Pelee Jaunt - Nov 3, 2026

 
Birds! 

I drove down late on Nov 2nd and spent a small amount of time "night birding" - but I didn't see anything, and decided to sleep. 

Nov 3rd was fun at Point Pelee. I needed to remind myself why there are so few notable rare passerine records in fall from the tip itself - and it worked. Some potential reasons: 

• Too many gulls and raptors flying aboot
• Too windy (in particular, the dynamics between the weather systems & the water temperature)
• A change in the trigger for vagrancy in the first place (i.e., different ages and life stages of any potential rares)

Nonetheless - good birding was had. Insects also put on a show with 9 species of Leps and 6 species of Odes. Details here: https://ebird.org/checklist/S407998552

The real action kicked off at night. I was very tempted to see what would happen with nocturnal bird movement and the warm temperatures. It barely went below 19 C all night! Would it be possible to detect late or "wrong way" migrants? 

I split the night into two parts - starting with a 3 hour watch just as it was getting dark: https://ebird.org/checklist/S407998401

In a way, the weirdness I had hoped for actually happened. In this first session, only 11 songbirds in total were observed, yet one was identifiable as a Red-eyed Vireo (!! - thanks to the magic of digital photography). Interestingly, I didn't hear a single NFC during this watch. The checklist may look rather dull at face value, but seeing birds at night has been unimaginably exciting. The flock of Ring-necked Ducks was really neat - and it inspired me to take some photos and a few seconds of uneventful video... 

After a short sleep, I was back out around ~3:20 am for another round: https://ebird.org/checklist/S407998356

Unlike the early evening hours, I finally heard some NFC's ... Siskins! There are always some tantalizing birds that go unidentified with these watches. Thankfully the Short-eared Owl hung around long enough for me to get some really good looks and visually confirm the ID. I've seen no shortage of these birds over the years - breeders, wintering birds, birds travelling to and from roosts, birds flying way out over the lake during wicked storms...... but the flight style of this bird was unlike any previously. Active nocturnal migration.  So cool! 

I had the ability to bird the rest of the day - but with my biggest curiosity-itch fully scratched - I ended up heading for home pretty soon thereafter.