Greetings! This is the weekly summary of Whitefish Point sightings for May 6-7th. Again (and again and again….) the winds haven’t been exactly favorable for migration, but the birds still continue to arrive. While the waterbirds and the hawks haven’t been exactly gangbusters, we all have been pleased by the return of neotropical migrants to [...]
Eurasian Tree Sparrow by Skye Haas While not completely unexpected, the manner in which Whitefish Point gained it's 8th record of Eurasian Tree Sparrow was a bit of a surprise. This afternoon when out at the waterbird count with Louie Dombroski, I heard an odd nasal chirping from overhead, and upon seeing the [...]
Greetings, this is the Whitefish Point Sightings Report for the week of April 29th-May 5th. Well another Spring Fling has come and gone, and the birding did not disappoint! Very educational for all was the presence of expert birders Jerry Liguori (raptors), and Cameron Cox (waterbirds) out birding the point as well as giving excellent [...]
Well I had written a lengthy blog post about the sightings from the last week and of course, a computer error made it disappear on me so I apologize for the truncated report tonight. North winds have stymied migration, but birds continue to trickle through. Common Loons have started to make modest pushes with over [...]
This weekend saw an increase in the numbers of both Common and Red-throated Loons at Whitefish Point. On Saturday, April 23, a few lucky visitors witnessed a flock of three Red-throated Loons fly right over the waterbird shack! That day's loon totals were four Red-throated and six Common. Numbers of both greatly increased on Sunday, April [...]
Here is the sightings report for the period of April 11-22. After all migration was completely halted due to winter-like conditions for the first half of April, a powerful warm front finally got birds moving again and there were several days that migrant birds, particularly hawks and cranes flooded over Whitefish Point. The Waterbird [...]
The first several days of the waterbird count coincided with the biggest Sandhill Crane flights ever recorded at Whitefish Point. After a plague of bad weather that lasted for over two weeks, the cranes took advantage of the powerful warm fronts and migrated in huge flocks to the Point. What was striking to a few [...]
April 15th marked the beginning of the Waterbird Count for the 2016 Spring Season. The first birds recorded at day-break were three hen Hooded Mergansers, a species actually not recorded that frequently on this count. The rarity of the day was a flock of 4 Trumpeter Swans, this species has only been recorded a couple [...]
It was a good day on the hawk deck yesterday (4/14), though as it turned out, it was a merely a warm-up to the Ides of April where everything that happened on the 14th, happened again, only with more! Sharp-shinned Hawk by Skye Haas The 13th we hit double digit Sharp-shinned Hawks with [...]