Soooo, About Hermine. . .

[Forecast track of Hermine from the NWS as of 11:00 a.m. Sunday, September 4, 2016.]

Sooooo. . . all of us eager for tropical birds in the wake of Hermine are feeling a little bummed, because she is tracking well offshore. All of us who live at the shore, of course, are happy our property will be unharmed. Hermine tracked across the Gulf, through Florida and along the Carolinas, and there are probably a bunch of neat birds (boobies? frigatebirds? tropical terns?) riding along with her, but will they make it to Cape May, NJ when they try to go home? Doubt it. One set of birds to look for, though, are those shorebirds that migrate to South America over the Atlantic, which could be forced to divert over land by Hermine. Hudsonian Godwit is a great example. If you are a dreamer, there was once this small curlew that took this route. . . but it is presumed extinct. . .

However, check the wind forecast on this graph:

Click to enlarge. Solid northwest winds Tuesday, Tuesday night, and Wednesday, thanks to the high that is keeping Hermine at bay. This bespeaks of warblers Wednesday morning, and perhaps raptors during the day Wednesday. There were a few warblers migrating in Cape May today, by the way, as in a few hundred, thanks to the continued north winds.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch we've got this rogue dark juvenal Parasitic Jaeger that has been flying over land, over the hawk watch, and generally forgetting it is a seabird. Above, it was hunting a stone's throw off the jetty at Alexander Avenue in Cape May Point early yesterday morning, while it was still pretty dark. Not a storm-related bird, as far as we can tell.

Tropical storms sometimes change direction, so Hermine is still worth watching.