Birds, Butterflies and Bats

  The title sound like a Paul Cypher blog post. Paul's Blog - Birds, Brews and Blither

 In the dwindling evening daylight I had half a dozen Common Nighthawks put on a show over my house in Mason County.

  Besides the Nighthawks I saw several migrating Monarch butterflies all flying in the southwest direction.  They passed by right up until sunset. The last one I saw at 8:12 PM, 4 minutes before local sunset.  It did a couple of laps around one of my White Pines before settling onto one of the branches to roost for the night.

Chimney Swift

  Five minutes after sunset I was able to get a couple of photos of a high flying bat.  Subsequent lower flying bats were impossible to keep in the camera's viewfinder.

Latest Birds

   Finally back on a more birder-friendly schedule after spending most of peak migration on the dreaded dayshift.  This morning I took a walk along the Lake Michigan shore after work to see if any shorebirds blew in on the southerly winds.

   Only shorebirds I saw were Spotted Sandpipers.

   Came across a colony of Bank Swallows on a sandy bluff overlooking the lake.  As nest preparations must still be going on I saw small groups of the swallows fly down to the beach pick up some nesting materials and fly back to the sandy cliff. Not sure if the volume of material presented to their mate makes any difference but clearly some birds are trying a little harder than others.

Here's a guy confident in his relationship

This guy either is in over his head or pulled a Kobe Bryant

Common Raven minding its own business

Crow also minding the raven's business

Nevermore

  Lastly here a couple of photos taken from the yard this week.

Robin taking lunch to the kids

Common Nighthawk

Over 120,000 Broad-wingeds at Lake Erie Metropark 9/16-17

    The peak of Broad-winged Hawks migration has arrived at Lake Erie Metropark. Tuesday 68,000 were counted and today another 52,000 were added.    Tomorrow's weather will be favorable for another good day with winds with a northerly component.  So if there are still broadwings that need to move through, Thursday would be a perfect day for them to do it.

   Even if another broadwing day doesn't materialize tomorrow there should be plenty of other raptors to keep the hawk watchers busy.

Flying on their backs

Merlin

Osprey

Sharp-Shinned

American Kestrel

  Songbirds are also migrating through LEMP.

Black and White Warbler

American Redstart

Magnolia Warbler

   Warblers are also migrating through my yard.

Tennessee Warbler

Blackpoll Warbler

  Other recent yardbirds of interest are shown below

Common Nighthawk

Ruby-throated Hummingbird