Today's Sunset Beach Morning Flight Count featured a nice movement of migrants on light easterly winds with a total of 32 species and 678 individuals counted. Most of the migration observed this morning was forward migration of diurnally-migrating species later on in the morning, with very little reorientation flight occurring.
As is typical of this time of year for forward migrants, Eastern Kingbirds and Purple Martins led in numbers with 277 and 97 counted respectively. Other highlights of the morning included the season high of 11 Red-headed Woodpeckers, a good count for the date. Most of the birds were immatures in varying stages of plumage, some with complete red heads. After first appearing on the count yesterday, it was also nice to see seven Baltimore Orioles, with four southbound and three northbound individuals.
We also counted our first migrating Osprey of the season, a high circling bird that eventually set its wings in the classic "M" shape and cruised south. Though Osprey have been on the move for some time, raptors typically start flying a little later in the morning than our count window for Morning Flight, making them less likely to be detected on a given morning. Osprey numbers at the Kiptopeke SP hawk platform should be steadily building in the coming weeks, where they can be seen migrating well into the evening on some days.
Winds shift to light southerlies overnight, so it is unlikely that we will see much in the way of a flight tomorrow until later in the morning when a few diurnal migrants may start to move. A cold front still appears primed to pass through early next week, which should hopefully bring a fresh batch of migrants as we move into the final week of August.
Stay tuned for more daily Eastern Shore Migration Updates right here on the CVWO Blog, and be sure to follow along live each morning on our Trektellen page for real-time count updates: https://trektellen.nl/count/view/3748/20250823
