Day 1: Arrival in Philadelphia; transfer to Cape May

After meeting as a group at 2pm at the arrival hall in Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), we will drive straight to Cape May, our base for all 6 nights of the tour. Following a local weather-check, and detailed scouring of the local bird news, we will hatch our plan over our welcome dinner for the next morning. Night in Cape May.

 

*NOTE: On Each day and night, we will make plans based on developing bird scenarios, and weather conditions. Certain sites and types of birding work well during specific conditions (e.g. northwest winds for hawk migration), and we will react to this instantly. Therefore, the exact order that we visit sites, and the full list of sites we will cover in the Cape May area will be governed by conditions and news at the time of the tour. This flexibility will afford us the greatest level of success.

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Days 2-6: Cape May

The exact order and selection of sites will be governed by local birding conditions at the time (i.e. weather, where is hot for birds, etc.) Here is a summary of just some of the most famous hotspots…

 

Higbee Beach: Bordering Delaware Bay, it is not usually the beach that is the focus for fall birders, but the fields, bushes and brushland, surrounded by water on all sides that attracts migrating songbirds en masse. This is a traditional dawn time site, where we will position ourselves on the dike to take in the warbler flights at sunrise, and seek the ones that drop in along the forest trails and field-side tracks. The beauty of the dyke is eye level views of some of the migrants. It is said that 250,000 birds fly over this dyke each fall! Among the birds we will be looking for, will naturally be those most addictive “fluffballs” of migration, warblers. Each year over 30 species come through this site, including Connecticut, Cape May, Blackburnian, Northern Parula, Blackpoll, Black-throated Blue, and Canada Warblers. Accompanying this A-list band will be a wealth of other songbirds, like nuthatches, vireos, orioles, flycatchers, thrushes, sparrows. 15 species of sparrow are recorded annually, including Clay-colored and Field Sparrows, and 6 swallows species are regularly in the air at one time during fall. Located on the edge of Delaware Bay, also means that seabirds, ducks, and other waterbirds are often airborne too, meaning it is often difficult to know where to look on the heady days. This is the “down” side of Cape May. Migration is often happening at 360 degrees!

 

Cape May Point State Park and Hawkwatch: This is arguably the centerpiece attraction at Cape May. A spacious wooden platform is the base for not only meeting with the local hawk counters and birding community, but also to experience raptor migration up close, and in spectacular fashion, in peak season. While hawk watching can be envisioned as a painful task, picking out small dots in the sky, and indeed it can be. However, at many times, birds like Broad-winged, Cooper’s, Sharp-shinned, Red-shouldered, and Red-tailed Hawks glide gently, and low overhead, just begging to be photographed as they drift over the peninsula on their way south for the winter. At other times, kettles of raptors gather in the sky, making for quite the exhibition, as mixed species groups come together on a shared thermal of warm air. Fifteen raptor species come through regularly each year, and thousands come through on some single fall days. We will time our visits for the best wind conditions and light, to get us a front seat at the “Annual Cape May Raptor Spectacle”, an experience every birder should get at least once in their lives.

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Avalon: This is THE spot on the Cape May Peninsula for seawatching in the fall, and where official counts take place. Each year, hundreds of thousands of birds pass by this very spot! We visit a little earlier than the October-November peak (to ensure we do not miss the other migration pulses through the region of hawks, shorebirds, and songbirds for example), we are still likely to pick up sea ducks (scoters and mergansers), seabirds (terns and gulls), loons, and gannets in decent numbers.

 

Stone Harbor Point: At the end of Seven Mile Island, this Atlantic coast barrier island shifts the interest to shorebirds, which like warblers, other songbirds, hawks, and seabirds, also pass by Cape May in epic numbers during the fall. This area of tidal flats and beach provides easy walking with huge numbers of shorebirds to cover on the appropriate tide. In late September, 25 species of shorebirds are often present, including American Oystercatcher, Red Knot, White-rumped Sandpiper, Marbled Godwit, and Piping Plover, to name a few. Terns and gulls are always represented here well too, with 16 species possible in this month, among them, Lesser and Great Black-backed Gulls, and Caspian, Common, Forster’s, Royal and Sandwich Terns. Congregations of thousands of shorebirds also bring in their attendant predators, and so Merlins and Peregrine Falcons are also beach regulars during this time too.

 

South Cape May Meadows: This Nature Conservancy site protects important wetlands and bushland near the tip of the peninsula, and is a major birding attraction in the area. Trails traverse the area, allowing scouring of the wetlands for ducks, bitterns, egrets, herons, rails, shorebirds, ibises, raptors, terns, gulls, kingfishers, kingbirds, and wrens, among others! Some of the species on offer include an assortment of raptors, like Northern Harrier, Bald Eagle, and Osprey. Among others are Northern Shoveler, Northern Pintail, and sometimes Eurasian Wigeon too. Virginia Rails, Least Bitterns, Marsh Wrens, and Swamp Sparrow lurk among the swampy vegetation. Little Blue, Green and Tricolored Herons, and Glossy Ibis may be seen working the muddy edges, while Belted Kingfishers and Eastern Kingbirds look on. This is a really enjoyable site to slowly walk around, pick up migrants on the wing, on the water, or on the ground.

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Other legendary sites could include Nummy Point for Nelson’s Sharptail and Seaside Sparrows, and Clapper Rails, and the extensive, rail-riddled saltmarshes of Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge (formerly Brigantine).

 

Day 7: Cape May to Philadelphia for DEPARTURES

After some brief final local birding in the morning, we shall head back to the airport as a group. The tour leader will drop off everyone at Philadelphia International Airport at the same time (between noon and 1pm), in time for mid-afternoon departures or later.