I was standing on the hawk watch platform last week, marveling how little much has changed.
Let me explain.
It used to be that nobody birded Cape May in October. End of September rolled around. Cape May rolled up it’s tent and slipped into the night. Birders stayed home and counted down the days until the Christmas Bird Count Season and they could go birding again.
Jessie Barry, fall 2007 Hawk Counter, keeps a close watch on the sky.
The problem was the New Jersey Audubon Society’s Cape May Autumn Weekend (the one that was just concluded). Back in days of yore, the event was held in late September. The alleged “peak” of the migration.
By default, if that was the peak, then anything that happened after was on the down-hill slide of autumn.
Who wants to bird the dregs of autumn. Nobody. So come October, post Autumn Weekend, nobody came.
The result was that the best birding of the season was habitually missed by the majority of birders.
I remember the greatest migratory fallout I ever witnessed. It was around October 15. I was standing on the hawk watch platform alone.
There weren’t even birds. Not yet.
As dawn broke the landscape was eerily absent of avian forms. Conditions were perfect.
Two days after the front.
Light northerly winds.
Peak season for middle-distance passerines.
There were no hawks, either. I looked left. I looked right. I scanned all around. I…
Saw some twinkling lights way overhead. It looked like shards of aluminum foil catching the rays of a sun that was yet to break the horizon. Puzzled I trained my binocular on the skyyyy….
And it was awash in birds.
Tens upon tens of thousands of birds.
Then…the sky fell. Literally.
In minutes, Cape May was awash in birds; inundated.
I remember another birder showing up. His name was Ron. He had the kind of grin on his face that it takes a pint of gin or a life-altering encounter to engender. He and I just kept looking at the spectacle then looking at each other in amazement then looking around for someone, anyone, to share the spectacle with.
Autumn Weekend participants scan Lighthouse Pond from the Hawkwatch platform.
There was no one. That was the way it was in October.
Then the New Jersey Audubon Society moved the Autumn Weekend to the end of October. The new “peak of the autumn migration.” Then everyone came to the realization that October wasn’t the dregs of autumn. It was the mighty buildup.
Thousands of people have now experienced the great migratory fallouts of October that Cape May is famous for. People still talk about the great Hermit Thrush fallout of 2006. The 1.3 million American Robin flight. The morning you had to watch your step to keep from trampling kinglets foraging in the grass.
A lot has changed (you’d say; you’d think).
Well it has and it hasn’t. I mean the only thing that’s changed is that more birders come later. The thing that hasn’t changed is that they leave too soon.
November, particularly the first half of November, is just as rich in birds as October. Seabird migration is at it’s peak. Raptors continue into December (I recall a Christmas Bird Count where over 200 Red-tailed and Red-shouldered Hawks (not to mention two Golden Eagles) were tallied.
Maybe New Jersey Audubon should move the Autumn Weekend to the end of November?
Of course, it might take a bit of convincing to get the restaurants and B&Bs to stay open that long.
Then again. Maybe not.