Lloyd Spitalnik Photography

Here are some of the flight shots mentioned in the previous post. Let me know what you think.

I’ve always said that Cape May is either feast or famine. I’ve been there in both conditions many times. A good friend went there the beginning of last week (Oct. 4th-6th) and called to tell me what a tough time he was having. This was strictly from a photographer’s point of view. He mentioned there were birds coming through but too high to shoot. That’s the famine.

I received a call from Kevin Karlson telling me it was time to come down. This was Wednesday the 7th. If you remember, the winds were 40 MPH gusting to 60. While driving down the Garden State Parkway I had to hold onto to the steering wheel pretty tightly the whole 130 miles. Arriving at 4PM, I met up with Kevin and a few other friends and we tried to take some shots of Merlin. Those birds are so fast to begin with imagine when they have a 40 MPH tailwind. Needless to say, I came away with nothing. Fortunately I really went down for Thursday’s possibilities and wasn’t disappointed.

At 6:30am I met up with a group of friends who just happen to be some of the finest photographers around. Besides Kevin, some of the others were Scott Elowitz, Jim Zipp and Jim Neiger to name a few. As soon as we got into our camouflage drapes the birds started coming in. Early in the morning is the time to shoot perched birds. There were a few times when we had 3 Cooper’s Hawks sitting right in front of us. We shot until 9 and then it was time for flight shooting. We didn’t stop until 6PM and all had a great time. Other than Cooper’s Hawk, we also were able to shoot Sharp-shinned Hawk, Broad-winged Hawk and Northern Harrier. Strangely, there were very few Merlin which were expected in the late afternoon, but all in all I’d say we had our feast.

In my last post I used the word “pathetic” to describe the current songbird migration going on in the NYC area. I’m sure there are a lot of birders out there who would disagree with that assessment. However, I’ve spoken to a lot of experienced, long time birders and we all agree that this might be the worst we’ve seen it in many, many years. Sure, you can go out, and if you work really hard, you can probably fill your day list with a decent amount of species. The problem is, with few exceptions, most species are seen in ones and twos. Back to the title of this post, from a photographer’s view, not being concerned with birds high in the treetops, the migration has been almost non-existent. Considering we’re into October, I have very few images to show for my time in the field. What’s most discouraging is not the lack of photos, but the severe decline in numbers of individual birds. Hopefully the birds have found other migration paths. Here are a few photos I’ve been able to get. I hope you enjoy them.