike most warblers, walk the ground, foraging among the leaf litter and twigs, with its wings partially drooped and its tail cocked upwards. It is sometimes called the Wood Wagtail because it moves its tail up and down. It hunts for insects, caterpillars, snails, slugs, earthworms, small amphibians, seeds, berries, and fruit.

Keep your eyes and ears open for these two brown birds of the woods. While their coloring may not be bright, their songs certainly are distinctive and liven up the woods.

Trish Martin is a year-around resident of Mackinac Island, has earned a master’s degree in botany from Central Michigan University, and owns Bogan Lane Inn.