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, Sanderings, 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 until the next morning around 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 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.
