Scarecrow Island
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Scarecrow Island is a small 7-acre (0.03 km²) island in Lake Huron. It is one of eight Michigan islands included in the Michigan Islands National Wildlife Refuge. It forms the southern limit of Thunder Bay and helps define the harbor of Alpena, Michigan. The adjacent waters are part of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. It became part of the National Wildlife Refuge in 1943, it became one of three islands in the Michigan Islands Wilderness Area in 1970, and its waters became part of the National Marine Sanctuary in 2000.
Located off Hardwood Point, Scarecrow Island is the center of a region rich in freshwater fish. A 2002 study by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, operator of the Michigan Islands NWR, found whitefish off Scarecrow Island, and the island was home to a colony of fish-eating cormorants. Great blue herons also live and eat fish on the island.
Like many other islands in the Great Lakes, Scarecrow Island is a relic of the Wisconsin glacial period. A melting Ice Age glacier dumped a large quantity of rocks and gravel onto a gouged-out surface that became part of the bed of Lake Huron.
