Porphyry and Edward Island -
Black Bay

In May of 2011, Greg Cleary and Joseph Youngman made the journey to Porphyry and Edward Island in the mouth of Black Bay.   We'd discovered a major fall waterbird pathway moving south past Blake Point at Isle Royale in 2009 and assumed there was an equal northward migration in the spring.  We'd heard from John Woodcock at Thunder Cape Bird Observatory that in the spring, waterbirds came from the east then turned up into Thunder Bay.  We assumed that birds were moving up into Black Bay as well.   Since Black Bay has a clump of islands splitting the bay into two channels we set up two count sites and put one man at each.  One was at the SW tip of Porphyry Island and the second was on the SE corner of Edward Island. The birds were great and the geology and scenery were phenomenal.