9/24 and 9/25: They had so much potential

Cold "wall" that came through on 9/24

The past two days have been characterized by very mediocre bird movements and interesting weather.  Yesterday was warm, eventually getting up into the 60s, and humid in the morning when a serious cold front plowed through that dropped the temperature 10-15 degrees and hit me with rain for the last 2-3 hours of the count.  The picture above is the front itself, truthfully I can't ever remember seeing clouds make a 90 degree right angle before.  Today was all about the wind, it blew out of the N and NNW and it blew hard.  The winds this morning were sustaining themselves in the 20-25 MPH range with gusts well over 30 at times.  Despite, or perhaps because of, the winds bird movement was pretty poor except for Canada Geese.

Canada Geese continue to be the most common birds of late with counts of 137 and 480 the past two days while other waterfowl are still showing but in sporadic groups.  Yesterday saw a decent movement of dabblers while today was mostly scoters and mergansers with only a handful of dabbling ducks noted.  While on the loon front numbers continue to be about the same with Commons totaling 87 for the two days and Red-throateds totaling 18.  Red-necked Grebes made a bit of an improvement today with 61 seen which is better than the 10 that were seen on Friday.

Shorebirds are still in short supply with a small flock of Sanderlings providing most of the total though a Baird's Sandpiper has been present for two days now and an American Golden-Plover was seen this afternoon.  As has become the norm up here this year jaegers were noted both days with a continuing light-morph juvenile Parasitic seen both yesterday and today while the light-morph adult that has been hanging around for several days was again noted this afternoon.  An additional unknown jaeger was seen this afternoon bringing the season's total to 61 jaegers!

The conditions have not been conducive to birding the point itself when I have had the opportunity for a couple days so I have seen very little but a few intrepid birders did scout the woods this morning with Rusty Blackbird and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker being the top prizes.