Cape May Migration

• Incredible migration of songbirds, raptors and waterbirds!
• A boat excursion into the coastal salt marshes.
• See the research programs of Cape May Bird Observatory.

Tour Overview

Cape May, found at the southern tip of New Jersey, is one of those legendary locations with a rich birding history and is one of the birdiest places on the eastern seaboard! We’ll bird a variety of habitats including salt marshes, brushy woodlots and extensive beaches. Hordes of songbirds migrate through the Cape at this time of year. We will explore various patches where the warblers, sparrows, buntings and other passerines spend the day refueling for their next leg of their migrations.

Overhead swirling flocks of thousands of swallows are commonplace and this tour is timed to hit the peak of the magnificant Peregrine Falcon migration, that has a cult-like following of raptor enthusiasts. This is also a good time to see other raptor species like Osprey, Northern Harrier, Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s Hawks and American Kestrels.

Shorebird migration is also at a crescendo at this time of year with the extensive beaches of the Jersey shoreline coated in Black-bellied Plovers, Red Knots, Western Sandpipers and Ruddy Turnstones.

Other waterbirds are starting to gather at the point with treats like Parasitic Jaegers harassing the terns offshore, Black Skimmers and Royal Terns roosting on the beach, evening flights of egrets and herons over the ocean and the first flocks of Black and Surf Scoters coming down the coasts. And finally Cape May has been the place of many a rarity so who knows what surprise may occur while we are there.