A warm welcome to the 2004 KWF

 
It’s hard to believe that this is the 11th Kirtland’s Warbler Festival. It’s even harder to believe that the festival has evolved in to a nationally acclaimed nature/birding event. It’s not unusual these days to open my email and find messages from all over the country regarding the warbler or the festival. Recent emails came from New Mexico, Maine, Ohio, California, Pennsylvania and Illinois.

As I was writing this, I took a telephone call from Mr. Jim Runkel, who was calling from Texas and regretted that he couldn’t make the festival. But he was going to be in the area two weeks later and was wondering how he might see a Kirtland’s. (We tipped him off to the tours run by the U.S. Forest Service, Mio, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service out of the Grayling Holiday Inn.)

KCC webmaster Marj Esch has created a fabulous KW Festival website, http://warbler.kirtland.edu, which in recent months has registered almost 4,000 hits.

It’s very unusual for a community college to achieve a national stature for anything, but KCC has, at least among birders and nature lovers, been lofted into that rarified atmosphere thanks to a half-ounce bit of feathers that nests only in a few counties in northern Michigan.

The Kirtland’s warbler and the festival that celebrates it are also having an economic impact on our area, to what extent we’re not sure. But we do know that our out-of-state and downstate visitors – and there are plenty of them – are booking rooms, staying in area campsites, filling their gas tanks, eating in our restaurants, shopping in our stores.

The festival committee, in conjunction with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will be polling festival-goers to see if we can’t begin to get a handle on what the festival and its warbler contributes to the area. “Ecotourism” has been a buzzword for years and it will be interesting to see what our research begins to turn up.

But the festival is also for us local folks too. It began as a community event and it always will be a community event. That’s why kid’s activities will always be a big part of the event. That’s also why, for example, we hired the Whispering Pines Animal Kingdom (see Page 10) to come to last year’s festival (they’re here again) with their beautiful exotic animals.

Last year, the discussion at a certain festival committee meeting was pretty lively with one faction worried that the festival was going to take on a “circus atmosphere.” But the doubters cried “uncle” when they saw what a classy (and educational) act Whispering Pines turned out to be for both kids and adults. Tia, the cougar, was my favorite. I’d like to think we became buddies (she let me scratch her ears – a festival chairman perk!) but, alas, she hasn’t written or emailed.

So welcome to the 2004 Kirtland’s Warbler Festival. Have fun, stop by the Headquarters Tent and say hi, let us know what you like or don’t like. We appreciate the feedback – after all, it’s your festival.

One final note: We had a phone call from a physician in Manhattan (NYC). Doc wanted some festival info and particularly wanted to know if there was a Hyatt Regency in Roscommon. I told him not yet, but we’re working on it.

Jim Enger
KWF Committee Chairman