Cloudy skies and light northeast winds were the conditions for this morning’s Sunset Beach Morning Flight Count. Not much was moving overnight and the morning was fairly slow overall, but we still had some good diversity and tallied 40 species and 242 individuals.
The passerine flight today was certainly more of a trickle than a flood, though highlights included the season’s second Scarlet Tanager and nine warbler species. A few raptors were moving including eight Sharp-shinned Hawks and a nice American Kestrel that touched down in the snags by the count area for a short time.
Interesting changes in the weather are coming over the next few days, namely a tropical low pressure system that will bring much needed and significant rainfall Monday night through early Wednesday. Northeast winds continue to intensify tonight, and a decent number of migrants should be able to move in tonight and tomorrow. Rainfall moving up from the south Monday night and lasting over 24 hours could be an interesting setup for knocking down migrating birds on the peninsula including shorebirds and other long-distance migrants.
Following the wet weather, winds are forecasted to switch around to the northwest and west by Thursday and Friday, likely allowing migration to resume. Hopefully we will see some significant migration leading into the weekend, though it will be just as interesting to see what drops in with the rainfall over the next few days.
Keep up with the happenings on the Eastern Shore here on the CVWO Blog, and make sure to check out our live Trektellen pages for real-time updates for our two counts:
Sunset Beach Morning Flight Count:
https://trektellen.nl/count/view/3748/20250913
Kiptopeke Hawkwatch:
https://trektellen.nl/count/view/4022/20250913
