Buffalo Ornithological Society
Birding Western New York and the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario

Swainson's Thrush - © Sue Barth

Scoping May

It's showtime! This is the month we have all been waiting for! The possibilities are endless. The beauty of May is that you can basically go birding anywhere and expect to see migrants. The birds arrive in pulses, usually accompanying a warm front. On the third Sunday of the month is the annual May Bird Census. Please join us by volunteering some of your time on this day! This year's compiler is Bob DeLeon, please contact him if you can assist with the count at [email protected].

There is an art to birding in May. Weather plays a huge part on when birds arrive and where they make landfall. Generally speaking, locations along the immediate lakeshores can sometimes be loaded with birds. This is most likely to happen after the passage of a warm front followed by a cold front resulting in rain. The precipitation can ground birds and produce fallout conditions. Of course the planets have to align in order for a fallout to occur, but when it does, it's magnificent!

The traditional migrant hotspots are the popular focus in May: Forest Lawn Cemetery, Tifft Nature Preserve, Reinstein Woods, Goat Island, Four Mile Creek State Park and Fort Niagara State Park. On years with cooler weather, leaf bud is delayed the closer you are to the lake shores. Inland locations will tend to leaf out earlier and therefore be more attractive to migrants. Forest Lawn Cemetery is widely acclaimed as a spring destination for Neotropical migrants. This is due to its inland location resulting in earlier leaf out as well as its oasis-like appeal to birds looking for a resting place after a long night of migration. The list of rarities located here is long. Unfortunately, migrants this time of year don't tend to linger. These birds are on a race to get back to their breeding grounds.

May still offers hawk flights at the Hamburg Hawkwatch. By this stage of the spring raptor migration, immature Broad-winged Hawks make up the bulk of the numbers as well as young Bald Eagles and Sharp-shinned Hawks. In the early mornings at the hawkwatch site, you can test your skills at identifying overhead passerines. These birds are dispersing inland away from the lakeshore to find suitable foraging habitat for the day.

WNY is not known as a great spring shorebird site, but they do pass through the region in May. The traditional locations are the best area to check: Woodlawn Beach SP, Batavia WWTP and Iroquois NWR. Also worth checking are the farm fields in Niagara and Orleans Counties - especially after a heavy rain. Not only does the rain create temporary mud puddles in agricultural fields for the shorebirds to forage in, but precip events will also ground the birds during their overhead passage. One of the most stunning sandpipers to cross paths with this time of year is the Dunlin. Species such as Solitary and Spotted Sandpipers can be found along creeks and pond edges at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Reinstein Woods and Delaware Park Lake.

Later migrants are still sifting through towards the end of the month, species such as Yellow-bellied and Olive-sided Flycatchers, Mourning and Blackpoll Warblers and Gray-cheeked Thrush.

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional time to look for migrant Whimbrel along the Fort Erie Lakeshore just west of the Peace Bridge. Most Whimbrel migrating through the region cross the fetch of Lake Ontario and there is a watch set up near Toronto to record the thousand-plus birds that pass through annually, all within a few short days. Every year a few birds end up along the rocky shoreline of Fort Erie. Check the end of Kraft Road, Windmill Point and Rock Point Provincial Park. The breakwalls along the Buffalo Outer Harbor would also be worth scoping.