Cape May is one of the premier birding locations in the world. Several years ago, in preparation for a planned trip to Cape May I purchased Clay and Pat Sutton’s book Birds and Birding at Cape May: What to See and When and Where to Go. It was a 568 page tome and I read almost every page, leaving my mouth watering to go. However, we had to cancel our plans because my daughter was getting married in Italy and that obviously took precedence. We resurrected these plans for early October, 2015. As the time to leave approached we watched with trepidation as hurricane Joaquin devastated the Caribbean. Fortunately, the hurricane stayed out in the Atlantic but it did generate one of the most severe nor’easters on record causing massive flooding in South Carolina. While the weather in Cape May could not have been better, sunny every day, the winds had pushed most of the migrating birds westward.
The birding in Cape May was rescued by the availability of birding by boat trips sponsored by the Cape May Bird Observatory on the Osprey, leaving from the Miss Chris Marina. We took two of these 2 – 3 hour rides with naturalist Fritz Alia as our bird guide.
And, of course, the winds had no effect on the many beautiful Victorian homes in Cape May. These places, as opposed to birds, are shown in the PLACES folder AND SLIDESHOW PLACES.
Another item that saved the day was the demonstration of hawk banding. This gave us the opportunity to obtain great close up photos of a male and female Cooper’s Hawk and of an American Kestrel.
After 5 days at Cape May we visited friends at Setauket, NY. A beautiful nearby pond provided close-up photos of Mute Swans and American Wigeons. While ticks are a concern in Cape May, we never had a problem because of the wide walking paths and boardwalks for the birding areas (see the Meadows photo in PLACES).
