Million Bird Flight

Friday and Saturday I helped lead field trips for the New Jersey Audubon Society's Fall Weekend Event in Cape May (with Ellen on Saturday), and it was amazing. We've done this for many years, and of course you never know what the weather will be like, and weather is a key factor in bird migration. This year fate and the gods conspired to order up the perfect weather scenario for a huge migration: warm humid weather for about a week before, rain and southerly winds, then on Thursday night early a strong cold front came through bringing cold air, strong northwest winds and clear skies, all the signals birds to the north and west of us were waiting for. And they came by the hundreds of thousands! Here's Don Freiday talking to our early morning group on Friday, while all around us there were masses of birds.

Birds filled the sky…

…and the trees, not to mention the ground and every available surface, even cars and buildings in town. People woke to find birds everywhere. Driving down the Parkway in the gathering light, I saw waves of them coming in off the ocean where they'd been blown by the wind.  Once they reached land, they began to spread out in search of food and shelter, often flying north and west a while against the wind until they reached a place they felt safe in.

What kind of birds? Not a huge number of species, but of the ones present, there were great numbers. For instance, above is a Hermit Thrush, generally a solitary bird. I've rarely seen more than three in a single day. This day there were flocks of 50 to 100 all over the woods of Higbee Beach, where our walk was. There were thousands of Robins, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Red-winged Blackbirds, Flickers, and so on. Then, in search of breakfast among this bounty came hundreds of Sharp-shinned Hawks diving and swooping after them. While there's no official count of this massive migration flight, there was a count of birds passing one spot at Higbee, about 150,000. And that's only what was moving and passing that one spot. There were masses of birds everywhere in the area. As one veteran birder put it, "I'd be shocked if there weren't over a million!"

Saturday was much the same, but with less wind and perhaps about two-thirds of the birds. This time some rarities turned up, though. One, a Henslow's Sparrow, hasn't been seen in the Cape May area in over 20 years. Here's our group at Higbee lined up along a path…

…while leaders Michael O'Brien and Louise Zemaitis circled around through the field to gently flush the bird back toward the group. Everyone got to see it, plus more in later groups. It was a life list bird for nearly everyone, including Ellen and I.

Henslow's Sparrow photo by Brian Zwiebel

About 100 yards down the same path an hour or so later we found another rarity (not as rare), Ash-Throated Flycatcher. Also a life bird for us.

Ash-throated Flycatcher by Karl Lukens, local guide

It's been years since I had a saw a new bird for my life list in New Jersey, two in the space of an hour is unprecedented! Small birds don't interest you? Okay, how about the two Immature Golden Eagles that passed overhead a little later in the morning. That would get anyone's attention who's at all interested in birds.

Cape May is truly one of the best places to watch birds in the world, but days like this here are rare and precious. And there are now a few hundred people who came to the Fall Weekend event for their first visit here and think it's always like this…!