The second week of the Spring Waterbird Count saw the arrivals and peaks of many waterbirds, with many first-of-season sightings! Apr 22 was a quieter day, without much waterbird movement over the course of the day. I did have a few Green-winged Teal which are always a treat to see, and a decent crane [...]
Hi everyone, I am Martina Nordstrand, the Spring 2025 Waterbird Counter for Whitefish Point Bird Observatory! I'm excited to spend this spring counting at the Point and seeing some great visible migration over Lake Superior. I am originally from North Carolina, so when I arrived in Paradise last week, it was definitely a change [...]
Spring migration is coming to a close at Whitefish Point, but that doesn't mean the excitement is gone. Waterbird numbers have begun to drop, with only loons, mergansers, geese, and some shorebirds being reliable each day. One of the highlights at the season's end has been large pushes of Whimbrels; the evening flight on [...]
It's been an exciting week at the Point, with many of our later migrants starting to hit hard and many of our irregular migrants starting to show up. Our second wave of Canada Geese is in full swing, with over 3,000 individuals being seen over the last three days. White-winged Scoters are still passing [...]
Prevailing north winds have kept this past week fairly slow, with little changing in terms of species diversity. The numbers of White-winged Scoters and Long-tailed Ducks are slowly increasing, with the number of loons and grebes slowly decreasing. Red-breasted Mergansers have also begun to move in pretty good numbers, with May 13 netting 440 [...]
Plenty of birds have been migrating this week. Most days saw triple-digit numbers of loons, although none beat last week's high count. Many ducks seem to be tapering off this week, with only a handful of dabblers and scaup being seen each day. May 3 saw the biggest push of Bufflehead for the season, [...]
It's been a busy week for waterbirds! Despite the rainy weather, we have seen several big pushes over the last week. April 27 saw what will probably be the biggest push of scaup this season, with 656 birds (mostly Greater Scaup) passing the Point. This week also saw increasing numbers of White-winged Scoters as well as the season's first Surf [...]
Waterbirds are on the move! After several days of bad winds, April 23 finally brought some decent winds out of the south, bringing in some decent numbers of birds. On that day, 255 Greater Scaups, 108 Red-necked Grebes, 81 Common Loons, 24 Red-throated Loons, and numerous other species flew past Whitefish Point on their [...]
We are only a couple of days into the spring waterbird count and have already seen some significant movement at the Point. The first day of the count saw what is probably the last major push of Sandhill Cranes, 3,198 of them in a single day. The vast majority of the birds moved through [...]
The last week of the 2023 spring waterbird count has been defined by two things: the mosquito hatch and the Canada Goose molt flight. In their own right, both of these happenings are fairly remarkable natural phenomena. We've got two periods of heavy Canada Goose movement at Whitefish Point. The first is towards the [...]
