Chirps and Cheeps

I attended this summer's second BOS Shorebird field trip today. We didn't see anything out of the ordinary, exceptional, surprising, or WOW, but we had a great time and saw some large numbers of shorebirds. At times, we had to guesstimate our counts because they winged by us in sizable groups.

Doug Happ led the seven of us to several spots along the north shore of Lake Erie, including: Morgan's Point, Rock Point Provincial Park, Mosaic Pond, and Jaeger Rock.  We also stopped at a large grass/sod field to look for Black-bellied Plovers and found over 60 of them!  Marcie, the birthday girl, never got her birthday wish, which was a Buff-breasted Sandpiper. She still invited us to her family's lovely beach side home, however, where we saw more shorebirds and a very large group of Common Mergansers.

Some of the other birds we saw today included all three of our regional falcons (1 Merlin, 2 Peregrine Falcons, and an American Kestrel), a Cooper's Hawk, an Osprey, 9 Great Egrets, several Great Blue Herons, Green Herons, a Tundra Swan, many Semipalmated Plovers, Killdeer, Least, Spotted, Pectoral, Solitary, and Semipalmated Sandpipers, 1 Lesser ( Jajean's life bird) and 1 Greater Black-backed Gull, 4 Horned Larks, 4 Bluebirds, and an estimated 500 Double-crested cormorants at Morgan Island.

Thank you, Doug, for a great trip today - and thank you for your hospitality, Marcie!

A short trip to Kumpf Marsh yesterday brought some nice looks at an Osprey, a Red-eyed Vireo, and a few Common Gallinules.  Just a week ago, I saw my very first Common Night Hawks out at the marsh too. Celeste and I had stopped at Kumpf before going to see the Sandhill Cranes again and Celeste spotted two nighthawks soaring out over the marsh. What beautiful views we had! We also saw several migrant warblers and a family of Baltimore Orioles at the marsh that night too.

A female American Redstart has been hanging out in our woods for the last three days and I've seen both a Hooded Warbler and Common Yellowthroat back there too. Fall migration is underway for sure!