It's hard to believe, but we are already halfway through the Spring Waterbird Count! The third week of the count was very eventful and full of highlights! Red-necked Grebes by Martina Nordstrand April 29th featured an exciting weather switch, with southwest winds overnight and into the first few hours of the count. [...]
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 [...]
Week 13 was the final week of the fall waterbird count, with two days to spare. This will be my last blog post (unless we see something phenomenal in the last two days). With our total numbers for the week (4,278 birds) compared to early September, we are beginning to see migration tapering off. [...]
This week, we had some unfavorable weather both for the birds and the birders, with our first truly cold days, a few days with strong southerly winds, and lots of rain. We experienced quite a drop in numbers with three particularly slow days mid-week, and it was pretty uneventful overall. We added one new [...]
Week 11 was a productive week for the waterbird count. We added some exciting new species and had some remarkable numbers! On 10/24, we experienced a large push of over 2,000 Aythya ducks, this time with Redhead outnumbering the scaup. Our biggest day yet was 10/27, with over 6,000 waterbirds counted; Long-tailed Ducks were [...]
Another week of above-average temperatures has made birding at the Point very enjoyable. We had many new high counts for the fall this week, as well as a few new exciting birds around. Our first new high count was 244 Mallards on 10/18; they were the most plentiful bird that day, which seemed a [...]
This week of the waterbird count was my favorite so far! With many visiting birders and many exciting birds to be seen, there was quite a shift in species numbers this week. In particular, I was excited to see large numbers of Long-tailed Ducks, with 579 on 10/14 and then 1,396 on 10/15. We [...]
Week 8 of the waterbird count started off strong with some nice northwest winds; 10/3 was our biggest day so far this fall, with 2,765 waterbirds counted! As wind speeds increased throughout the week, our waterbird numbers decreased, with just a few hundred counted on some later days. On our more intense days, we [...]
With some good weather days pushing lots of birds through and many visitors drawn in by other rare birds at the Point, week 7 of the waterbird count was very lively! We had north winds on 9/29 and 10/1 that persuaded lots of ducks to move through, and the calmer days brought in some [...]
