With almost 350 visitors to the Hawk Deck over the holiday weekend, the last few days of the season felt like one big parade with humans far outnumbering all the hawks I counted over the same period. Many of the visitors who come to Whitefish Point are birders who understand the concept of migration [...]
May 22. Over the course of 8 hours, 655 Long-tailed Ducks (this spring’s peak flight, to date) rose, like apparitions, from The Gap. The Gap is terminology we use to point out waterbirds flying through the stretch of water bounded by Ile Parisienne and Ontario’s mainland — e.g., “there are two Red-throated Loons flying [...]
Not surprisingly, the owl migration has been winding down in recent nights. For the first time since April 16, we did not band any Long-eared Owls on May 21. In fact, we did not band any May 21-23. However, we did band two last night. Hopefully, we’ll get a couple more long-eareds this season, [...]
With one week of the spring raptor count left, Mother Nature decided she wanted to remind me of those wonderful April days where fog engulfs the hawk deck while the north winds blow off the lake and birds are practically nowhere to be seen or heard. I looked at empty skies as raptor migration [...]
Spring migration has this accompanying urgency: many of the shorebirds and waterfowl that pass WPBO’s waterbird count are headed to arctic tundra. Up there, the days are long — but the season is short: the span of days within which to establish a territory and raise up the next generation is acutely finite. Accordingly, migration [...]
Although it appears that the Long-eared Owl migration has begun to slow down, we had another productive week. We banded another 118 owls over the last seven nights; 78 Northern Saw-whet Owls, 36 Long-eared Owls, three Barred Owls, and what is likely the last Boreal Owl of the season. Additionally, we caught seven previously-banded [...]
Tuesday, May 9, the big Sharp-shinned Hawk push happened. That day, your friendly neighborhood raptor counter tallied 1,443 sharpies. I believe it is safe to say that I look forward to the big sharpie day more than any other day during migration; it is simply chaos on wings. The counting is continuous, complex, and [...]
This past week at the waterbird count has represented the longest stretch of favorable migration conditions I’ve ever experienced at WPBO: there have been no sustained periods of strong north winds; no lasting fog. Not surprisingly, the birding has been favorable, too! It feels like we’re on the cusp of the peak scoter, Long-tailed [...]
We experienced another fairly productive owl migration this past week. We banded 110 owls, including 58 Northern Saw-whet Owls, which has us currently at 300 saw-whets banded for the season. We banded 46 more Long-eared Owls, which has us at 194 Long-eared Owls for the season. Unfortunately, no Boreal Owls were banded this past [...]
Oh, what a sight to behold! On unseen currents they spin, flashing like silversides in the sun, Broad-winged Hawks numbering in the thousands. Twisting, turning, gliding, and churning, higher and higher, they rise and blossom into a great mushroom cloud at an unimaginable altitude. They fill the sky as they funnel out to find [...]
