Outside my window is an empty Osprey nest. Occupied for three years. The nest’s tenants are at this very moment winging their way north, after five months in the Amazon Basin. I’m speculating, here, neither bird is fitted with a transmitter, but many birds from this region spend the northern…...
Still Fall
New Jersey Audubon’s Cape May Festival is over. Autumn must be waning, you think. Think again. There are still weeks of Autumn ahead. Fact is bird migration continues until February. November and December are migratory prime time for some species of raptors and water birds. Big burley buteos like Red-tailed…...
Peak Migration
What ever happened to bird watching? I remember when this was just a quaint little closet avocation, practiced by professorial types and other social misfits. Just last weekend I was just one of the standing-room-only crowd at the Cape May Hawkwatch Platform. Around mid-afternoon a trio of non-birders (identified by…...
Outsiders
I had an interesting revelation the weekend of September 1st. While sitting on the hawk watch platform at Cape May Point State Park; a platform overflowing with raptor enthusiasts, I overhead a non-birding trio as they mounted the platform, who were expressing their astonishment over the number of bird watchers…...
Heads up, it’s time for Broad-wingeds
Mid- September means migrating Broad-winged Hawks. Between September 10 ad 20 tens of thousands of these stubby forest buteos will migrate across mostly n. New Jersey heading for winter territories in Central and South America. Traveling in large aggregations called “kettles” in honor to the flock’s resemblance to water boiling…...