Field Notes

Our last full week at Whitefish Point is in the books, and we have just a couple of days left to count waterbirds and watch the last waves of fall migration. We are still having some good days for waterbird movement, albeit fewer than a couple of weeks ago. Most of our songbirds have [...]

With less than two weeks left in the season here at Whitefish Point, the fall has started to take on a different feel. While we still have some leaves on a few plants in the understory, the vibrant foliage on our deciduous trees has mostly fallen, so things are feeling a little more barren. [...]

We only have about three weeks left of the fall season at Whitefish Point, but the bird activity here has yet to slow down. While just about all the warblers and other early to mid-fall migrants are gone (even Yellow-rumped Warblers!), we continue to have large quantities of sparrows and winter finches. Not to [...]

We’re well into the second half of the fall season at Whitefish Point, and we’ve seen most of the songbird, raptor, and waterbird migrants that we’ve been expecting. The winter finches are abundant on most days, and there have been some Evening Grosbeaks, White-winged Crossbills, and Common Redpolls among their numbers. We are also [...]

The birding at Whitefish Point has been magnificent over the past week! We've had several expected bird species finally arrive at the Point for the first time this fall (mainly on the waterbird count), but we had quite a few surprises as well. The most exciting of these surprises was on 10/8. I was [...]

While the Burrowing Owl seems to have vanished from Whitefish Point (last seen on 10/1), it was still a fun week of birding here! The number of early-season migrants, such as warblers, continues to dwindle, but the sparrow numbers have picked up tremendously over the last week. The sparrow influx has been headlined by [...]

This past week at Whitefish Point has been the most exciting stretch of the season thus far, thanks in no small part to the celebrity Burrowing Owl that turned up here this past Friday (9/27). Since being discovered early that morning by birders Paul and Catherine, visiting from New Zealand, the owl has captivated [...]

With the addition of Hannah Leabhart to the WPBO team as the official waterbird counter for the fall, I have spent more time in the woods over the past week while helping with the count as Hannah adjusts to her new role. My first project was fixing the bird feeder setup behind the Owl’s [...]