Another week is in the books at Whitefish Point and it’s really starting to feel like fall. The leaves are beginning to transition from vivid green to yellow, orange, and red, heralding the departure of summer. The leaves aren’t the only thing that’s changing; the birds are too!

An adult Bald Eagle right off the parking lot! Photo by Clay Bliznick.

While we’re still getting good numbers of warblers, we are now past our peak warbler window. However, we did have at one last showing of great warbler diversity on September 18th. I spent the day birding the Point and turned up 17 species of warbler, including our first Orange-crowned Warbler of the season and a beautiful male Black-throated Blue Warbler. Some other exciting birds on the day were a Northern Mockingbird and Scarlet Tanager, both species we missed entirely at the Point last fall. Since the 18th, we’ve seen quite a considerable slow-down in warbler species, but on the other hand we’ve seen an uptick in sparrows. We’re now having White-throated Sparrows constantly hanging out behind the bird feeders, and White-crowned Sparrows are becoming a bit more regular too. The feeder action overall has been picking up, with frequent visits by Black-capped Chickadees, American Goldfinches, and Downy Woodpeckers as well. We wrapped up this stretch with some Bohemian Waxwings stopping by for a few minutes on the 22nd!

This non-breeding plumage Scarlet Tanager was a nice surprise! Photo by Clay Bliznick.

We’ve been getting an adult White-crowned Sparrow stopping by the feeders every now and then. Photo by Clay Bliznick.

The most exciting bird to visit the feeders lately has been a White-winged Dove, a common bird across southern portions of the US, but a nice rarity for the state of Michigan. After being spotted by Frank on the 19th flying down the shore of Superior, it decided to make itself at home in the understory of the trees behind the the observatory building. While not consistently present, it has been appearing on and off near the feeders for the last four days (19th, 20th, 21st, and 22nd), much to the delight of at least a dozen birders over the weekend. It seems to enjoy the cracked corn as much as we enjoy seeing it, so we’re hoping it sticks around for awhile! Another shocking find in the last week was not one, but two Swainson’s Hawks! The first bird flew in off the lake on the morning of the 17th and was seen by Frank and another other lucky birder before departing towards the south. The second was seen by myself on the 22nd while conducting the waterbird count and made two passes over the jack pines in the course of an hour. You never know what birds might show up here, or for how long!

White-winged Dove with not one, but two pieces of cracked corn in its bill. Photo by Clay Bliznick.

The fog was dense, but this juvenile Swainson’s Hawk appeared out of the haze a couple times. Photo by Clay Bliznick.

There have been some great birds seen over the last week, but the songbird counts on the raptor deck this weekend were somewhat slow. With very strong winds out of the southeast most of the weekend and a good amount of rain as well, there unfortunately weren’t a lot of birds to count. I will say there was a very thrilling moment on the Saturday count though when a young Northern Harrier passed exceptionally close to the deck. Easily the best looks I’ve had of the species! The weather on Sunday was so poor that we didn’t have anyone turn up for the bird walks, but we had a fantastic turnout on Saturday with 14 birders. The highlight of the walks had to be the two American Golden-Plovers that gave us shockingly close views as they walked right by us on the beach. Better yet, they were a lifer for most of the walk participants! I’m looking forward to what birds we see over the next several days and hope to see some of you out here!

Track the morning flight counts on Trektellen.

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Join Clay for one of his WPBO Migratory Bird Walks offered every weekend through November 15.
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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.