Every morning during the summer and fall migration seasons, Sumiko Onishi and her PIBO team go on what they call the Dawn Walk. Dawn on Pelee comes early, and the walk takes them on a 90-minute circuit – the same route every day – during which they write down every bird they see or hear. They count not only species, but the number of individuals within each species, to arrive at a daily tally of the birds along their route, whether residents or migrants crossing the island on their way to their summer breeding or winter feeding grounds. The walk takes them around Fish Point, at the southernmost end of the island, through three different ecosystems, each with its own distinct bird population. The Carolinian forest at the centre of the Point is where forest birds rest and feed: warblers, orioles, tanagers. The wetland on the point’s east side shelters wading birds such as soras and rails, as well as Swamp sparrows, Red-winged blackbirds, and both Carolina and Northern waterthrushes. And the shoreline yields flocks of shorebirds, from tiny dunlins and sanderlings to Red-breasted mergansers, Northern shovellers, Canada geese, and even American white pelicans.