BirdCapeMay.org

[Cave Swallows, perhaps 20, were in view much of the day at Bunker Pond. On this one, photographed there today, note the pale throat, pale rump but not as pale as that of Cliff, and lack of the bright "headlight" above the bill, which is prominent on Cliff. In today's harsh light from the light overcast, the Cave Swallows often looked completly dark above when flying against the sky, but you could usually pick up the warm buff-orange on the throat, or at least a sense of color there. Photo by Don Freiday; click to enlarge all photos.]

Mike Crewe was talking about the season's passage last week and, in his very British way, said that while birding was still good it "feels like the end of the match." It felt that way today, for sure - despite northwest winds all night and all morning, not much of a passerine flight materialized and not all that many raptors were about. Well, maybe a couple hundred raptors will have been counted by day's end, Red-shouldereds and Red-taileds, a couple Peregrines, a few Bald Eagles, Sharpies, Coops and. . .when I walked up the platform around 10:30 a.m. Pete and Melissa had a juvenile Northern Goshawk in the scopes, perched over the "red roof." Yah, but where's the Golden. . . .kidding, of course.

The Swainson's Hawk hangs on, seen at the Beanery, over the meadows, and from the platform. A White-rumped Sandpiper went by the hawk watch this morning. Cave Swallows were in steady view at the platform, along with at least a couple Rough-winged Swallows and the many Tree Swallows, and the Cape May Duck Festival is still underway, with all the wigeon still on Lighthouse Pond (including more than one Eurasian) and today's Common Eider count off Coral Avenue at 137. The dabbling ducks are busy courting - it's a good time to learn your duck vocalizations.

At Cape May Point State Park at dawn, the only owl I could come up with was a Great-horned, but there were a half-dozen each of American Woodcock and Wilson's Snipe flying about. As dawn broke into day it became evident that Fox Sparrows are in, with several singing and chipping.

The day's award for unseasonal goes to the Yellow-billed Cuckoo I found in a patch of groundsel bushes at the Magnesite Plant, which is the southern portion of Higbee Beach WMA off Sunset Boulevard. Pretty darn late for this species, especially considering it winters om South America, south as far as northern Argentina! A White-crowned Sparrow was in the fields there, too.

Doug Gochfeld had the Swainson's Hawk from the hawk watch platform at Cape May Point State Park around 2:00 p.m. today, out over the meadows. We're going to have to dig into the records a little to verify this, but I think this bird is the longest staying Cape May Swainson's Hawk on record.

But, if you haven't seen the Swainson's yet and want to, you better come tomorrow, because if it hasn't left already it may well leave tomorrow, with the forecast winds northwest 8-10 mph. It's a good bet we'll have Golden Eagle tomorrow, too, and an excellent hawk flight in general.

Doug also had at least four Cave Swallows today. I was up at Island Beach State Park leading an NJAS field trip with Scott Barnes, and we had 2 other southbound Cave Swallows there at 1:30 p.m. that likely are now in Cape May, as well as two flocks of Snow Buntings during the day.

It's a positively lovely night in Cape May, with light northwest winds. If every there were a night when owls, or woodcock, or late-season passerines were going to migrate, it's tonight.

[Continuing our marsh sparrow theme (see posts below), here's another "sharp-tailed" sparrow, a Saltmarsh Sparrow photographed this morning at Jake's Landing. This bird shows obvious dark streaking across the breast, and bright orange color on the face which contrasts with the pale buffy breast. Click to enlarge photos.]

Karl Lukens just sent a text message along that there is an American Avocet at the Cape May Migratory Bird Refuge, a.k.a. South Cape May Meadows, at the "gull island," which is east of the east path. A nice bird at any season.

Chris Hayduke reports the 5 Harlequin Ducks continue at Poverty Beach near the pilings. Do NOT walk up the beach past the Coast Guard's No Trespassing sign, or you will be detained. A good scope and some patience makes pretty much any bird around the pilings identifiable from the legal side of the sign.

An hour at Jake's Landing this morning before work was productive, yielding at least three Saltmarsh Sparrows, two Seaside Sparrows, and an adult Bald Eagle perched on the cedar tree last winter's Rough-legged Hawk liked. Flyover groups of shorebirds included Black-bellied Plovers, Greater Yellowlegs, and a dowitcher sp., and two Hooded Mergansers hummed by as well. Where the woods meets the marsh, a little pishing brought in a Pine Warbler, three Red-breasted Nuthatches, two Winter Wrens, Brown Creeper, and Golden-crowned Kinglets. A vigil at the end of the road at Jake's Landing the night before last yielded no Short-eared Owls, but Dave Lord did pick out a flying American Bittern.

We'll find out this weekend if the Monday past was indeed the last "big day" of fall 2009, starting tomorrow and going through Sunday. A cold front is supposed to pass late tonight with rain to our north, which should mean few passerines on Friday, BUT northwest winds are predicted all day Friday, all night Friday night, all day Saturday, and into Saturday night, staying north or maybe northeast through Sunday morning. Figure on late season raptors Friday and Saturday, and landbirds Saturday and maybe Sunday. Looks like a good weekend to come to Cape May, or to bird anywhere.

[Mole Crab's-eye view of a charging Sanderling, early this morning at Stone Harbor Point. Click to enlarge all photos. Stone Harbor Point may be closed on and off for the next few days while beach replenishment equipment is operating there, or so one of the workmen informed me.]

Doug Gochfeld reports that the Swainson's Hawk is still around, seen from the hawk watch while looking towards the Beanery at about 9:00 a.m. this morning. Doug also had a Northern Goshawk north of the state park heading east at about 8:00 a.m., and a Cave Swallow from the platform at about 10:30 a.m.

[See if you can get any purple off this Purple Sandpiper, photographed by Kevin Inman at Barnegat Light today. I can on my monitor. Avalon had at least 5 Purple Sandpipers yesterday, and single digit counts have been had around Cape May. Click to enlarge.]

If you haven't been keeping up with View from the Field, our blog on CMBO's seasonal counts, by our seasonal counters, check it out. Note, for example, that Avalon had the first Black-legged Kittewake of the season yesterday, a darn scarce bird from shore - and yet, expected at this season if you put your time in.

Melissa Roach reports that the Swainson's Hawk was last seen, in flight, from the Hawk Watch at Cape May Point State Park just before 1:00 p.m. today. It was not reported from its usual haunts at the Beanery despite searching, and one wonders if it has flown the coop, so to speak. More literal than one might think, since yesterday the Swainson's perched for several minutes over Les Rea's chicken coop, inspecting the inmates with some interest. (That's Les Rea, the Rea of The Rea Farm, who honors us with the privelege to lease the birding rights to that delightful property. )

A look at the Cape May Bird Checklist reveals that a serious effort could certainly result in 24 species of ducks in a day south of the Cape May canal right now - and that excludes goodies like King Eider, Canvasback, and Redhead, which are theoretically possible anyway.

I took a spin on my bike in Belleplain State Forest after work this afternoon. Nobody birds Belleplain in fall (we sure do in spring!), and I guess that makes sense, given the opportunities elsewhere. I did pass a flock of Wild Turkeys, plus Eastern Bluebirds, and heard Brown Creepers, kinglets, and the usual forest birds of late fall and winter.

Jake's Landing at sundown featured hunting Northern Harriers, a bazillion Clapper Rails giving a tutorial on rail vocalizations, 3 Marsh Wrens at the parking lot, flyby Hooded Mergansers and a flyby American Bittern spotted by Dave Lord. . .but no Short-eared Owls. Yet.

[Tony Leukering managed a shot of the duller, presumed subvirgatus subspecies of the Nelson's Sparrow at the Meadows, which was present yesterday and the day before. The bird's face/malar area and breast are similar to each other in hue, good for Nelson's, but this bird is duller than the bird pictured below, grayish, and weakly patterned. Click to enlarge.]

If you're confused by this Nelson's Sparrow buisness, by the way, you should be. Nelson's Sparrow used to be called Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow, and, before that, was lumped with Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow. Back when the two were considered one, they were called just Sharp-tailed Sparrow. For now anyway there is the Saltmarsh Sparrow and the Nelson's Sparrow.

The skinny on Nelson's Sparrows is that each subspecies breeds in separate areas. Ammodramus nelsoni nelsoni breeds from the southern Northwest Territories and east-central British Columbia south and east through the prairie provinces to the northern Great Plains states in the U.S. A. n. alterus nests along the coasts of Hudson Bay and James Bay, and annoyingly is not illustrated in any of the field guides. A. n. subvirgatus occurs along the St. Lawrence River and along the Atlantic coast from southeastern Quebec and the Maritime Provinces to southern Maine.

All three Nelson's Sparrow subspecies winter along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from New York to Texas (nelsoni also winter along the Pacific coast). The ones in the meadows are migrants and very unlikely to winter there, since it's freshawater and will freeze. It is possible to dig up Nelson's and Saltmarsh Sparrows in salt marshes in winter, however.

[Here they come - American Robins, White-throated Sparrows, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Dark-eyed Juncos, Chipping Sparrows, Song Sparrows, American Goldfinches, Blackbirds, Fox Sparrow, and others - that's what was calling overhead last night. This nexrad 0.5 degree velocity radar image is from last night - but wait, it wasn't raining. . .?]

Yesterday there was a strong flight, today there was a strong flight. . .but it is mid-November, and the well of southbound migrants gets drier every day. Fall goes by so fast.

In the pre-dawn hours, just-arrived Dark-eyed Juncoes flushed in front of my vehicle as I drove through Cape May City, and the sound of robins was constant overhead when I got out.

As I hopefully waited for owls against the lightening eastern sky, American Woodcock, Wilson's Snipe, and a steady flow of dawn flying dabbling ducks crossed the horizon in Cape May Point. The dunes at Cape May Point gave a vantage on sheets of robins as the sun rose, 3,000 strong from 6:30 to 7:00 a.m. along with blackbirds, including a couple Boat-tailed Grackles, finches including many goldfinches, not a few Purple Finches, Red-breasted Nuthatch, American Pipits, a few Pine Siskins, and a couple Dickcissels. "Only" 80 Common Eiders were visible from my vantage at Coral Avenue.

Most (not all) of CMBO's weekly walks finish up for fall this week, and today was the last South Cape May Meadows walk. The full list from that is below and speaks for itself - I still don't get why birders don't congregate here through November, because the birding is extraordinary and frankly you see more birds and see them better than at other times during the fall - ducks, short-distance passerine migrants that aren't hell-bent to get out of town, and rarities. Including, today, the Swainson's Hawk, which was in view on and off today from the hawk watch.

Yesterday's Cumberland County trip was extraordinary. From Dave Lord: "If you bring binoculars to Cumberland and don't see an eagle, well. . . today's Birding Cumberland trip came up with 23 Bald Eagles! The bird of the day was the subadult Common Eider found by Chris Krupa at East Point and enjoyed by the whole group. On top of that: three Common Goldeneye at Heislerville [one's been on Bunker Pond the past couple days, too], a Great-horned Owl in broad daylight at Seabreeze, a field filled with 75 American Pipits, Sandhill Cranes calling form the marsh at Husted Landing Road, and a flight of 900 Robins at Heislerville. One of the best trips in recent memory! - Karen Johnson, Janet Crawford and Dave Lord."

[The Swainson's Hawk was seen by many hunting some kind of small insect along Stevens Street today. Photo by Don Freiday, click to enlarge.]

Mike Crewe reports: "I was at the Meadows this morning and witnessed the biggest American Robin flight I've seen this fall; not massive, but several thousand birds. Accompanying them, a great assortment of American Goldfinch, Purple Finch, American Pipit, Cedar Waxwing, Rusty Blackbird, Tree Swallow, Eastern Bluebird - a real treat! I also heard a Dickcissel which may have been the bird later seen at the state park."

Mike's report is of interest, because at Hidden Valley this morning I did not notice a particularly large flight of anything. This is actually typical in Cape May - sometime there are birds evident in one part of the peninsula but not others.

Kathy Horn reports from the CMBO Villas WMA walk this morning, "Two brightly-colored Baltimore Orioles and a couple large mixed flocks of ground-feeding Dark-eyed Juncos, Eastern Bluebirds, American Goldfinches, and Chipping, Field and Song Sparrows were highlights of this morning's Villas WMA walk. The large pond in the back held Ring-necked Ducks, Pied-billed Grebe, American Coot, Mallard and a Double-crested Cormorant."

Photographs (copyrighted) taken at Cape May Point 14-15 November 2009 by Tony Leukering

This fall's unprecedented and incredible showing of Common Eiders has enabled me the opportunity to really study plumages of the species, as one can get quite close to them as they loaf and forage near shore at Cape May Point, particularly near St. Mary's. Last night, Dave Czaplak and I pored over my 100s of photos of the birds attempting to make sense of the great variation in plumages. We referred to a variety of field guides, but primarily used the Identification Guide to North American Birds, part II by Peter Pyle (2008, Slate Creek Press; Note: I have no financial interest in the product). Though the two volumes of Peter's tour de force is primarily a guide for banders, I consider it an indispensible tool for birders.

First up in our efforts to understand the bewildering variety of plumages is to understand the timing and progression of molt in the species. Turning to pg. 128 in Pyle, we find that young-of-the-year conduct a partial pre-formative molt away from breeding grounds during Oct-Mar. As juvenile males are similar in plumage to that of adult females, this is a critical point. Also on that page, we find in a boldfaced note that (and I paraphrase here) some juvenile males don't initiate this molt (or, at least, obtain some white feathers) until Mar-Apr. In combination, these two pieces of information let us know that while some juvenile males have started down the road that makes them, plumage-wise, obviously males, some may not have and that we have to be careful at assigning all the juvenile birds as females.

Looking directly at plumage now, juvenile females are described as having "head and body pale brown"while both adult females and juvenile males have "head and body dark brown." This, then, would suggest that this bird is a young female.

[Click pictures to view a larger image size.]

If we look at the inner greater coverts (gc) and inner secondaries (ss), we can see indistinct whitish tips, a feature of juvenile/immature females; juvenile/immature males should show virtually no white here. I do, however, have some concern about the two worn nearly-white feathers on the back that might indicate some other age and/or sex, but I cannot reconcile all the other features with anything but a young female.

The next bird is darker-headed and -bodied and shows substantially more obvious white tips to the inner greater coverts and secondaries. These two features make me quite confident that this is an adult female.


I will treat the ageing of males, a much more complex aspect of this task, in a day or two. Right now, the sun has finally come out (after 5.5 days of gray) and I've got more photographs to take! Also, if I've gotten any of this wrong, please feel free to drop me a note and let me know, as Im not at all an expert in this!

Photographs (copyrighted) by Tony Leukering

For a short while yesterday morning (14 Nov), Dave Czaplak and I had solved the mystery as to the sex of the "bright" one of the two female-plumaged Eurasian Wigeons that have been gracing Lighthouse Pond. That's because we found the bright bird to now be sporting patches of gray on both sides (as noted, below, by Don), a certain indicator that the bird is a male. However, a bit later when viewing the ducks from the blind in the State Park (rather than from Lighthouse Ave. as earlier), we found the bright bird and it lacked gray on the sides. Hmm. We also found the "duller" bird. Hmm, did we imagine things? No, because we then found the "bright" bird with gray on the sides. There are now three Eurasian Wigeons present, none of them being adult males -- the age/sex that accounts for virtually all records of the species in North America away from the West Coast.

Below, I've included photos from the 14th of both the bright one lacking gray and the bright one with gray. Oh, our new Brit resident, Mike Crewe, tells me that the original bright one (the one lacking gray) is obviously a juvenile, as it sports gray down the culmen. Thus, with the age determined, the whiteness of the one white inner secondary (Americans sport a pale gray inner secondary) tells us that it must be a male (adult females can have a similarly bright white secondary). He should know. Finally, Melissa Roach and Doug Gochfeld noted a bird there that might have been a second female Eurasian Wigeon; my, oh my.

It does not appear that much of a landbird flight occurred last night, and yet I found my first Fox Sparrow of fall at Hidden Valley this morning. Even better were the two Northern Bobwhites at Hidden Valley, one of which flushed in front of me along the west path, which inspired me to whistle bob-white a bit, which in turn inspired a different quail to call.

The Common Eider accumulation around Cape May is off the charts, with 150+ around Cape May Point. A few White-winged Scoters are with them, and Sam Galick just reported 2 male and 3 female Harlequin Ducks around the pilings at Poverty Beach, in front of the Coast Guard Station.

The Common Eider thing is unprecedented, and both Tony Leukering and I have had eiders flying down the Delaware Bay the past couple days, which leads me to believe the ones at Cape May are birds that were blown inland by the northeaster and followed the bay south. Lending credence to that theory is the Common Eider being seen right now on CMBO's Exploring Cumberland field trip - at East Point!

At least 3 Eurasian Wigeon are present on Lighthouse Pond, one of which is developing gray patches on the sides and so is a male and soon will look like one, if it stays.

In the non-duck department, apparently both Clay-colored Sparrow and Dickcissel were found behind the Cape May Point State Park museum today, and at least two Cave Swallows are about. Tony Leukering found two Nelson's Sparrows of the gray subvirgatus race at the meadows yesterday, and they were still there this morning. Look along the east path near the bend. There are two Glossy Ibis lingering in the meadows, too, and three Long-billed Dowitchers there yesterday.

Oh, the Swainson's Hawk is still there, same general area, seen yesterday on the CMBO Beanery walk and this morning, too, "over the chilis" according to Tony, meaning the field with the peppers in it, kind of between Stevens Street and the birds normal haunts (see map, below). The Beanery Walk also had a calling Virginia Rail near the parking lot, and Rusty Blackbirds.

Other raptors include a juvenile Northern Goshawk at the Beanery seen by Tony Leukering yesterday, and a Golden Eagle reported over Bridgeton, Cumberland County yesterday by Michael Cesario. There's a bird that will be seen from the hawk watch this afternoon or tomorrow, maybe not that individual (it was headed northeast when last seen), but with northwest winds (light though they are) it seems that a Golden in the next two days would be a good bet.

Plenty of late fall good things were just flying around this morning, things like Eastern Bluebirds in flocks up to 30, Eastern Meadowlarks, Wilson's Snipe. The clear, light-northwest night that was forecast for last night (and didn't happen, it was overcast and misty) is now on tap for tonight. Owls? Passerines? We'll see.