Day One & Two
You make your travel arrangements months in advance and then just hope that the weather will be great. Well, we know that doesn’t aways happen - such was the case at the start of this trip. Remnants of hurricane Ian which devastated parts of Florida (I just missed that on my Florida trip) was moving up the east coast. Needless to say the first two days have not been great for birding.
I arrived yesterday with a couple birding buddies. We went straight to the hawk watch at Cape May Point State Park, the rain was holding off but the winds were NE 19mph with gusts over 30mph. We saw roughly 9 peregrine falcons, 4 merlins and a couple hundred swallows (mostly tree and some barn). We took a walk on the blue trail, didn’t see much. The highlight was seeing a Eurasian wigeon which is a rare bird for the area. Interestingly I saw one of those here last year during migration. We also saw this common yellowthroat (below) during our walk.
Oct 4
This year’s trip coincided with an Anne Arundel Bird Club Cape May trip. Folks from the club showed up today; which sadly is worse than yesterday weather wise. We all met up at the Cape May Bird Observatory and did some birding around the shop. Birding there was pretty good, it’s tucked in a bit, protection from the weather. We saw:
Red-breasted Nuthatch
White-breasted Nuthatch
Tufted Titmouse
American Redstart
Swainson’s Thrush
Northern Cardinal
Carolina Chickadee
House Sparrow
Mourning Dove
Expecting and hoping the weather to improve tomorrow morning.
