I first visited Cape May, New Jersey to watch birds in late
May 1970 with high school classmate Bill Johnson. The highlight of our field
trip was birding the Cape May Point State Park with its bunker pond, where we
saw several Least Bitterns (life birds for both of us). Last week, 55 years
after that first visit, I was back at the Bunker Pond, which now features a nationally
famous elevated hawk watch platform.
The hawk watch now serves as the epicenter of birding activity at Cape May in autumn. On Wednesday afternoon I walked up the ramp to the platform and bumped into Cape May-based naturalist Mark Garland, who welcomed me and informed me of an exciting advance in his work tracking the migration of Monarch butterflies (I report on this important advance later in this blog). Soon after my chat with Garland, David Wilcove arrived from Princeton, and our fourth decade of autumn birding here at Cape May began.
The hawk watch was busy Wednesday afternoon with a good movement of accipiters, ospreys, and falcons. Coops, Sharpies, Merlins, and kestrels were particularly common. The word on the street was that the coming overnight hours would see long-awaited northerly winds and a cold front to produce great birding for songbirds and raptors on Thursday morning.
Wilcove and I walked the loop trail of the state park, encountering lots of accipiters, Merlins, and a single Peregrine.
That evening, Wilcove and I dined al fresco at the Blue Pig tavern situated
at the handsomely ancient and oversized Congress Hall right on downtown Surf
Avenue. Blue Pig is always a good bet, and we were not disappointed this night.
Nice to be dining in comfort outside in October!
I retired to campsite 118, tucked into the woods of the
Depot Travel Park, a well-managed campground in West Cape May (a little enclave
of Trump’s rural America in liberal Cape May). I was excited to see that the men’s
shower room gleamed from a total remake. The nice thing about the Depot is that,
sited on Broadway, it is close to all the prime birding locations. Wilcove was
bedding down at the West Cape Motel on Sunset—even closer to birder’s ground
zero. The soft hoots of a Great Horned Owl greeted me that night, but no yips
of the Coyote…
Saturday broke cool and breezy. After an obligatory run to
Wawa for coffee and a breakfast sandwich, I set up scope and camera gear on the Coral Avenue dune platform of West Cape May. A crowd of eager and expert birders
was already milling about, calling out the names of the birds racing by, some
low through the pines and others high overhead. Lots of flickers, accipiters,
kestrels, blackbirds, plus surprises—12 ravens (10 in a single group), a flock
of dozens of White Ibis, tons of scoters low out over the water, and Myrtle and Palm Warblers. Also Rusty
Blackbirds, pipits, sapsuckers, the odd shorebird, plus Ospreys, Bald Eagles,
and Great Blue Herons lumbering overhead, mainly headed across Delaware Bay to
Delaware.
A late and hearty breakfast at George’s Diner downtown
served as our lunch, which was followed by a nap. We then headed to the Science
Center in West Cape May for a demonstration of the new butterfly tracking
technology from Project Monarch and the Project Monarch app.
In the interior courtyard of the grand old edifice (formerly a convent), Mark Garland and a small group were netting Monarchs and outfitting them with tiny solar-powered transmitters. Each apparatus, a mere 0.06 grams weight, includes a miniscule transmitter, a short antenna, and a narrow solar panel (see photo just below). This device is glued to the back of the butterfly’s thorax using eyelash glue.
The transmitter sends geo-location signals to the Project Monarch app, allowing the app to track these winged waifs as they make their way to their Mexican wintering ground.
The Monarch we saw tagged by Mark made its way across Delaware Bay to Lewes, Delaware that very afternoon. One of the Monarchs that Mark set up this day traveled from Cape May to Virginia Beach in a couple of days. Below is a sample map of a tagged Monarch’s movements. This little insect flew from Cape May to Louisiana, following a nearly straight path. How do they manage that??
This new technology will revolutionize the tracking of Monarchs, other migrating arthropods, and small songbirds as well. This will, no doubt, end the practice of banding birds with aluminum rings and tagging Monarchs with paper tags—which typically produce minimal results regarding the movements of the tagged creatures (because these individuals are very rarely re-trapped after being marked).
We can shortly expect to see precise movement data on all
kinds of migratory animals that will greatly improve our understanding of the
movement biology of these species. Booyah!
Post demonstration, Wilcove and I moved on to the state park
and visited the hawkwatch platform, then walked the dune trail and circled back
through the woods on the main walking track. The back of the dunes produced
large flocks of sparrows and Myrtle Warblers. The sparrows, mainly White-throats
but also Songs, White-crowneds, and juncos, were arrivals from overnight’s cold
front.
The park woods produced the prize of the day (with expert assistance). We came upon a young local naturalist on the boardwalk who quietly informed us that he had just watched a Connecticut Warbler foraging in the understory brush of this woodland patch. This is a bird I had been trying to locate in my autumn visits to Cape May for 3 decades without success. We worked the area and were able to get a couple of half-decent looks at this elusive songbird, which is not rare here in autumn—just super-tough to locate or observe because of its retiring habits.
It is, no doubt, the highest-priority songbird to pass annually through the Cape May environs. Most are seen in flight from the morning-flight platform at Higbee Beach by a sharp-eyed naturalist with identification skills that exceed our own. Watching a Connecticut Warbler fly by overhead from the morning watch platform is about as satisfying as taking a cold shower while fully clothed.
We ended the afternoon at the TNC South Cape May Meadows, which is always a nice place to walk at the very end of the day. Ducks, geese, herons, shorebirds, and songbirds all are there, and the vistas of the lighthouse are pleasing to the eye. We saw no remarkable species but the walk was relaxing and pleasant.
View of lighthouse from the South Cape May Meadows
Dinner at tiny Louisa’s restaurant downtown provided a perfect ending to a good day of birding. Flounder (Wilcove) and scallops (BB) were prepared to perfection. We were able to get a reservation because it was a Thursday. Louisa’s and Freda’s are the two tiny eating places in greatest demand in downtown Cape May. Both are worthy.
Friday broke gloomy. East winds (bad). Wilcove and I tried
the hedgerows of Higbee Beach, joining a large crowd of expectant birders. Apparently, the
birds did not get the memo. A few accipiters and a few warblers, but a solid
disappointment. Coral Avenue was crowded with birders but not crowded with birds. We instead spent
most of our time chatting with old friends, folks like Amy Donovan and Tom
O’Toole, devotees of autumn birding in Cape May.
The state park offered a change of venue, and shortly after arrival we got word that there was a Say’s Phoebe out on the war-time concrete bunker (Fort Miles Battery 223) just southeast of the Hawkwatch platform on the big broad beach. We headed out there and joined the crowd admiring this western vagrant flycatcher that has rarely been recorded from New Jersey. It is a species that Sibley does not even mention in his birding guide to Cape May.
On Friday PM Wilcove retreated to Princeton and I hunkered down at the Depot Travel Park. Word came down that a strong Nor’easter was headed our way, expected to hit on Sunday AM. I decided to shorten my stay by a day to avoid awakening to a flooded campsite on Sunday. Friday night I dined at Chen’s Garden, which is a carry-out. Luckily there was a tiny table where I could sit and eat. I did not want to carry my hot food back to the dark of my campsite. Chen’s is very basic, but the food was fine, especially if one has a hankering for Chinese, which I did.
Saturday early, in light rain, I broke camp and headed to Stone Harbor Point, a half-hour’s drive north of Cape May. The rain shower having passed, I walked the beach down to the point and back (about 2.5 miles), savoring the solitude and the autumnal weather (strong easterly winds, waves, cloud, passing Scottish mist). I encountered only two other solitary walkers. But plenty of birds.
A single Peregrine patrolled the Point.
Lots of shorebirds worked the shallows.
Oystercatchers roosted in the protection of the back inlet
along with cormorants and a scattering of Marbled Godwits.
Gulls dominated the shoreline—Great Black-backed, Lesser
Black-backed, Herring, and Ring-billed.
A large flock of waterbird passed by in the distance
(cormorants? geese?).
A tight flock of a thousand or so Tree Swallows swirled about, doing their autumn thing.
Back near the entry trail to the beach, I came upon a small assemblage of resting shorebirds up on a dry section of beach—7 Semipalmated Plovers, several Dunlin, and a single color-banded Piping Plover.
Monarchs settled on the Goldenrod that lined the path back to my car. It was time to drive home. The trip produced 104 species of birds, not bad for mid-October!
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