The final week of the fall waterbird count! Migration continued to slowly but steadily taper off throughout the week. It was fairly slow number-wise with no large flights, but quite interesting nonetheless with light pushes of late-season species and a few unique rarities in town. A rainbow appeared over the Point on Nov. 9 [...]
As the season slowly tapers down, this past week was highlighted by classic late-season waterbirds, several interesting rarities, and two strong storms over the past two days. The week started fairly slow on Nov. 2 and 3, with Common Goldeneye, Bufflehead, Long-tailed Ducks, and Red-breasted Mergansers being the primary movers. A great highlight was [...]
This past week featured the first signs of the winter to come, with the first day of snow flurries on Oct. 28 and accumulating snow each day since Oct. 30. This made for some beautiful late fall scenes while walking through the pine woods out to the waterbird shack each morning. This week also [...]
One of the last Northern Saw-whet Owls of the season. Photo by Liv Ridley The 2023 fall banding season has come to a close! We've had a handful of owls trickle in over the past week, but for the most part, migration has started to slow down after the late surge we [...]
This past week was quite interesting and fun at the waterbird shack; it featured two heavy waterbird flights on Oct. 20 and Oct. 25, with lighter days of waterfowl migration in between. However, among those lighter days, the Point experienced two potentially record-breaking days for passerine migration. The forecast for Oct. 20 looked good [...]
This past week, we had our biggest flight of the fall season so far. On Oct. 18 and 19, we were closed due to weather. When we reopened on Oct. 20, we banded two Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO) and one Barred Owl (BDOW). One of the NSWO weighed in at 108 grams, which is [...]
It was a fairly slow start to the week, with waterbirds continuing to trickle through the area following the strong front on Oct. 8. The weekend forecast looked quite interesting, with a strong north-northeasterly flow across the region wrapping back around behind a low-pressure system and cold front passing well to our south. The [...]
The first Boreal Owl of the 2023 fall season. Photo by Liv Ridley It's been a very busy week here at Whitefish Point! Migration is in full effect. We've been getting lots of birds, mostly Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO) but also Barred, Long-eared, and Boreal Owls. On October 11, we banded 16 [...]
This past week featured the strongest week of migration so far, and each day brought a different mix of waterbirds. On Oct. 5, a weak rain front passed over the region in the predawn hours. This was the same morning as the historic fallout across Chicago and the southern Lake Michigan area, widely broadcast [...]
Howdy! We've had nets closed most of this week due to rain and strong winds. However, last Thursday, there was a great flight before the storms blew through this weekend. It was our fifth double-digit night! We also got our second encounter of the season, a Northern Saw-whet Owl. We're still trying to determine [...]
