Migration Counts

This is my third spring conducting WPBO’s spring waterbird count. I am delighted to be back, for I love Whitefish Point, and in particular, I love observing spring migration here. The season is short, the flights intense, the hours of migration run around the clock. With the whole season ahead of me, there is [...]

Many people visiting the hawk deck ask, "How do you keep count of the raptors flying by?" These days, my answer is, "On one hand." Alright, I may have had one day where I needed two hands and another day on which I needed more than two, but otherwise, one hand has been more [...]

Waterbird Highlights: The final days of the waterbird count (Nov. 5–15) were extremely favorable weather and bird-wise. We were surprised with several goodies, such as another immature Black-legged Kittiwake, several distant Snow/Ross's Geese, an immature Harlequin Duck, a second-winter Iceland Gull, a first-winter Glaucous Gull, and a late Double-crested Cormorant! During the final hour of [...]

Highlights: Sprague's Pipit & Townsend's Solitaire A hatch year Northern Goshawk. Photo by Chris Neri A Sprague’s Pipit found by Fall Waterbird Counter Mario Balitbit is very likely to be the rarest bird of the season. He first heard it as it flew by the waterbird shack on the afternoon of Nov. 6, but our [...]

Waterbird Highlights: This week (Oct. 29–Nov. 4), we had species of waterbirds, with our highlight being RED PHALAROPE and a few more BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKE. The Red Phalarope showed briefly in the morning before being lost between the 5-foot+ high swells. Two of the three kittiwakes showed on the same day, while our latest immature kittiwake moved north [...]

Snow Bunting by Chris Neri Passerine migration activity at this time of year really comes down to the winter finches. Thankfully, we’ve had some nice finch flights this week. We documented some significant movements from different species on three consecutive days this past week. We had 1,087 Common Redpolls on Oct. 27, followed by 779 White-winged [...]