Migration

I awoke in a warm sweat.  No, it wasn't the night sweats of covid, this was migration fever.  As sure as I know which way north is, I sensed that as I lay there in bed, millions of neotropical migrants were in the air winging flap upon flap towards Ontario.  Hastily I dressed, ate, and travelled towards the Lake Erie shoreline - I with conventional means of human navigation, they with invisible instinct implanted brilliantly deep within from ages long since past.  At dusk they rose like vapours from misty mountains in West Virginia, backyards and forests in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky, and a patchwork of other southlands to drop like scintillating rain on stopover sites along the Erie shore.  Colours of cerulean blue, scarlet red, flame orange, olive green brought to life at the sunburst of dawn, forests brimming with the life of myriad bird song.

...at least that was the fantasy and the hope as I cruised down the highway in the pitch dark of morning (I've been reading too much Virginia Woolf, and her descriptiveness is rubbing off).  Ok, back to reality!  Yesterday, I decided to take the day and go to the hallowed ground of Point Pelee!  Migration has been slow lately, but I was hoping that the light winds over night might have been conducive to migration!  I got to the park around 645am and birded until just before noon.  Although it was definitely not an insane day of bird activity, it was still pretty good, and I tallied 19 species of warbler including 5 Prothonotary Warblers, 1 Hooded, and best of all a Kirtland's Warbler! Most of the birds were very high up in the canopy which did not make for great photos, but I managed to get a few.

Warbling Vireo

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Cedar Waxwing

Prothonotary Warbler

Blackburnian Warbler

Cape May Warbler

Kirtland's Warbler!

Forster's Tern

Dunlin

I stopped quickly at Erieau pier and was rewarded with a flyby Whimbrel!

Whimbrel