Who knows why....

For some reason, the images for the last blog decided not to post so here are a selection from today, hopefully...

Pic 1 great egret
Pic 2 juv little blue heron
Pic 3 typical view of the saltmarsh habitat
Pic 4 wader pools
Pic 5 greater yellowlegs (middle) roosting with willets
Pic 6 roosting willets
Pic 7 roosting marbled godwit amongst the grass and willets
Pic 8 young male common yellowthroat
Pics 9-10 juv white eyed vireo
Pic 11 red eyed vireo
Pic 12 northern waterthrush
Pic 13 American redstart
Pic 14 alder flycatcher

The east wind shalt blow

And all the migrants disappear! 
Sadly the wind direction changed overnight to the east and its amazing the effect it had. Yesterday, Higbee was heaving with birds but this morning it was dead! The change in direction provided ideal conditions for the birds to continue south. Very few warblers were about with 79 cedar waxwings the highlight.

Yesterday we bumped into Richard Crossley who kindly invited to his house where there was some banding (ringing) happening in his garden. We were invited to drop in when we wanted so we decided to see what was happening today.
When we arrived Patti, the ringer in charge, was panicking slightly as she was on her own with a load of birds. We were put straight to work extracting gray catbirds. Probably about the same size at a song thrush and strangely soft in the hand. Sadly we had missed a couple of hummers earlier but we did get to ring several catbirds, red eyed and white eyed vireos, American redstart and common yellowthroat. Sadly an ovenbird managed to escape.
It is very interesting discussing the different ageing techniques especially as they don't seem to use moult much...

Things went quiet so with some advice from Richard we headed to explore the coast.
The main area we were looking at were the saltmarshes and beaches around Stone Harbour. The wind was getting pretty strong by now and the sand was a nightmare on the beach so we decided to do those another day.
We found the recommended place for a wader roost which held a nice selection of species. 102 willet, 1 marbled godwit, 1 grey plover, 16 greater yellowlegs, 5 least + 1 pec sand, 8 short billed dowitcher and a spotted sandpiper. Loads of herons and egrets were about feeding on the saltmarsh pools including 13 snowy & 7 great egrets, 4 tricoloured & 2 little blue herons and both species of night heron.

A little seawatch from apartment balcony at the end of the day saw a steady passage of gulls and terns with single gannet and Arctic skua new for the list. The most interesting thing was a turtle sp moving east offshore.  I only ever saw the head but it was big!

Warbler Fallout

Amazing, frustrating, captivating, exciting, all words that could go some way to try and describe birding at Cape May today. The winds were right to produce a fall and we weren't disappointed.

We arrived at Higbee to be greated by masses of small warblers flying out of the trees. It was amazing to watch but frustrating as I couldn't identify any of them!! There were lots of other birders on site and as the sun began to rise over the trees the birds began to settle down. Everywhere you looked there were birds. Warblers in the trees and flickers and cedar waxwings overhead.
After a while I felt confident picking out magnolia and blackpoll warblers and was pleased to id a blackburnian for myself. Didn't get the nashville or Tennesee warblers but I was happy to have them pointed out.

A quick look at the Hawk Watch yielded little at the lack of wind meant the raptors were too hight and just specks in the sky so it was back to the CMBO centre for more warblers.

The tree lined roads were jumping with birds.  Every tree seemed to be full of birds. If Carlsberg did bird flocks....

We picked up our 1st yellow rumped warblers and had crippling view of black throated blue and black and white warblers.  There were palm warblers everywhere with at least 150 by the end of the afternoon!!!

By the end of the day we had logged minimum counts of...

Northern flicker - 113
American robin - 5
Parula - 33
Rose breasted grosbeak - 2
Cedar waxwing - 190
Red eyed vireo - 23
Brown thrasher - 3
Blackburnian warbler - 4
Blackpoll warbler - 6
Philadelphia vireo - 6
Magnolia warbler - 13
Scarlet tanager - 5
Common yellowthroat - 16
Swainsons thrush - 1
American redstart - 16
White eyed vireo - 3
Black and white warbler - 19
Black throated green warbler - 2
Nashville warbler - 2
Tennesee warbler - 2
Palm warbler - 150
Red breasted nuthatch - 1
Grey cheeked thrush - 1
Ruby crowned kinglet - 3
Black throated blue warbler - 5 (3 male)
Pine warbler - 1
Cape May warbler - 5
Yellow warbler - 1
Prairie warbler - 1

An AWESOME days birding, as the locals would say :-)

Pics 1-2 Black throated green warbler 'banded' by me

Amazing migration

NW winds mean migration. Birds migrating south are pushed towards the coast and are then funneled south until they hit the Delaware Bay. This means that they stop at Cape May providing some great migration.

Today started at Higbees Wood. A series of tree fringed meadows hold migrant warblers overnight before they continue south. The sight and sound of birds leaving the trees and heading off was both spectacular and frustrating as they all sounded the same and impossible to ID!

Although many of the local birders said it was quiet it was pretty good to me. Good numbers of warblers were being seen although they were pretty hard to see in the thick woodland although we did catch up with black throated blue, black & white, magnolia, wilsons warblers along with summer tanager, parula and 6 American redstarts.

A quick look around the Meadows found 8 stilt sands, 11 lesser yellowlegs and 3 killdeer but it was evident that there was a big raptor movement especially kestrels so we headed for the Hawk Watch.

We had missed quite a lot of birds in the morning but there were still loads of raptors moving. Most obvious were the American kestrels, many of which showed incredibly well passing low over the watchpoint. Good numbers of merlins were seen too. They were very dark compared to the ones at home and were often seen catching dragonflies over the pools just like a hobby! In 2hrs we logged 99 American kestrel, 8 merlin, 14 sharp shinned hawk, 10 osprey, 2 peregrine, 9 bald eagle, 2 northern harrier, 2 red tailed hawk, 2 coopers hawk and a broad winged hawk. We found out later that the CMBO counters logged over 500 kestrels during the day!!

The final stop of the day was the tree lined streets around the CMBO centre. Feeders and drip pools attract in birds really close with the main attraction being the warblers. We had black & white and parulas drinking and bathing to a few feet!
Warblers added to the trip list included Cape May, chestnut sided, blackpoll and black thoated green. I think we will be going back there again :-)

Pics 1-3 Higbees Wood
Pics 4-5 Cape May Meadows
Pic 6 mixed flock of lesser yellowlegs and stilt sandpipers
Pic 7 CMBO centre

Exploration

Probably went to bed too early last night as we were up well too early being still on UK time.

The plan of the day was to visit several of the main birding sites to get the lay of the land.

A pre-breakfast seawatch and mooch around the local area got us back into the swing of US birding.  Loads of black skimmers, laughing gulls and royal terns were roosting on the beach. The scrubby dunes produced the 1st warblers, a fine yellow and a palm and some pools behind help a small group of least and semi palmated sandpipers.
I managed resist a massive yank brekkie before heading off to the Hawk Watch platform.

I was quite surprised at how many people were there with bins. There were clearly a few birders twitching the whiskered tern but most didn't really have a clue. The pools infront of the platform held blue winged teal, lesser yellowlegs, great egret and pied billed grebe. Raptors were pretty slow with the weather not ideal but we did manage Coopers, sharp shinned and red tailed hawks,  bald eagle, American kestrel, black vulture, peregrine, merlin and tons of osprey. The trails were pretty quiet but we did manage 6 red eyed vireo, belted kingfisher and a female black duck.

Higbee Beach wasn't what I was expecting.  I didn't expect it to be so wooded and finding anything would be a challenge.  It was very quiet and a struggle to find anything but we did manage 2 northern waterthrush, yellow eyed vireo, ovenbird and a corking black and white warbler.

The raptor watchers are predicting some decent winds for the next couple of days so fingers crossed. ..

The Eele has landed

Well we have finally made it to Cape May.
Nice smooth flight with US Airways went well but as usual I couldn't sleep. Landed pretty much on time but immigration was the usual pain in the arse taking pretty much 2hrs to get through. Many of the other people who were queuing were meant to be getting connecting flights, most of them missed them!

Getting the car was pretty easy too, a nice flash VW but as usual the scary 1st few miles are the scariest as you remember which side you need to drive on and what the hell everyone else is doing!! We thought we had missed our road but it was a false alarm. We even managed to get the 1st birds on the list. Feral pigeon, Canada goose and night heron.

Cruise control and the Interstate fit together perfectly and within 2hrs were in our apartment in Cape May.

Sadly we arrived after dark but sitting out on the balcony I can hear the sea only 50m away!!

Hope to keep my blog going daily but its early to bed. There is birding to do in the morning and I'm knackered!

Frustrating

It seems to have been one of those weeks.
Stories and online messages of bird-filled bushes along the coast had me full of optimism at the start of the week that I was going to find something decent.

NE winds and foggy conditions seemed to be perfect but despite being out every morning before work it didn't seem that it was going to happen. Gypsy Lane, Brancaster and Titchwell were all tried with very little reward. It did seem rather strange that Gun Hill had a stack of birds but just a few miles to the west, nothing. I do believe some of is down to the lack of coverage in these other areas. Birding is dead, long live pager chasing!

Anyway, I digress.

Today was my last day and chance to find anything before my hols and as luck would have it, I had to go out on the reserve to 'check something' this afternoon. A walk along the east trail hedge produced a lesser whitethroat and then I flushed a tree pipit out of the grass strip by the hedge. Not bad :-)

I decided to check the scrub on the tank road as it is often good for warblers.
As soon as I started pishing a bloody barred warbler flew up into a tree right in the open before diving into some elders. I tried to call Dave who was still birding somewhere close but he didn't answer. I saw the bird again briefly but not again after that.
About 10 mins later Dave called to say that he had seen a probable barred warbler on the carpark but couldn't relocate it.

We searched for my barred but it wasn't to be found. There were a few song thrushes dropping in, a single redwing and probably 2 garden warblers too.

It was very pleasing that the effort paid off even if I was skiving a bit!!