Saturday was the eBird-sponsored Global Big Day, and the hawks here at Whitefish Point made it a big one. I've already done well for Broad-winged Hawk this season -- earlier this week they usurped second place from previous number two, Red-tailed -- but with today's spectacle their season total has just about doubled! When nine o'clock rolled [...]
Yikes! I have some catching up to do with this blog! Here are some highlights from this May so far, beginning with the most recent: May 11 – A good morning flight of Long-tailed Ducks, with 325 passing by within the first three hours after sunrise. Morning clouds made for good viewing to the southeast [...]
Greetings again, sorry for the long absence, I was having some blog sign-in issues, but hopefully that has been all worked out. First an announcement- we are now taking pledges for our annual Birdathon! Every year in late May, the staff and few volunteers head out to find as many bird species as we can [...]
The spring's 300th Long-eared Owl! We'd like to start off by thanking all of this year's Spring Fling attendees for their interest & support! Thankfully the owls were cooperative over Spring Fling weekend and many attendees were able to see some of the Long-eareds and Northern Saw-whets we banded that weekend. The nights [...]
With a total of 6,585 counted by the end of April, Sharp-shinned Hawks are the most common species for the first half of hawk count. Chart generated at https://dunkadoo.org/project/wpbo-hawk-count May is here and the hawk count at Whitefish Point is just past the halfway point. Snowdrifts are suddenly difficult to find, even in [...]
An early Eastern Whip-poor-will on April 21. Photo by Chris Neri The current weather pattern has really slowed things down the last couple of nights, but prior to that the nights had continued to be productive. Since our last post we have banded 179 owls and recaptured four more previously banded [...]
Tuesday, April 25 started out with several reasonably close flocks of Greater Scaup flying past the tip of Whitefish Point. All but one of the five Lesser Scaup seen that day were nestled in these flocks of Greaters, making this tricky identification task a bit easier. While dabbling ducks were in short supply, a pair [...]
Action on the hawk deck has completely exploded in the past week! With the arrival of our first Ospreys on the 19th, Broad-wings on the 22nd, and the thrilling addition of Swainson's Hawk on the 24th, we've now detected all of the raptor species one expects in a spring season here at Whitefish Point. This spectacular [...]
The waterbird count has been picking up steam over the last week with several new arrivals in just the last few days. Today (April 24) we saw the first Caspian Terns of the season and the first White-winged Scoter. Numbers of other species have been picking up too, such as Red-necked Grebe, 79 of which [...]
Scaup, Wigeon and Tundra Swans by Skye Haas This week saw the start of the Waterbird Count on the 15th, though it was quite the rainy mess of a day. This has actually been a bit of a theme this week with unfavorable weather conditions on several days. But there have been some [...]