Star Island, one of the Isles of Shoals off the New Hampshire and Southern Maine coast, is a classic migrant trap. When the conditions are right, hundreds of migrating birds will spend the day refueling before continuing their northward trek in the evening. This is what keeps me returning to Star Island most springs for as least the past decade.
This year I headed to Star on Tuesday afternoon, just past, and returned to the mainland on Thursday afternoon. I also snuck in a day in southern Main on Monday (but I’ll leave that to another post).
The trips to Star are organized by Eric Masterson and as he says “Migration depends on three things: time of year, location and weather. I can control two of these!” Alas, for this year’s trip the weather did not cooperate… it was too nice.
We saw a wide variety of birds, both migrants and residents, but the numbers of individuals were small. The ‘bird of the trip’ was a Summer Tanager which was far north of its usual range.
Lastly, sometimes when the birding gets slow I turn my lens to the landscape; these photographs are here.
“too nice?” in what way?? Poor weather brings out more varieties?? These look pretty good to me, sorry. . .
Joe,
Regarding the weather and avian migration… it’s complicated but here is my version.
It is important to know that small birds migrate at night. They take off at dusk and fly all night. At first light the next morning, they look for a place to land and spend the day resting and refueling for the next night’s flight.
Thus, with respect to islands and coastal land, an offshore wind blows more birds out to sea and thus there are more birds to land on the islands when they go looking for land in the morning. Headwinds also tend to bring down more birds as they are tired and thus less picky about where they land. Poor visibility (rain and/or fog) also tends to bring down more birds as well.
Small birds generally migrate each night but really bad weather will keep more birds on the ground for the night. However, as described above, if the weather is too good (i.e. light or no wind and clear skies) birds don’t tend to land on offshore islands.
We had calm winds and partly cloudy skies during the three days I was on Star Island.
Hope this helps.
They look great to me. Never been to Star Island but I should consider it soon. Great pics