Day Four
Finally the weather has turned - waking up to a beautiful day! We start our birding day at 7:00am at the morning flight platform at Higbee Beach Wildlife Management Area.
Why here? After migrating during the previous night passerines (songbirds) will come upon the southeastern tip of Cape May. In front of them they see water. Rather than continuing south across the open water during daylight which would cause them to be more vulnerable to raptors, they instead, turn west and then north following the Delaware Bay coastline. Many of these birds fly just above the tree tops. Higbee Beach Wildlife Management Area is a prime location to observe this.
These gentlemen are official counters at morning flight.
Note: Select the images to enlarge.
These are the numbers we had for Higbee Beach Wildlife Management Area:
6 October 2022
6:57am
1 hr.-15min
Clear, 58F NW winds 6mph, gusts 7mph
After watching the morning flight we took a walk at Higbee Beach Trail along the meadow.
After our walk some of the group split up, I went to the hawk watch at Cape May Point and met up with a couple of my birding buddies. We walked one of the trails and came upon some mute swans in the Lighthouse Pond West.
Next we birded at and around the Cape May Bird Observatory. It was good birding. We actually saw a Cape May Warbler in Cape May. We saw 32 species, highlights were:
3 Sharp-shinned Hawk
3 Cooper’s Hawk
1 Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
3 Peregrine Falcon
1 Blue-headed Vireo
3 Ruby-crowned Kinglet
5 Red-breasted Nuthatch
1 Brown Creeper
1 Black-and-white Warbler
1 Cape May Warbler
5 Northern Parula
12 Yellow-rumped Warlber
1 Black-throated Green Warlber
Another long day of birding - finished up about 5:30pm - didn’t want to miss a moment of birding on a beautiful day.
