National Wildlife Refuges National Parks Acreage of Important Bird Areas 8 5 5,340,716 Michigan is no slouch in terms of size: It’s the second-largest eastern state by land area and it has more than 3,000 miles of coastline along the Great Lakes. Michigan is also the tenth most populous of all the states, but happily for birds the dense urban centers are all concentrated in the far south. That leaves a lot of land for avian habitat, especially in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula, where Seney National Wildlife Refuge hosts flocks of Trumpeter Swans. Slightly more than half of Michigan is forested, whether with bottomland hardwoods or northern conifers. The woodlands of the Lower Peninsula are most famous for the Kirtland’s Warbler, one of the rarest species in North America. Special tours are offered each summer to see these birds in their pine-forest habitat. Many of Michigan’s most productive birding...