Following yesterday’s cold front, a huge flight was underway come nightfall. It was by far the biggest of the season to date, and one of the stronger (by density) flights as you can see around here.

Here are the midnight radar and velocity images, for example:

Even as of 4:00am, with the eastern sky likely showing a little light, the flight was still strong:

So of course I was up early to go to Sandy Point. However, the winds were forecasted to be out of the northeast, becoming easterly in the morning. And, the local weather stations I looked at (and my windometer at home ) were all reading north or northeast when I awoke a little before 5:00 this am. The 6:00am Intellicast “Wind cast” image shows this coastal northeasterly wind very well:

After almost any night in the fall with a little migration, there will be a few birds at Sandy Point. And after a migration as strong as last night’s, there were bound to be some birds. However, due to a combination of geography and the instinct to fly into the wind to compensate for overnight drift (to oversimplify things a bit), there are just never a lot of birds at Sandy Point on northeasterly winds.

On the other hand, on both north and northeast winds, I have witnessed good morning flights (aka Morning Re-determined Migration” or “Morning Reorientation”) in the south-facing peninsulas that reach into Casco Bay, including the dual peninsulas of Harpswell.  What I have not figured out yet, however, is which point is best, how, and when. This is mostly because I can’t tear myself away from Sandy Point long enough to find out!

But this morning, as I reached I-295, something made me turn north instead of south. With what was supposed to be an increasing northeasterly wind and a huge flight, this should have been a perfect morning to test my hypotheses at the tip of Harpswell.  So, with no small feeling of impending regret, I drove down to Pott’s Point at the end of Rte 24 for the dawn.

As birds that were over and beyond Casco Bay at sunrise begin to work their way inland and compensate for that drift, island-hopping to the north and northeast deposits birds in the long fingers of the Mid-Coast. Unlike Sandy Point on Cousin’s Island, however, there isn’t a single leading line, perfectly-pointing peninsula, narrow crossing, and raised bridge (for visibility) that combine to offer a perfect morning flight observation location.

So I thought today would have been a perfect morning to see if Pott’s Point was the answer on a northeasterly wind, even if it meant missing a few birds at Sandy Point.

I was wrong.

I arrived at the end of Pott’s Point at 6:27, 20 minutes after sunrise, but found the wind to not be northeast, or even north, but to be north-northwest. Uh-oh, I thought.

But since I have yet to find a way to be in two places at once, I settled in for the next hour at Pott’s Point (it would have taken at least 45 minutes to get from Pott’s Point to Sandy Point), and counted…very, very little:
16 Cedar Waxwings
11 American Goldfinches
5 American Redstarts
5 Unidentified
2 Yellow-rumped Warblers
1 Pileated Woodpecker

Now, all of those birds were doing the “right” thing, flying from over the bay or from Haskell Island just to the south, then over Pott’s Point and northward up the peninsula.  There were just so few of them!

If I only had a boat…

The view of the top of the power plant at the other end of Cousin’s Island was a reminder of what could have been, as Sandy Point is excellent in a NNW wind. Was I missing a huge flight? Or, were the winds northeasterly on the other side of the bay, and only a light flight was passing through there (although it would have undoubtably been better than the “flight” at Pott’s, I will convince myself of the latter!)?

In other words, I was here:

But should have been here:

Besides, it’s a peaceful spot to spend the morning, with the only traffic being a few lobster boats.

And the narrow peninsula does have a Monhegan-esque feel to it and its birding (sometimes).

So if the migrants were not at Sandy Point, where was the Morning Flight concentration this morning?  Looking back at the radar images, there was not a ton of offshore drift (due to the lack of a westerly component throughout the night), so maybe there just weren’t a lot of birds offshore come sunrise.  But there still looks like more than enough for a good reorientation flight at sunrise.

Bascially, I am not only left without an answer to my pursuit of a good Mid-Coast morning flight spot, but now I will no doubt spend the rest of the season being over-cautious about missing a flight at Sandy Point and therefore miss the next huge flight through Pott’s Point on a northeasterly wind!

There wasn’t much else left to do but go birding, so I poked my way up the peninsula and into Brunswick, checking a few of the hotspots. Some day I will find a rarity at Stover’s Point, but today wasn’t the day for that either. However, I did have some pretty good birding at Mitchell Field, including a trickle of warblers overhead. A Yellow-bellied Flycatcher and a Lincoln’s Sparrow were highlights, and other migrants present included seven species of warblers. OK, it was small consolation, but at least there were some migrants around Harpswell today!

Unfortunately, the wind and weather forecasts for the coming days hardly look good for Sandy Point, so it might be as much as a week before I am back to spending the sunrise at “my office” where I should be!

P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for my “Morning Flight Phenomenon on Cousin’s Island” workshop for RSU5 Recreation and Community Education next week. More information and registration details are here.

9/5 UPDATE: I received an email this morning from Bill Hancock who was at Sandy Point on Friday and reported it was “dead” and did in fact have a northeasterly wind. Phew!  Meanwhile, I tallied 110 migrants on calm conditions on Saturday morning – a very light flight, as expected this time.