The American Robin — and Michigan's Other Bird

Michigan named the American robin its state bird in 1931, after a statewide vote crowned the cheerful “robin redbreast” as the best-known harbinger of spring. It’s a fine, friendly choice — and also the state bird of two other states, which is exactly why some Michiganders have long argued for a different one.

That other bird is the Kirtland’s warbler, and it has a claim almost no state bird can match: it nests almost nowhere on Earth but Michigan. This small gray-and-yellow songbird breeds only in young jack pine forests — mostly in the northern Lower Peninsula, with a few sites in Wisconsin and Ontario — and winters in the Bahamas. Jack pine needs fire to reseed, and when the 20th century suppressed wildfires (and a parasitic cowbird invaded its nests), the warbler nearly vanished: by the 1970s and 1980s, fewer than 200 nesting pairs remained.

Then came one of conservation’s great comebacks. Decades of planting jack pine and protecting nests brought the bird back, and in 2019 it was removed from the endangered species list — recovered. The robin wears the crown, but the warbler may be the most Michigan bird there is.