Every fall, visitors line up at the Cape May Point State Park hawkwatch platform expecting the migration spectacle to be right there in front of them. On a good day, it is. But the platform's daily raptor tally, the one that draws crowds numbering in the thousands on its busiest afternoons, isn't actually the biggest count running on the peninsula. It isn't even close. Fifteen miles up the coast in Avalon, a single counter working a folding chair on the beach between 8th and 9th Streets tallies more birds most Octobers than the entire hawkwatch season puts up in three months. And the two sites want opposite weather to have a great day.
That's the part of the fall migration calendar that doesn't make it into the postcard version. If you live here year-round, it's worth knowing, because it changes which mornings are worth the drive and where.
Three Counts, Three Very Different Machines
Cape May Bird Observatory runs three official migration counts each fall, and they're not the same operation scaled up or down. They're built around three different kinds of birds moving in three different ways, on three different, overlapping calendars.
The Morning Flight songbird count at Higbee Beach Wildlife Management Area is the longest running of the three, staffed from August 1 through November 15 and tracking the phenomenon of songbirds that migrated overnight, got pushed out over open water, and reorient back toward land at first light. It averages more than 190,000 individual birds across 100-plus species in a season.
The hawkwatch at Cape May Point State Park is the one most people picture when they think of Cape May in October. Staffed every fall since 1976 in partnership with the state park, it runs September 1 through November 30 and averages more than 45,000 hawks, eagles, falcons, and vultures a year.
The Avalon Seawatch runs the shortest calendar of the three, October 1 through December 22, but it's the heaviest lift. One person, working sunrise to sunset in whatever weather shows up, has topped one million seabirds in each of the past three seasons, with a typical year averaging more than 750,000 birds across roughly 70 species.
Add the three together and 2025 alone produced more than 1.6 million migrants logged at Cape May's watch sites.
| Count | Season Window | Typical Annual Total | What a Big Day Looks Like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morning Flight (Higbee Beach WMA) | Aug 1 to Nov 15 | 190,000+ songbirds | Heaviest in the first two to three hours after a cold front's overnight passage |
| Hawkwatch (Cape May Point State Park) | Sept 1 to Nov 30 | 45,000+ raptors | Several thousand birds after a cold front, versus a few hundred on a quiet south-wind day |
| Avalon Seawatch | Oct 1 to Dec 22 | 750,000+ seabirds | Can top 200,000 birds in a single day during the last two weeks of October |
The hawkwatch is the famous one. The seawatch is the one with the numbers.
Same Front, Opposite Effect
Here's the mechanism that actually decides which site is worth visiting on a given Saturday, and it comes straight from the two count programs' own field notes.
The hawkwatch runs on cold fronts. A high pressure system slides in from the north or west, temperatures drop, and the resulting north to northwest wind pushes migrating raptors down the coastline and funnels them toward the peninsula, since most hawks are reluctant to cross open water. Smaller birds like American Kestrels and Sharp-shinned Hawks tend to show up in force on the first day after a front passes. The bigger soaring birds, eagles and buteos, build over the second or third day of sustained northwest wind. Northeast winds can also trigger strong falcon flights, since falcons are more willing to cross water than other raptors. South or southwest wind, by contrast, produces what the counters call business as usual: a few hundred birds instead of a few thousand.
The Avalon Seawatch runs on the opposite pattern. Southerly and easterly winds are what push seabirds past the seawall, not northerly or westerly ones.
Put those two facts side by side and you get a genuinely useful piece of local knowledge: the same weather system that lights up the hawkwatch platform is often the system that leaves Avalon quiet, and vice versa. A north wind weekend sends the crowd south to Cape May Point. A south or southeast wind weekend is the one to point toward Avalon instead, particularly in that last stretch of October when the seawatch tends to post its biggest single-day counts.
The Calendar Is Also Shifting
There's a second layer to this that only shows up if you've been watching the same counts for a few years running, which CMBO has, going back five decades at the hawkwatch alone. Black Scoters and Surf Scoters, the sea ducks that make up a large share of the Avalon tally, are now migrating more than a week later than they did a couple of decades ago, with peak flights landing in early November instead of late October. It's a small shift, but it means the old rule of thumb (last two weeks of October, always) is drifting later, and anyone timing a visit around a decade-old memory of "peak scoter season" is now arriving a little early.
What the Season Adds Up To If You Stay Through It
None of this runs on the tourist calendar. Higbee's count is already six weeks in by the time most visitors think about fall. The hawkwatch is entering its final stretch by the time the Avalon Seawatch is just hitting its best weeks. For anyone who lives here year-round, the actual migration season is a four-month arc from the first week of August through the third week of December, not a few weekends in October.
The community version of the season closes out with the Cape May Fall Festival, hosted by New Jersey Audubon's Cape May Bird Observatory at the Cape May Convention Hall from October 15 through 18, 2026. This year marks the festival's 50th anniversary, tracking back to the same 1976 season that started the hawkwatch platform's official count. The festival draws international birding tour operators, optics brands, and long-time speakers, and registration is required for most programming.
If You Want to Check a Day Before You Go
A few habits separate the people who catch a good flight from the people who show up to an empty platform:
- Check wind direction the night before. Northwest favors the hawkwatch, southerly or easterly favors Avalon.
- CMBO's own sightings blog, View from the Cape, posts commentary on recent flights and is the fastest way to know what's actually moving before you drive anywhere.
- Both the hawkwatch platform at Cape May Point State Park and the Higbee Beach WMA trails are free to access. The Avalon Seawatch is open to the public on the beach between 8th and 9th Streets, supported by the Borough of Avalon.
- The CMBO's Northwood Center, on East Lake Drive at the north end of Lake Lily in Cape May Point, is worth a stop for a current sightings whiteboard even on a day you're not planning to count birds.
None of this requires a plane ticket or a guided tour. It requires knowing which wind is blowing and which of the three counts is actually built for that wind.
If you're already part of this community and want to compare notes on the best morning to catch a big flight, or you're weighing what a fall move to the shore actually looks like day to day, Alexander Huffard is glad to talk through either one.
