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A Bird in the Hand
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The nonprofit Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory runs the banding for both the northbound and southbound migrations -- March through May and mid-August through November. About 300 species have been identified on the refuge, and lucky birdwatchers have even spotted exotic "strays" such as frigatebirds and sandhill cranes along the coast. There are advantages to each season, including winter, when this area is a Miami Beach sojourn for far-north birds such as loons and buffleheads.
This weekend, Cape Charles throws its annual Eastern Shore of Virginia Birding Festival, headquartered at the Sunset Beach Resort just south of Kiptopeke and featuring birding and bands (the musical kind). By late morning, most birds are sated and settle down for a long siesta, a good time to explore the rest of Kiptopeke State Park.
Boardwalk trails lace through the woods and a shoreline that for Chesapeake Bay is quite dramatic -- like Northern California's curves and green hills on a miniature scale. Ospreys nest on park-built platforms here and squadrons of pelicans fly by, wingtip to wingtip, as if auditioning for the Blue Angels.
To view the soaring hawk and raptor migration, the park has set up an observation platform where an expert fields questions and sings out identifications of peregrines and merlins. Across the highway at the wildlife refuge (site of the spring banding program), more birders wander the trails and fill the visitor center, the photography blind at the freshwater pond and a treetop-level platform atop a WWII bunker.
Farther afield, U.S. 13 splits the narrow cape, but it's worth taking the less-traveled road, Route 600 -- a "blue highway" that meanders past big old many-gabled houses with long porches set amid expansive pastoral fields. Side roads lead to fishing villages like Oyster on the ocean side and, on the bay side, to historic little towns like Eastville, with its inn noted in 1724 as a "social mecca and court lodging."
It's a neat find, this southernmost tip of the Delmarva Peninsula. No wonder the birds come here every year -- twice.
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