This trip begins with an arrival at the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, airport. Those who arrive early enough can enjoy birding at the nearby John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. Woodlands and wetlands here offer some excellent birding in this very urban setting. We are here during fall migration, so a large assortment of songbirds is possible, including several species of warblers. Around the lake we may see Wood Duck, Great Egret, Osprey, Bald Eagle, Tree Swallow and Marsh Wren.

We spend the first night in the less urban area of western New Jersey so we can get an early start birding some woodlands for fall migrants. We will have many opportunities to find songbirds during this trip, but our list will already be growing nicely when we leave the forest and arrive at the coast of Delaware Bay. Now we will begin adding large numbers of shorebirds, gulls, terns, waders and waterfowl. Many birders will be in the area at this time, and rare bird alerts will be checked regularly to see if we need to chase anything unusual.

The Cape May area offers a large assortment of wonderful sites for birding, and we will spend the next few days visiting as many of them as we can, building our list to well over 100 species. We will enjoy a two-hour cruise on the coastal marshes. Several species of birds are much easier to see from this boat than from other vantage points around the area. Off the southern point of Cape May, the rough water sometimes attracts pelagic species like shearwaters, storm-petrels and especially jaegers.