A Fall Migration Trip to Cape May, New Jersey

Maybe you thought migration was easy for a bird. Just spread those wings one evening when the stars are shining bright and rise above the trees circling into the heights until you find your bearings. Your bird brain can sense both a magnetic map and a star map, so suddenly you sense the south and dive downwind on breezes from the north.

After days of feasting on fat and plentiful worms, all small birds have extra energy loaded in their cells, ready to burn as wings beat all night on the long journey. From Ontario they come or Quebec, over New York and New England, where others have left a few hours before on the flight line.

After a cold front passes off the coast, the winds are usually northwest, and the birds are driven toward the unwelcoming sea. The map above their heads is clear in their brains, but below all is dark except for the confusing lights of cities and towers. If fog forms, then the lights are their only beacon, and they come down to crash into tall buildings and towers to end both flight and life.

If the sky stays clear, then the flight lasts until the first glimmer on the eastern horizon, and the birds descend into the open arms of trees and shrubs. But depending on the departure point and the strength of the winds, the only thing the birds may find below may be the watery grave of Delaware Bay or the Atlantic Ocean.

Then begins a frantic dash, somewhere, anywhere, searching for the shore before the strength is gone from wings and heart. That is when those islands and peninsulas of hope, the blessed land jutting out from and into the sea, become safe havens. Monhegan, Cape Cod, Nantucket, Block and Long Island, all drawing the lost birds to them like sirens in the endless sea.

These are called migrant traps, where many birds end up, crammed together by the hundreds and thousands, all vying for the resting places and the dwindling food supply. These places are life savers, but they are also traps that must be left quickly to find the wider lands of the interior, where food is everywhere, and the frightening water is far behind.

The biggest trap of all on the east coast is in southern New Jersey, at a place called Cape May. There a narrowing strip of land extends far south to enclose the huge expanse of Delaware Bay, and the lost birds flee to it in the gray dawn. They land in the trees just beyond the beach, and there in a place called Higbee, we wait for them.

Among the dozens of birders lining the hedges and tree lines are nearly twenty members of the Allen Bird Club and Hoffman Bird Club, migrants from western Massachusetts come to this mecca of birdwatching. It is barely light, but birds are suddenly moving from tree to tree across the fields and roads, always working their way north toward broader lands.

The wind is strong against them, but their movement is inexorable, and we see them as they hesitate on open branches before launching out to the next tree of safety. it is early October, so these are the hardier, late leaving migrants like flickers and sapsuckers, yellow-rumped and palm warblers, and kinglets.

The tiny kinglets are wearing their bright fresh colors after the summer molt, the greens and yellows blending into grays, all topped by the bright head patch of either the ruby-crowned or the golden-crowned. They do not seem tired, rather restless and energized after their long trip and chancy landing.

On the edge of a woodlot in a single tree there are twenty or more ruby-crowned kinglets flipping their wings and jumping from branch to branch. Do they chance the long dash across an open area and over a pond with hungry hawks lurking overhead?

Suddenly they are gone, melted into the shadows, waiting for the sun to warm the leaves and arouse the insects. Then they will catch a quick snack before they venture across the open and continue the day long trip back inland away from the dreaded water. Yes, migration is an easy thing, just a waltz from park to park.