Welcome to the Kirtland's Warbler GeoTrail (KWGT). This trail will take you in a loop in central Northern Michigan through the Jack Pine ecosystem, breeding home of the Kirtland's Warbler. This tour takes you to a total of 25 caches with an amazing trackable geocoin as a reward. The KWGT Passport can be downloaded here: https://f81c572e-1d95-4026-befc-8c60f69cbcd9.filesusr.com/ugd/31e003_41b2f3aa918442e8b08c880e746e6946.pdf
The wintering grounds of the Kirtland’s Warbler were found January 9, 1879, on Andros Island in The Bahamas. Kirtland’s Warblers spend the winter throughout the Bahamian archipelago, primarily in dense, young, broad-leafed coppice scrub on the central islands of Eleuthera, San Salvador, Cat Island, and Long Island. A few birds have been found on other Caribbean islands. Sites with active or former goat farming and rights-of-way under powerlines are relatively attractive to Kirtland’s Warblers. Most of the warblers occur on private or community-owned lands (generational or commonage) on the four islands.
The coppice used by wintering Kirtland’s is 4 to 8 feet tall evergreen and semi-deciduous broadleaf trees and shrubs, with an abundance of wild sage, black torch, and snowberry bushes, growing on limestone covered by poor soil. Most of this young habitat is created by human disturbance such as slash and burn agriculture and goat grazing. Hurricanes also can create Kirtland’s winter habitat.
Cache
This habitat was created in the early 2000s by burning the limbs left over from clearcutting, then replanted with two-year-old seedlings. A co-worker and I could see smoke from the burn from where we were working near Tawas.