The book on morel mushrooms relays that fruitful foraging lasts into early June, and the 2026 should not disappoint late-season pickers.
“My opinion is the season will go on for awhile,” offered Lynn Bakker, a fruit farmer and forester by trade. Her occupations “force” her into the woods and orchards of Leelanau County nearly daily, and this time of year she finds herself looking down as often as up at apple blossoms and oak trees branches just starting to bud.
That “force” interpretation is a ruse. It doesn’t take much convincing to get Bakker outside trekking on the Suttons Bay Township fruit farm owned by her and husband Alan — or anywhere in Leelanau County, actually.
Her assessment, shared by agronomists and swimmers alike, is that spring has taken her sweet time in arriving, and may get pushed aside should summer opt to bust into weather patterns.
“My walnuts, my oaks, they are not leafed out,” Bakker said late last week. “I think we’re about one-third through the whites (mushrooms), and people might still find some blacks. The thing is it’s been colder than normal. If it gets warm, we have plenty of season left,” Bakker said.
The long-range forecast seems to follow that hope, with temperatures expected to stay in the 70s this week, which is plenty warm for mushrooms. After a very rainy spring, sunshine is expected as well. Seven-point, six inches of April precipitation was recorded by the National Weather Service in Maple City compared to an average of 2.92 inches. As of this writing May was tracking somewhat normal.
Having cooler temperatures delayed blooms by a couple days of so, which allowed Memorial Day visitors to catch apple and even some tart cherry orchard blossoms in the northern part of the peninsula. Even in diminutive Leelanau — the secondsmallest county in acreage in the state — peak apple blossoms vary greatly due to not only variety but also latitude.
Migratory birds, driven by long-established survival instincts, were also somewhat late arriving to the county.
“I don’t know this as a fact, but I think the migration was slowed by snowstorms south of us and the cold,” said Dave Barrons, retired television weather anchor and always-active birder. Barrons was a driving force in establishing the Sleeping Bear Birding Trail.
“Warblers are back,” Barrons continued, “which I heard from others. Brown thrashers have been around for a few weeks. And white-crown sparrows have passed through. We see them in spring and fall, but they don’t nest here. Typically I see them one week and then they’re gone.”
The white-throated sparrow, however, is a county summer resident. Unless you know how to identify them, the groundfeeders go unnoticed by blending in with more common sparrows. But you may have unknowingly heard them singing a tune that resembles, “O Canada,” the national anthem of our northern human neighbors.
“It sounds like that rhythm and tone (“O Canada”). I’ve heard them around here but not in the last couple days because I haven’t been out,” Barrons said. The most commonly recognized harbingers of spring were delayed but are now setting up home on the peninsula. Barrons started observing male rubythroated hummingbirds about three week ago, and observed his first female one week ago.
Orioles are also in town. “One of the guys I talked to this morning heard from a guy who saw an oriole building a nest,” Barrons said.
So fear not, Leelanau outside observers. The countryside is no worse for wear following a long winter.
