In Cape May, the off-season is bird season

Like most people with big weekend plans, David La Puma was watching the weather forecast.

It looked perfect: a cold front, followed by northwest winds.

Perfect for the birds, that is, and the humans who watch them.

Both flocked to Cape May for New Jersey Audubon's fall festival, an annual event that began 68 years ago amid post-World War II ebullience, and that contributes a bundle to the local economy. This year's outing began Friday and ended Sunday.

Several thousand birders - often with binoculars plastered firmly to their faces - attended the three-day event, which included field trips, lectures, demonstrations, and an exhibit hall full of the best binoculars and scopes money can buy.

On what had to be some of the most glorious days of the fall, people scoped southbound seabirds that soared over the ocean off Avalon Point, where counters log nearly a million birds every fall. They tallied the hawks that circled above. They tested their identification skills on the warblers that flitted through the bushes.

They birded by land and by boat. They birded Higbee Beach and Cape May Point.

Frequently, the three-day tally on the fall festival weekend nears 200 species. This year's final count will be available Monday.

Sunday morning, Pete Dunne - N.J. Audubon's official birding ambassador, and one of the region's birding celebrities - was joined by nearly 150 people on the hawk-watch platform at Cape May Point State Park.

Among them was Laura Tipple, who drove from Toronto with her husband, Doug. It was the avid birdwatchers' fourth visit to Cape May - "the most magnificent place you could ever be," she said.

About 50 more people were in a nearby pavilion for a hawk-banding demonstration. A further 150 scanned the skies in the parking lot.

But they were far outnumbered by the birds. Sharp-shinned hawks were swooping over the nearby treetops.

"I almost got hit by a yellow-rumped warbler," Dunne said. "Here comes another. And another!"

For birds that weigh less than half an ounce, Dunne estimated there were "about 150 pounds of yellow-rumped warbler in view right now."

Birds, birders, and Cape May have all benefited from the synergy.

For the birds, Cape May is a geographic bottleneck. Birds that hug the coast wind up in Cape May. Birds that track slightly inland wind up in Cape May.

There they find an an array of protective and food-rich habitats, from marshes to beaches to meadows. About 350 species a year breed there or fly through on migration.

Cape May is also close to a lot of humans. Dunne likes to point out it's a destination within a tank of gas for 60 million people, and that Cape May has the hotels and restaurants to handle a lot of them.

According to the latest figures from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, New Jersey wildlife-watchers spent more than $986 million in 2011, including trip expenses and equipment.

Although the precise dollar amount is unspecified, a handsome portion comes to Cape May.

So no wonder Cape May hotels post "birders welcome" on their marquees during the off-season, also prime time for migratory bird action.

"It's good to see that upswing" on weekends that would otherwise be slack, said Doreen Talley, marketing director of the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Cape May.

But the clincher that makes Cape May, in the words of N.J. Audubon, "one of the planet's most celebrated bird-watching destinations" is that some of the planet's most knowledgeable birders, bird authors, and bird photographers have migrated there, as well.

They're known for their friendliness and their ethic - birding is great; share what you know.

"The beauty of that critical mass of talent is that if you're interested in learning about birds, you don't have to go but a few steps before you run into someone who is an authority," said La Puma, director of the Cape May Bird Observatory, the N.J. Aubudon offshoot with more than 3,000 members worldwide.

"You could walk up to Pete Dunne or Richard Crossley or Kevin Karlson, and they're going to give you everything they know," La Puma said.

The weekend was not exactly a time to be indoors, but plenty made it to Cape May's Convention Hall, where visitors could book an international nature tour, buy the latest field guide, and learn about conservation.

Or, as Laura Tipple did, buy some new gear. Her husband bought her a $2,200 pair of Swarovski binoculars for her birthday. "Go, me!" she said.

Birding has come a long way from a century ago, when often the only way to verify an identification was to bird by shotgun.

Optics have advanced. Now prism coatings and "extra-low dispersion glass" and "phase correction" optimize the view.

Another benefit of today's technology: If a notable bird or flock shows up in Cape May, the sighting gets posted on social media within moments.

Indeed, shortly before 9 a.m. on Sunday, the observatory tweeted that more than 1,200 northern gannets had flown by the Avalon sea watch so far that morning.

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