Indiana Dunes National ParkThe trip: 1 hour.

Indiana Dunes National Park is a Rust Belt-like wilderness: discreet but beautiful, a lonely stretch of delicately brown, grassy sand dunes overlooking the shore of a distant lake with the Chicago skyline visible, in miniature, beyond. of the road. But that’s not what draws me there. Behind those dunes lies some of the best birdwatching anywhere in the Midwest: forests and wetlands that are home to hundreds of migratory birds in spring and fall.

I started going to the dunes regularly after I started birding in 2019 and after learning that it was a hub for migratory birds. It’s where I once saw (at least I’m pretty sure I did) the only orchard oriole I’ve ever seen. Loons, hawks and warblers of all colors and types, to name just a few, remain in the dunes during their travels, attracting birders of all feathers to see them. At last year’s Indiana Dunes Birding Festival (this year it will be held May 16-19), birders recorded more than 200 species, including 20 to 30 types of colorful warblers per day, one of the true treasures of migratory bird watching in the Midwest.

To me, Indiana Dunes National Park is more than sand hills on a lake. It’s a place where birds and birdwatchers gather, away from the hustle and bustle of the city across the water. On one of my first visits, I looked for songbirds sheltering at the edges of the forest and then for wading and waterfowl in the open marshy spaces. And there they were, everywhere, living their best avian lives in their dune sanctuary.