Field Notes

White-winged Scoters by Skye Haas Greetings! Here is the last Whitefish Point Sightings Report for the spring 2017 season. But first I just want to thank and congratulate the WPBO staff for their hard work and long hours that they put in this season. From freezing temperatures to hordes of biting insects, the [...]

Greetings! The season here at Whitefish is rapidly coming to a close, though we are still a little puzzled as to where some of the birds are yet. It’s been a great migration for many species, but warblers have still been low numbers and vireos and flycatchers have been near absent so far. What little [...]

Greetings! I would like to start this week’s report off again with a plea for support for our annual Birdathon! We are now taking pledges for the event where we head out to see how many bird species we can find in a 24 hour period to raise funds for the count and banding projects [...]

Greetings again, sorry for the long absence, I was having some blog sign-in issues, but hopefully that has been all worked out. First an announcement- we are now taking pledges for our annual Birdathon! Every year in late May, the staff and few volunteers head out to find as many bird species as we can [...]

Scaup, Wigeon and Tundra Swans by Skye Haas This week saw the start of the Waterbird Count on the 15th, though it was quite the rainy mess of a day. This has actually been a bit of a theme this week with unfavorable weather conditions on several days. But there have been some [...]

Sandhill Crane by Skye Haas It has been a week of strong contrasts; either we have been shut out by harsh winter-like weather or it’s been beautiful spring days with classic Whitefish Point skies full of hawks! Waterbirds for the most part have not yet really got going- a modest push of COMMON [...]

Common Merganser by Skye Haas Greetings folks, here is this week’s sightings report. It has been another decent week at the Point; the first part of the week saw some decent hawk and songbird flights though blustery north winds have quelled migration here for a few days. Still the weather is setting up [...]

Greetings, here is the sightings report for the week of March 24-31. Spring has been chipping away at the edges of winter up here, and the snow, while still a few feet deep in some places is doing it’s best to melt. A new development here at WPBO is the introduction of electronic data collection [...]

Sharp-tailed Grouse by Skye Haas Greetings! This begins the weekly sightings summary of the observations at Whitefish Point. It’s safe to say that winter’s grip on Whitefish Point is still pretty solid. There are still a few to several feet of snow on the ground and the temperatures have been below freezing most [...]

Greetings from Whitefish Point! Pine Grosbeak by Skye Haas We are excited to be kicking off WPBO's 38th year of spring migration research! Of course, it doesn't feel too much like spring just yet with several feet of snow on the ground, lake ice as far as the eye can see, and temperatures [...]