Another week has passed here at Whitefish Point and migration has been picking up across the board, with abundant waterbirds, songbirds, and raptors throughout the week. While we haven’t had the numbers to rival last week’s Red-necked Grebe count, we’ve had plenty of new arrivals at the Point, several species moving through in high numbers, and some very surprising sightings too!
One of the more notable sightings has been some very early Redpolls on the move. And not just one, but multiple sightings! As we were gearing up for our 9AM bird walk on Saturday morning (Aug 30th), we had three very small finches fly over us at the Owl’s Roost. They were repeatedly making their distinctive dry, ‘chit-chit-chit’ flight calls as they passed, and they continued to make those calls all the way out to the lake where Frank was able ID them too. Two days later on Sep. 1st, we yet had another Redpoll make an appearance on the waterbird count. Redpolls may be a regular migrant at Whitefish Point, but sightings of them earlier than October are unheard of. In fact there have only been two eBird records of Redpoll in the Lower 48 in August, but coincidentally one of those sightings was yesterday (Aug 31st) in upstate New York. There have also been several other August reports of Redpoll just across the border in Canada, specifically in Southern Ontario and Quebec. Is this the beginning of a Redpoll movement further south? Only time will tell, but we’ll be keeping our eyes out here at the Point.
Male Evening Grosbeak overlooking the bird feeders. Photo by Clay Bliznick.
The Redpolls were a great way to start off the weekend walks, but we had plenty of other highlights. The bird seed had hardly attracted any birds since setting out the feeders a couple weeks ago, but we finally had a visitor on the first walk. It was a gorgeous male Evening Grosbeak of all things! The feeder action starts pretty slow in the fall, but it will only pick up from here. Some other exciting moments from the walks were three distant and one close jaeger near the waterbird shack, some of our first American Pipits of the season, and an impressive kettle of 40 or so Broad-winged Hawks right over the top of us!
Not long after the Evening Grosbeak, we had a Lincoln’s Sparrow eating up some cracked corn on the seed board. Photo by Clay Bliznick.
The photo might not be great, but this is considered a close jaeger by Whitefish Point standards! Photo by Clay Bliznick.
The recent songbird flight surveys from the raptor deck provided some other interesting insights on bird migration this fall. The most obvious one was that Red-breasted Nuthatches are on the move, and it’s looking like it’ll be a big winter for them down south. In a span of roughly 15 minutes on Sunday morning (Aug 31st), I had nearly 60 Red-breasted Nuthatches fly by me on the deck, with some flocks of them passing high and heading south. That same morning, we were seeing many more nuthatches than usual coming in off the lake by the waterbird shack. Outside of Whitefish Point, there has already been an abundance of early sightings and good numbers of Red-breasted Nuthatch in Indiana and some very early records in Kentucky and Tennessee of migrant birds. With a few early Redpolls, tons of nuthatches passing through, and a good number of other finches at the Point thus far, I’m excited to see how many of these birds we’ll be seeing here later in the season!
One of many Red-breasted Nuthatches stopping by at the raptor deck. Photo by Clay Bliznick.
~ Clay Bliznick
2025 Fall Field Ornithologist
Featured Photo: American Robins | Clay Bliznick
Track the morning flight counts on Trektellen.
Keep up with the 2025 Fall Field Ornithologist’s weekly blog posts and follow WPBO’s social media (Facebook, Instagram, and X).
Join Clay for one of his WPBO Migratory Bird Walks offered every weekend through November 15.
Learn more at wpbo.org/events.
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.
