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 [...]
Late May is just a time of year that feels good. It’s sunny; it’s warm. Black flies and mosquitoes have emerged down in Paradise, but the Point is bite-free for a couple of days or so. It’s one of the few genuinely comfortable times we get at a place that, of all this continent’s bird observatories, [...]
When I get my first triple-digit Bonaparte’s Gull flight of the spring, that’s a harbinger: time to start going out for night flight. Today, May 10, 499 Bonys, delicate and ternlike, traveled north during the day’s count. I kept my word, loaded up around 8:30 p.m., walked down the beach towards the tip as [...]
Shack Talk: Sunrise It would be a stretch to say Leonard and I shared the sunrise on May 2, for the last week and a half has been mostly gray skies. I’ve risen — and the sun, I suppose, has too — but we haven’t really seen it. But, sunrise or not, Leonard was [...]
It's been a fairly quiet week at the waterbird count, with conditions ranging from not-that-bad (light northerlies, dry skies, and little flocks of Common Mergansers) to pretty terrible (snow squalls, strong northerlies, zero visibility, zero avian movement). So it goes during spring on Superior. We've had our first White-winged Scoters (showing first on April [...]
Typically, my spirits are quite light when I walk down the boardwalk toward the waterbird shack. However, when I headed that way a little before sunrise on April 15 — opening day for this count — I felt especially light: I was wearing only merino leggings, down pants, a fleece, a felted wool vest, [...]
May 22. Over the course of 8 hours, 655 Long-tailed Ducks (this spring’s peak flight, to date) rose, like apparitions, from The Gap. The Gap is terminology we use to point out waterbirds flying through the stretch of water bounded by Ile Parisienne and Ontario’s mainland — e.g., “there are two Red-throated Loons flying [...]
Spring migration has this accompanying urgency: many of the shorebirds and waterfowl that pass WPBO’s waterbird count are headed to arctic tundra. Up there, the days are long — but the season is short: the span of days within which to establish a territory and raise up the next generation is acutely finite. Accordingly, migration [...]
This past week at the waterbird count has represented the longest stretch of favorable migration conditions I’ve ever experienced at WPBO: there have been no sustained periods of strong north winds; no lasting fog. Not surprisingly, the birding has been favorable, too! It feels like we’re on the cusp of the peak scoter, Long-tailed [...]
