An Incredible Sight at Point Pelee

The last two days I checked out the birds at Point Pelee.  Tuesday morning the weather was crappy as it has been most of the spring, but I picked the right day to go to the birding mecca of Point Pelee.  I did not arrive terribly early, but decided to join the throngs of birders near the visitor centre.  I started on Woodland Trail and noticed a huge number of birds quickly heading north.  Shortly into my walk, I received texts from the B's (J & M) that there were incredible numbers of birds at the north end of the park moving north.

I quickly went to my car and made a beeline to the north end.  I arrived a bit late to miss perhaps thousands of birds, but it was evident a huge number of birds were heading north.  I ended up at Orientation where I met both Mike and Josh Bouman.  It was pouring rain by this time, but the show was beyond belief!  Massive numbers of birds were quickly heading north out of the park.
Around this time, Bob Curry and Glenda Slessor came along and Bob remarked that in his almost 60 years of birding this park, he had never seen anything like it.

The north end of the park is narrow and the incredible fallout of birds were funneled through this stretch on their northward journey.
Perhaps an Ontbirds post by Bill Lamond describes the situation:
http://ontbirds.ca/pipermail/birdalert_ontbirds.ca/Week-of-Mon-20190506/094179.html

Soon we were joined by Ken and Mike Burrell where we stood in awe of the numbers of birds heading north.  Some of the migrants hesitated to be identified, but many remained unidentified.  Most of the warblers were obviously Yellow-rumped (60%).

We then moved to the lookout stand on the beach where birds were moving north at a low altitude, many of which were slow enough to ID.  At one point, Ken shouted out Kirtland's Warbler!  We got on the bird, but I was unable to get a decent photo. We soon lost it to sight, but strangely, it was found a little farther south a while later!

I spent the rest of my time working the edge of the beach down to Northwest Beach, finding many birds.  Due to conditions I could not seem to get decent photos!

Red-breasted nuthatches (and Ruby-crowned Kinglets) were in crazy numbers.

At one point I found a Prairie Warbler.  There were many reports of this bird throughout the park during the day.

I camped at Wheatley Provincial Park for the night.

The two Trumpeter Swans were still in the vicinity of Hillman Marsh.  They have been around so long they are getting rusty!

Next morning I decided to just do the north end again.  No people!  I met up with Josh Bouman and we worked our way south from Orientation.  Due to the brisk east wind, the west side was nice and we even had sun!
We started off with a Northern Mockingbird. (bad photo)

Another Prairie Warbler was working the cedars.

Later, we came across one of the reported Yellow-breasted Chats.  It was in the old northwest beach parking area.

I checked out Sleepy Hollow area before I left, as there was Kirtland's Warbler along the edge of the beach.  I caught up with it.  This is a different bird than the one we saw the day before further north.  There were actually two Kirtland's Warblers on Tuesday in the park.  It is a tad early for them, but not unusual.
Nice to see two of these warblers in 24h!  I now have seen at least seven Kirtland's at Point Pelee over the years.

Still more birding this week, and likely bad weather....