Good way to end the month

Sanderling

Today's weather was nearly as predicted, the winds came out of the W/NW all morning and afternoon long but to our benefit the rain stopped pre-dawn and the sun came out in the afternoon which made the point a much nicer place to be.  Activity was good early this morning and continued steadily through the day with only a moderate drop-off in the afternoon, much different than the precipitous decline in activity that  has been typical of late.  Tomorrow's forecast is for similar conditions to today with a greater chance of rain so we will see if the birds are still going to use the favorable winds to their advantage.

Presumably making their final large push of the season Red-necked Grebes were the most common bird of the day with 914 counted, of note they continued to move past at rates above 100 birds per hour till the end of the count.  A number of other birds also had their best showing to date with Horned Grebe (61), Common Loon (116), Ring-necked Duck (32), Greater and Lesser Scaup (209 and 95 respectively), and Surf Scoter (220) among them.  Duck diversity remained good with 16 total species including 124 Redheads, 1 Black Scoter, and 7 Long-tailed Ducks.  Surprisingly only 6 Red-throated Loons were counted despite the much larger numbers for their larger cousins.

There were very few other waterbirds around the point today but for the first time this season there appeared to be a southward movement of Ring-billed Gulls during the morning and a few Bonaparte's Gulls continued out on the lake.  A single American Golden-Plover along with at least one Sanderling are still hanging on along the beach.

The woods continue to be quite active with sparrows making up a large percentage of the biomass these days but there are still a few late warblers and other migrants.  So far it seems the winter finch forecast is holding true as the number of Pine Siskins continues to build each day.

Peregrine Falcon