great white

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A sleek great white that's not a shark. But to a swallow-water fish, it's just as lethal. The great egret is a patient predator, like Uncle Buck, a skilled fisherman, hunting by quiet stealth. We quietly watched this one snatch its lunch: fish sticks without the breading.

The great egret is a large, all-white plumaged heron, but not to be confused with the white morph (some say separate species) of the great blue heron. The egret has a yellow bill and black legs; the white great blue has yellow legs.

Confused? Yes, so was I.

Worldwide there are about 63 species in the heron family, which include not only the herons but also egrets and bitterns. Egrets are types of herons that are generally snow white. They get their special name from the long nuptial plumes called "aigrettes" that are grown during the breeding season.

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Cape May 2

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Raptors were not the only thing migrating through Cape May in early October.

Something much more delicate was headed to warmer climes. Something not exactly designed for long-distance flight. If hawks are made of muscle and sinew, then butterflies are made of papier-mâché.

But somehow, every fall the fourth generation of adult monarch butterflies doesn’t, as Dylan Thomas would have said, "go gentle into that good night." Instead they fly south—a long way south. Two thousand miles south. For years no one knew where they went; they just disappeared. Not a single egg, larva, pupa or adult could be found in their summer time range. POOF! All vanished.

In 1937, Frederick Urquhart, a zoology professor at the University of Toronto, and his wife Norah decided they’d find out where the Monarchs go. They literally dedicated over 30 years of their lives to the project, and in the winter of 1974 they solved the mystery. The Monarchs, millions and millions of them, were found on some of the taller mountain peaks west of Mexico City. Today there are five official Monarch sanctuaries there: Cerro Altamirano, Sierra Chincua, Sierra El Campanario, Cerros Chivatí-Huacal and Cerro Pelón.

I remember first reading about where the monarchs went in National Geographic in 1976.









-Top photo taken at Cape May Point State Park, October 2009. Soon after this photo was taken, these two monarchs flew across Delaware Bay, but an even more formidable obstacle awaited them: the Gulf of Mexico.



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Cape May

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South of Avalon is Cape May Point State Park, a birding mecca, especially in the fall. From September to December, migratory birds pass over the narrow finger of land, the last piece of New Jersey shoreline before the Delaware Bay. If the conditions are not right the birds linger in the area before crossing the open water. Wouldn't you?

First warblers migrate through, then birds of prey and finally, late in the season, it's the ducks. In early October, it was raptors. There's a large, wooden birdwatching platform built between the lighthouse and pond where the Cape May Hawk Watch takes place. Most days it's crowded with people looking up or out or across, watching. The first day we were there was Accipiter day: 358 sharp-shinned and 455 Cooper's hawks were counted. There were also 97 kestrels and 205 broad-winged hawks.








Cooper's hawk. Note the rounded tail trimmed in white.