A Common Tern spotted at Point Pelee National Park/Kirby Adams

Back in 2014 I regaled Traveler readers with a report from Canada’s Point Pelee National Park during spring migration. This month, I’m back to remind you that good spring spots are often just as good or better in the fall. I felt a little guilty crossing the border for a national park trip during this centennial celebration, but I think our friends to the north deserve a tip of the hat. Parks Canada celebrated its 115th birthday in May, making it a somewhat older sibling to our National Park Service.

Point Pelee National Park will have its centennial birthday party in 2018, marking one hundred years of preservation of some of the best bird habitat in the Great Lakes region. Birders and waterfowl hunters together pushed for the creation of the park, which allowed duck hunting until the late 1980s. Today it’s primarily a birding destination, though the beaches along this southern-most tip of mainland Canada attract vacationers with only a passing interest in birds.

The peninsula we know as Point Pelee obviously predates the park by several millennia. Since the glaciers retreated, birds have been stopping at migrant traps like this every spring and fall to gather strength – and perhaps courage – for a lake crossing. For southbound birds it’s only ten miles to Pelee Island and another few miles to Ohio’s archipelago of Lake Erie Islands. After that, there’s the relative safety of the north coast of Ohio. Still, a warbler equal in weight to a Loonie (Canada’s one dollar coin, not the actual water bird) is compelled to stop and assess the situation when faced with a Lake Erie crossing. That’s what makes Point Pelee a special place compared to a random patch of woods north of Toronto.

Pelee is famous for its spring migration and the three-week long Festival of Birds. It’s an essential line item for a birder’s bucket list. What’s sometimes overlooked is that the geography of the point makes it an even better fall migrant trap. The peninsula juts southward into the lake. It’s a gathering point for migrants who have just crossed Lake Erie in the spring, but in the fall it’s truly a trap where the migration highway bottlenecks en route to Ecuador.

Warblers in the fall can be a bit more difficult to identify than the same birds were in May. Roger Tory Peterson famously provided in his field guide a color plate titled “Confusing Fall Warblers.” Blackpoll Warblers and Bay-Breasted Warblers look nothing alike on May 10th, but could be twins at first glance on Labor Day, or Labour Day as it is in Ontario. Challenges aside, the woods can be full of warblers, orioles, tanagers, and flycatchers on any given day in September. This past Friday, Eastern Wood-Pewees were everywhere, the cottonwoods were full of Nashville Warblers, and flocks of Cedar Waxwings were mobbing anything that had berries.

The very tip of the Point Pelee peninsula is appropriately named The Tip. This is a great spot for watching birds on the lake, which is somewhat inappropriately called seawatching. Migrant ducks, loons, and grebes are common sights at The Tip. Long lines of cormorants heading south are regular throughout the month. Just off the actual tip of land is an area of violent water where waves hitting the west side of the peninsula meet those hitting the east with nothing to buffer them. The water is literally crashing into itself, as are the fish riding the currents. This makes The Tip a smorgasbord for terns and gulls. Feeding frenzies at the tip are a treat to watch and can happen at any time of year. Last week it was a flock of dozens of soon-to-migrate Common Terns joined by a few Bonaparte’s Gulls. The gulls were occasionally bouncing on the surface while the terns would make daredevil dives into the churning surf.

I could have stayed at The Tip all day, watching that spectacle. I could have, but I didn’t for one painful reason: Stable Flies. If there’s one negative thing to say about Pelee, I’m afraid these little beasts are it. They make good bird and dragonfly food, to be sure, but the blood of birders makes good food for the female flies, and that’s a bad thing. Repellant doesn’t really work well on the flies, although lemon and citronella seemed to dissuade them a bit. Still, my legs were literally blackened with them while standing at The Tip, and after awhile the death by a hundred pin pricks of fly bites is too much to take. Loose-fitting clothing and a mosquito hood would help, but shorts and sandals weren’t cutting it.

Dragonfiles feast on Stable flies at Point Pelee National Park/Kirby Adams

The flies are worst along the shores. At the popular Marsh Boardwalk, you can watch herons all day in relative comfort. The dragonflies massacre the biting flies out there. The Common Pondhawk is a regular dragonfly of the marsh that is more murderous to flies than any actual hawk is to squirrels. Pondhawks are your friends in fly season.  The DeLaurier trail is a little bit farther inland and also has fewer flies. I think the abundance of migrant flycatchers there might help too. Regardless, prepare for the flies on a late summer trip to Pelee. When the Parks Canada ranger in the entrance booth says, “Hello! Bonjour! Did you notice the ‘Stable Flies Are Biting’ sign?” you know to take precaution.

Before the insects drove me away, I did manage to spot a Ruddy Turnstone at The Tip and a flock of Sanderlings a bit further up the beach. Shorebirds can be on the beach in good numbers if you get there when there isn’t too much pedestrian traffic.

Flies notwithstanding, Point Pelee is an essential stop for fall birding. From warblers to waders to waterfowl, you get it all in one little spit of land that the Canadians were wise enough to protect nearly a century ago.