It’s only been a couple days, but it’s already time for another field ornithologist blog update! Fortunately, there’s plenty to talk about after the weekend weather provided us with abundant birding thrills here at the Point. Frank will cover several of the highlights with more detail in his next waterbird blog, but over the weekend we witnessed a record-breaking Red-necked Grebe flight, some great visible migration off the lake, and a slew of rarities and other notable bird sightings. All in all, it was one of the most exciting weekends I’ve spent at the Point!
The first thing I’d like to talk about is our WPBO weekend birding walks. We had our first walks of the season this weekend with a good turnout of participants, including birders visiting Michigan all the way from the Netherlands! Since the woods and boardwalk were still packed with innumerable swarms of mosquitoes, we took advantage of the birding along the lakeshore and the perimeter of the jack pines along the dunes. The beach has been busy with shorebirds over the past few days, and we all had great looks at lots of Baird’s Sandpipers, Sanderlings, and Semipalmated Plovers, among other species.
Sanderling scurrying down the beach in search of a meal. Photo by Clay Bliznick.
On Saturday, there was a lot of ‘visible migration’ occurring among waterbirds, raptors, and songbirds alike, which provided some ‘unique’ experiences to say the least. At one point while we were studying the plovers in some pooling water near the shore, a clumsy-looking brown blob darted off the lake and right at us, landing a few meters away on the dune. A Sora! It did a poor job of hiding among the dune grasses before fluttering not-so-gracefully into the nearby pines. On Sunday there was a little less migration action, but an American White Pelican we spotted during the Saturday evening grebe flight stuck around until the next morning for us to catch on the walk. On both days, we witnessed Least Flycatchers flying across the lake and touching down on the Point, with one bumping into my tripod before diverting course, another resting right at our feet before taking flight towards the trees. They may have been tired from the flight, but fortunately they were not picked off by the Merlins before getting to cover!
Sora hiding in the dune grass near the waterbird shack. Looks like the autofocus didn’t work out! Photo by Clay Bliznick.
American White Pelican floating off the Point. Photo by Clay Bliznick
Switching gears, I was able to conduct a couple more morning songbird flight surveys since my last blog post. We still haven’t had a huge songbird flight from the raptor deck this season, but we are still in the early stages of migration. Out by the waterbird shack, we’ve been seeing similar numbers and diversity of songbird migrants as at the raptor deck, but have been able to catch a slightly different assortment of species just as they reach shore. Notably we had our first Savannah Sparrows of the season, plus a lone Dickcissel rocketing over the shack giving its very distinctive flat, buzzy flight calls. We should be hitting the peak window for warbler migration at the Point here in a week or two, so check out next week’s blog to see what exciting birds we turn up!
Newly arrived Savannah Sparrow scouting out the beach. Photo by Clay Bliznick.
~ Clay Bliznick
2025 Fall Field Ornithologist
Featured photo: One of the several Least Flycatchers of the weekend. Photo by Clay Bliznick.
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Clay Bliznick, MS: 2025 Fall Field Ornithologist
Clay worked as the WPBO fall field ornithologist in 2024 and is excited to return for the fall of 2025. He first took an interest in birds during a high school trip to Alaska, where he was struck by the flamboyance of magpies, the sleek, penguin-like appearance of alcids, and the sheer number of waterbirds residing along the coast. He dove headfirst into the world of birding while an undergraduate at the University of Kentucky, spending every free second exploring his home state for exciting new birds and places. Afterwards, he attended graduate school at Murray State University and wrote a master’s thesis examining the response of bird communities to environmental factors in Western KY bottomland hardwood forest restorations. For the last several years, Clay has traveled throughout the US working with birds in varying capacities, including nest monitoring of Florida Grasshopper Sparrows and Crested Caracaras, conducting surveys of Swallow-tailed Kite post-breeding roosts, and collecting breeding bird data in North and South Dakota for the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies.
