Light westerly winds and patchy high overcast skies made for nice conditions for the last official Sunset Beach Morning Flight Count of the season. A nice variety of birds were moving to close out the fall with 40 species and 16,553 individuals counted.
Highlights at Sunset Beach included a high northbound Northern Gannet up over the beach early on, an unusual flight path for this seabird. A hen Northern Pintail embedded in a line of migrating Tundra Swans was a fun sight, a flock that also included a banded swan! Scoters were moving around the bay in decent numbers, and the American Robin flight was strong with 9,542 southbound individuals counted before they started to swirl around the point. A large clock of Brown-headed Cowbirds again descended on the campground this morning, at one point overrunning the parking lot during their foraging movements.
The Kiptopeke Hawkwatch had a slow day for raptors, but other birds were moving in good volume and diversity with 50 species and 37,753 individuals counted. Highlights included two overland migrant Red-throated Loons and seven Bonaparte’s Gulls, the same pintail/swan grouping as seen at Sunset, 152 Eastern Bluebirds, and 25,697 American Robins.
Elsewhere around the Eastern Shore, the morning flight crew rounded out the day with some nice end-of-season finds, including two different Yellow-breasted Chats, a late and secretive lingering migrant. Two Lapland Longspurs were nice to find mixed with a large Horned Lark flock up on Old Town Neck Drive, a rare winter resident difficult to pin down in vast agricultural fields.
With the end of the first Sunset Beach Morning Flight Count season, so concludes the fall’s Eastern Shore Migration Updates. It has been this author’s joy and privilege to share the many wonders of a season of fall migration with our CVWO community each day. Just as this season has flown by, next August will be upon us before we know it, and the miracle of fall migration on the Eastern Shore will begin anew.
The Kiptopeke Hawkwatch still runs through the end of November, and we look forward to seeing what sightings the hawk crew shares!
Follow along with our counts live every morning on our Trektellen pages:
Sunset Beach Morning Flight: https://trektellen.nl/count/view/3748/20251115
Kiptopeke Hawkwatch: https://trektellen.nl/count/view/4022/20251115
