Today's Sunset Beach Morning Flight Count featured a nice later morning push of forward migrants, with very little in the way of reverse migration. High overcast skies made for nice scanning conditions, and the neutral lighting on the bay was good for viewing the feeding terns out over the water. A total of 27 species and 435 individuals were counted.
Terns were around in decent numbers, with a good number of Sandwich Terns moving around over the bay as well as several Caspian, a couple of which made close passes to shore.
Forward migration picked up later in the morning, and Purple Martins dominated numbers-wise with 154 counted. Barn Swallows and Red-winged Blackbirds also bolstered the numbers, with 61 and 106 counted respectively. A light pulse of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers picked up at the end of the second hour, with 25 counted. One gnatcatcher stuck around to forage in the shrubs by the parking area.
It was also nice to see three Semipalmated Plovers that made a close flyby heading south. Other shorebirds included four southbound Least Sandpipers, three southbound Greater/Lesser Yellowlegs, and a total of 20 shorebird sp., distant birds out over the refuge and the Chesapeake Bay.
Songbird migrants were generally slow, but it was nice to see the second Worm-eating Warbler of the season moving south early in the morning as well as a southbound Orchard Oriole, the first of the species in nearly a week. Orchard Orioles are one of the earliest migrants to vacate the area in fall migration, and the vast majority are gone by early September.
Winds tomorrow will be variable but should be mostly light out of the southwest tomorrow morning. A cold front arrives overnight with a wind shift to the north, and Tuesday looks promising for the next significant arrival of migrants on the Shore.
Tomorrow also marks the first official day of CVWO's Kiptopeke Hawkwatch count season! Sage Church and Audrey Anderson will be staffing the hawk count again this fall, and we will eagerly look for their daily reports.
Be sure to keep up with our daily Eastern Shore Migration Update right here on the CVWO Blog, and follow along with the count live every morning on Trektellen: https://trektellen.nl/count/view/3748/20250824
