Having prepared for
Joaquin’s arrival, he promptly decided to head out to sea and the threat
quickly dissipated. However, it has been a very breezy weekend here at the
point and has meant that birders were faced with the usual conundrum – birding in
bad weather is decidedly unpleasant, but it produces some extremely interesting
birding...
The storm conditions
that we have just endured create pluses and minuses for the birdwatcher.
Firstly on the downside, small songbirds such as warblers become extremely
difficult to find and the exciting spectacle of a fall of colorful birds at Higbee
Beach just isn’t going to happen while we have raging onshore winds. On the
upside, shorebirds and waterbirds take on a snow globe effect as all the
predictable behavior gets shaken up by the weather. The past few days, Don
Freiday has done us a great service in travelling around to a number of likely
hotspots for ‘shaken up’ birds and texted some interesting counts. As high
tides flood traditional roost sites, birds have to move elsewhere and local
birders know that, on very high tides, Cape May Airport is the place to go. The
wet grass during a storm serves shorebirds well as a temporary roost site and
the usual selection of backbay species have recently been joined by Long-billed
Dowitchers, White-rumped and Pectoral Sandpipers and American Golden Plovers at
this site.
Small parties of
White-rumped Sandpipers were also passing Sunset Beach on Saturday morning, a
site where it is always a special experience to witness Peregrine Falcons
harrying storm-blown songbirds and enjoying the stormy winds like it was a walk
in the park. But the real downside of Joquin heading so far out to sea is that
the hoped-for tropical seabirds remained where they should be and we didn’t get
the splendor of enjoying pelagic rarities without leaving the comfort of terra firma. The only exception to this
came from the Avalon Seawatch where two Sooty Terns breezed down the shoreline
on the late afternoon of October 2nd, to be followed by two more the following
morning. Birds like that are always frustrating as you have to be there or you
miss them, there’s very little point in hoping to chase them down. Today has
started well, with straggling parties of Great Blue Herons, Great and Snowy
Egrets and Black-crowned Night Herons descending on the point throughout the
morning and ‘classic’ October birds like Golden-crowned Kinglet and Brown
Creeper calling from the cedars. Cape May Warbler, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and
the continuing river of Tree Swallows all added to the experience this morning,
as well as reports of Hudsoniam Godwit, Seaside and Clay-colored Sparrows,
Western Kingbird and Yellow-headed Blackbird.
Well, that’s what has
been, what about what will be? Predictions are, inevitably it seems, doomed to
failure but it doesn’t stop us trying – because we mean well and we want
everyone to enjoy the pulse-racing experience that is Cape May at its best.
Forecasts show a continued lessening of the winds and a gradual turn to
northwesterlies as the influence of Hurricane Joaquin fades. This can surely
only mean one thing – birds! There looks like a slight interruption on Friday
might interfere with things temporarily but, that apart, the coming week looks
like a scarily good conveyor belt of north-westerlies orginiating high up in
the Canadian Arctic and, while it is unlikely that we will have wall to wall
birding all week, it must surely bring us a wealth of goodies at some point. So
our advice to you – come and be here, just in case because, you know, even if
it’s not ‘the big one’ there will be birds in Cape May this coming week and the
spectacle of migration promises to throw up some memorable moments!
Fall is here – come birding!!!
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