It’s been a big week for our Piping Plovers at Whitefish Point! The eggs from our nesting pair, Violet and Really Tricky, have finally hatched. Wednesday morning, I noticed movement in the nest while Violet incubated the eggs. As she got up to switch with Tricky, I spotted two chicks! The chicks slowly left the [...]
This week we had some predator activity in the Piping Plover area. On Wednesday, I found two detached wings from different birds along the shoreline near our nest. I kept an eye out but did not see any raptors. I arrived at the Point Saturday morning to find either a Merlin or a Peregrine Falcon [...]
Our current pair (Really Tricky and mate) seem to be doing well this week, and I’ve been watching them switch incubation about every hour. I haven’t had any issues with off-leash dogs. Ron spotted a Merlin in the parking lot on Monday, but we haven’t had any issues in the plover area. A new male [...]
The last week of the 2023 spring waterbird count has been defined by two things: the mosquito hatch and the Canada Goose molt flight. In their own right, both of these happenings are fairly remarkable natural phenomena. We've got two periods of heavy Canada Goose movement at Whitefish Point. The first is towards the [...]
Really Tricky incubating eggs inside the predator exclosure. Photo by Joselyn Ralph The first Piping Plover eggs have been spotted at Whitefish Point! Our only current pair, “Really Tricky” and mate X,V:Of,YY, were observed changing the location of their scrape throughout the last week. On Sunday afternoon, after noticing Really Tricky adjusting in [...]
Well, we never got the late-season push of Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO) this spring. We think it was one of the slowest ends to the spring season we've experienced; we'll see once we enter the data. Adding insult to injury, the mosquitoes the last few nights were the worst we have ever experienced in [...]
The final days of the spring raptor count brought a mix of interesting rarities and large holiday crowds to the hawk deck. The week began with a smaller BROAD-WINGED HAWK flight on May 23, with just a double-digit day count; however, this was enough to tilt the species season total over the 8,000-mark. This spring continues [...]
Late May is just a time of year that feels good. It’s sunny; it’s warm. Black flies and mosquitoes have emerged down in Paradise, but the Point is bite-free for a couple of days or so. It’s one of the few genuinely comfortable times we get at a place that, of all this continent’s bird observatories, [...]
We've been able to band the last 17 nights, and things have really slowed down over that period. In the past week, we banded 18 Northern Saw-whet Owls (NSWO), eight of those were on May 20, and we got skunked last night for the first time since April 20. The Long-eared Owls just turned [...]
The momentum of raptor migration along the Point has waned dramatically as we enter the second half of May. The week began with a second consecutive day of a BLACK VULTURE documented from the hawk deck. This was likely the same bird observed in the late afternoon on May 15, as the silvery-winged vulture [...]
