Paper Birch
Paper birch survives in cool Niobrara canyons as a remnant of a colder climate, far south of its familiar northern forests.
Michigan, United States: places and wildlife — page 2
Browse the published Explore collection for Michigan, United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Purple Finch
New Hampshire’s state bird is a stout forest finch whose males look washed in raspberry and whose movements follow shifting seed crops.
American Black Bear
America’s most widespread bear is often easier to recognize by tracks, clawed logs, and overturned stones than by a direct sighting.
Gray Wolf
Long legs, a broad muzzle, and purposeful travel distinguish a wolf whose family life shapes northern forests and human debate.
Moose
Long legs, a heavy overhanging muzzle, and an appetite for twigs and aquatic plants make the moose unmistakably built for northern country.
Black-capped Chickadee
Black cap, white cheeks, small bib, and a curious approach make this year-round northern songbird a foundational backyard identification.
Common Raven
Heavy bill, shaggy throat, and wedge-shaped tail separate the raven from crows as it works cliffs, tundra, forests, and towns.
Ruffed Grouse
Mottled bark-colored plumage, a dark tail band, and the male’s accelerating wing-drumming suit dense young forest better than open lawn.
Hermit Thrush
Spotted breast, plain face, and a reddish tail contrasting with a browner back identify the thrush behind one of Vermont’s clearest woodland songs.
Osprey
Dark eye stripe, kinked long wings, and reversible outer toes identify the fish specialist nesting beside Oregon waters.
Largemouth Bass
A jaw extending behind the eye, deep body, and dark side stripe separate largemouth bass from their smaller-mouthed relatives.
Bluegill
A deep compressed body, dark ear flap, and blue-green cheek identify a widespread sunfish that rewards close looking.
Northern Pike
Duckbill snout, rear-set fins, and pale bean-shaped spots identify the pike waiting almost motionless beside cover.
Monarch Butterfly
Orange wings with heavy black veins identify a migrant whose caterpillars can eat only milkweeds and whose journey outlasts any one summer adult.
Common Green Darner
Large size, bright green thorax, and a dark bull’s-eye on the forehead help identify a darner capable of continental movement.
Black Swallowtail
Paired rows of yellow spots and an orange-centered hindwing eye distinguish a butterfly whose striped caterpillar feeds on carrots’ wild relatives.
Say’s Firefly
A dark firefly with pale margins and an angular shield pattern, Say’s firefly turns summer dusk into species-specific communication.
Large-flowered Trillium
Three broad leaves, three white petals, and a flower held above a single whorl mark Ohio’s woodland wildflower.
Common Milkweed
Opposite broad leaves, milky sap, round pink flower clusters, and warty pods identify a plant central to monarch development.
Northern Red Oak
Bristle-tipped leaf lobes, shallow-striped bark, and broad acorns distinguish New Jersey’s state tree from rounded-lobed white oaks.
Tulip Tree
Four-lobed leaves with a notched flat tip and green-orange tulip-like flowers identify one of eastern North America’s tallest hardwoods.
Eastern Hemlock
Flat short needles with pale undersides, tiny hanging cones, and drooping twig tips identify Pennsylvania’s state tree.
Red Maple
Red buds, flowers, leaf stalks, and paired winged seeds recur across the year on Rhode Island’s adaptable state tree.
Eastern White Pine
Long flexible needles grouped in fives, slender cones, and layered horizontal branches identify the eastern white pine.
Poweshiek Skipperling
One of North America’s rarest butterflies can disappear inside a few inches of prairie despite the enormous conservation attention around it.
Indiana Bat
A small social bat winters in a few cold caves, migrates to summer forest roosts, and carries the name of the state where science first described it.
Ohio Buckeye
Ohio’s namesake tree is a small-to-medium woodland understory species recognized by five leaflets, upright yellow-green flower clusters, and mahogany seeds marked with a pale eye.
Lakeside Daisy
A rare Great Lakes endemic can turn nearly barren alvar gold for a single synchronized week, surviving in thin soil over limestone where few flowering plants tolerate heat, wind, and drought.
Detroit Institute of Arts
More than 65,000 works range across continents and millennia, while Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals turn the building itself into an argument about labor, technology, and civic patronage.
Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation
The Rosa Parks bus, presidential vehicles, agricultural machines, locomotives, aircraft, domestic technology, and manufacturing systems place innovation beside labor, power, risk, and daily life.
Motown Museum
Hitsville U.S.A., Studio A, control-room equipment, offices, costumes, photographs, and the Gordy family apartment connect a global catalog to a pair of modest houses on West Grand Boulevard.
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
The core exhibition moves from African civilizations through enslavement, resistance, migration, Detroit industry, civil rights, and contemporary culture using environments, artifacts, documents, and recorded voices.
Arab American National Museum
Objects, oral histories, art, music, work, faith, politics, and family archives introduce many Arab American communities without collapsing distinct countries, religions, generations, or migration histories.
Michigan History Center
Anishinaabe homelands, mining, lumber, agriculture, migration, manufacturing, labor, leisure, and political change unfold through artifacts and large environments inside the state archives complex.
Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum
The Whitefish Point light station, restored keepers’ buildings, lifesaving history, ship models, recovered artifacts, and Edmund Fitzgerald bell explain why this shoreline became both navigational landmark and memorial.
Grand Rapids Public Museum
Three floors combine Anishinaabe history, furniture design, habitats, fossils, transportation, a working carousel, changing exhibitions, and a planetarium beside the Grand River.
Cranbrook Art Museum
Modern and contemporary art, architecture, craft, and design occupy Eliel Saarinen’s limestone museum within a campus where buildings, landscapes, studios, and collections were conceived together.
University of Michigan Museum of Art
African, Asian, European, American, modern, and contemporary works share a free university museum whose open study spaces and changing installations make interpretation visibly provisional.
Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum
Changing contemporary exhibitions occupy Zaha Hadid’s pleated stainless-steel structure, where angled galleries and unexpected sightlines make architecture an active participant rather than a neutral container.
Air Zoo Aerospace & Science Museum
Historic aircraft, restoration work, space artifacts, flight simulators, rides, and science demonstrations spread across two buildings near Kalamazoo’s airport.
Gilmore Car Museum
Hundreds of vehicles, recreated dealerships, marque collections, motorcycles, barns, and period streets turn transportation history into a walk through changing design, production, aspiration, and use.
Sloan Museum of Discovery
Regional history, a large vehicle gallery, hands-on science, early-childhood spaces, and rotating exhibitions connect Flint’s industrial influence to geology, migration, design, labor, and community change.
Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways
The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe presents origin, kinship, language, treaty history, removal, boarding schools, sovereignty, cultural continuity, and contemporary community life through its own institutional voice.
Flint Institute of Arts
European, American, African, Asian, Indigenous, decorative, modern, and contemporary art share the building with active glass, ceramics, and art-school studios.
Greenfield Village
Historic structures moved from across the country create farms, workshops, streets, laboratories, homes, railways, and demonstrations where labor and technology can be watched at human scale.
Ford Piquette Avenue Plant Museum
The 1904 factory preserves experimental rooms, early vehicles, wood floors, columns, and narrow industrial proportions where Ford developed and first assembled the Model T.
Fort Mackinac
Fourteen restored buildings, military exhibits, demonstrations, archaeology, and commanding harbor views interpret British and American control of the Straits from the Revolutionary era into the late nineteenth century.
Colonial Michilimackinac
Reconstructed French and British buildings, costumed interpretation, gardens, trade stories, and one of North America’s longest-running archaeological programs occupy the original fort-and-village footprint.