For limited-registration programs where preregistration is required, please send payment (checks should be made out to CMBO), program choice, and date of program along with your full name, address, and daytime phone number to CMBO, 600 Route 47 North, Cape May Court House, NJ 08210. You may also register by phone; call (609) 861-0700. Paid registration ensures a place. For these preregistration programs, group size is limited and a minimum number of participants is necessary. Sorry, no refunds unless the program is cancelled by CMBO. Instructions for field trips, including meeting place, will be sent at least one week before the event.
Top 5 Reasons to Join a Cape May School of Birding Workshop.
Thousands of CMBO Workshop alumni are out there in the field, applying the skills they learned in Cape May. Read what they have to say about CMBO’s Cape May Birding Workshops.
With Michael O’Brien
It is not surprising Houghton Mifflin’s landmark The Shorebird Guide (2006) sprang from the brains and hands of three Cape May birders and authors. Now you can experience some of the east coast’s best shorebirding while guided by one of them. Michael O’Brien is equal parts skilled birder and superb teacher. Search storied locations like Bunker Pond, the South Cape May Meadows, Stone Harbor, and (just a few clicks up the road), Brigantine NWR for peep, plovers, yellowlegs plus possible gems like phalaropes or godwits. Over 25 plovers and sandpipers are in easy reach, with some species numbering in the thousands. Learn to begin with size, shape, behavior and voice, and then move on to careful examination of plumage, just as The Shorebird Guide teaches. Second leader (if registration warrants): Pete Dunne.
Pre-registration required. Cost: $255 members, $295 nonmembers.
With Louise Zemaitis
PSST! We’ll let you in on our local secret: late August is a superb time to be afield in Cape May searching for passerines en route to the neotropics! Empidonax flycatchers, kingbirds, Olive-sided Flycatcher, and over 20 warblers are frontline possibilities at Higbee Beach or Cape May Point State Park. The trails are less crowded with birders, and the birds themselves often behave as if they are less pressed for time than they are later in the season (read: better looks). Many of our fancier breeding birds, like Blue Grosbeaks and Yellow-breasted Chats, are still around, and given that it’s still the height of shorebird season, we’ll devote a bit of time to the waders, too. Second leader (if registration warrants): Michael O’Brien.
Pre-registration required. Cost: $190 members, $230 nonmembers.
With Michael O’Brien
For certain groups of birds - ducks, seabirds, raptors - flight identification techniques have been well established. But have you ever longingly watched a songbird fly over, wishing it would perch so you could identify it? Or had a flock of blackbirds on the horizon and wondered if they were grackles or red-wingeds? Or needed to rapidly sift a flyby flock of shorebirds for something unusual? Learn how to apply what we’ve learned about flight i.d. to any bird that crosses your air space, be it a familiar-in-flight Sharp-shinned Hawk, or a relative stranger like a tanager or oriole.
Pre-registration required. Cost: $190 members, $230 nonmembers.
Meet 7:00 a.m. at Cape May Point State Park
With Louise Zemaitis
. . .this is when you should come. Why? Mid-September straddles the migratory timetable. You’re not too late for shorebirds, not too early for hawks, and right on time for warblers and other neotropical migrants. Songbirds in the morning; shorebirds, seabirds or raptors in the afternoon. We go where weather conditions dictate. We strive to see the greatest species diversity. Second leader (if registration warrants): Michael O’Brien.
Pre-registration required. Cost: $255 members, $295 nonmembers.
Meet 7:00 a.m. at Cape May Point State Park
With Don Freiday
This workshop will be “just birding,” no indoor workshop time (unless the weather makes being indoors seem sensible) at the prime time to be in Cape May. Expect eagles, ospreys, falcons, accipiters, shorebirds, warblers, flycatchers, and many others. A three day workshop ups the chances for hitting a passing cold front just right. Second leader (if registration warrants): Mark Garland.
Pre-registration required. Cost: $255 members, $295 nonmembers.
With Michael O’Brien
Birds don’t sing much in the fall - but they sure do call. Chip notes, flight notes and critical listening are the primary subjects of this workshop, led by the man who wrote the book (well, made the CD-ROM) on flight calls. Two days with Michael equals years of struggle on your own. Includes optional night-time listening for nocturnal migrants. Learn to dissect a single note, determining whether it rises or falls, is clear or burry. You will never listen the same way again. Second leader (if registration warrants): Louise Zemaitis.
Pre-registration required. Cost: $190 members, $230 nonmembersWith Mark Garland
Songbird flights surge in October with a mix of long- and short-distance migrants; over 15,000 passerines were counted passing Higbee Beach during these three days alone last year, including Eastern Meadowlarks bound for the southeastern U.S., Bobolinks aimed at South America, and several thousand warblers headed both places and in between! And raptors: 45 Peregrines and 150 Cooper’s Hawks October 10, 2008, with 46 and 211 respectively the next day! No matter the flight conditions, Brigantine NWR is always in easy reach with great birding. We’ll design the program to maximize the spectacles and bird-learning opportunities. Second leader (if registration warrants): Don Freiday.
Pre-registration required. Cost: $255 members, $295 nonmembers.
With Michael O’Brien
A workshop celebrating the LBJ’s (little brown jobs.) Subtle and cryptic they might be. Difficult to identify, they are not, providing you have the right instructor, the right place and the right time. A time when lots of sparrows of lots of species abound. Common species like Swamp, Field, Savannah and Chipping. Uncommon ones like Clay-colored, Vesper, Lincoln’s, Nelson’s Sharp-tailed and Salt-marsh Sharp-tailed. Learn the tenets of size, shape and behavior first. Then practice examining plumage patterns to discover how stunning sparrows can be. Second leader (if registration warrants): Louise Zemaitis.
Pre-registration required. Cost: $190 members, $230 nonmembers.
At fifteen raptor species, this is the time of peak raptor diversity in Cape May. Perhaps including bonus birds like Golden Eagle and Swainson’s Hawk! It is a rare moment during late October in Cape May when something raptorial is not in view. Learn how to tell buteos from accipiters from falcons from eagles at the very edge of eyesight. Pete Dunne wrote the book that is the title of this workshop, and the only thing he enjoys more than watching hawks is imparting the knowledge he has accumulated during his 15,000 hawk watching hours. Second leader (if registration warrants): TBA.
Pre-registration required. Cost: $190 members, $230 nonmembers.
With Mark Garland
This is the time the local birders wait for. THE Bird Show and Autumn Weekend have come and gone (hopefully with you in attendance), crowds have diminished, and the most massive fallouts of the season commonly occur NOW! Sparrows, kinglets, bluebirds, American Robin, Hermit Thrush, and literally who knows what else, since this week starts the season for vagrants in Cape May. It’s also a great time for big raptors like buteos and Golden Eagle, and large seabird flights pass Avalon and Cape May Point nearly every day. Second leader (if registration warrants): Louise Zemaitis.
Pre-registration required. Cost: $255 members, $295 nonmembers.
With Don Freiday
Once outstanding vagrants like Cave Swallows or Ash-throated Flycatchers are now fairly routine, but you have to be out in November to see them. Royal Terns and Black Skimmers linger on the beaches, and loons, gannets and scoters push past offshore, with daily counts at the Avalon Seawatch often exceeding 10,000 birds. Any given walk around the Cape May Meadows will turn up 50-60 species, a mix of sparrows like Savannahs and White-crowneds, lingering herons, raptors overhead, and seabirds offshore. Parasitic Jaegers, American Pipits, winter finches, Snow Buntings. . .birding might have died down elsewhere, but not here. Not at all! Second leader (if registration warrants): TBA.
Pre-registration required. Cost: $190 members, $230 nonmembers.