Clear conditions overnight with light northeast winds following a couple days of drizzle provided ideal conditions for overnight migration. A large liftoff last night over northeast states led a significant arrival of overnight migrants on the shore, and a nice diversity of species were moving this morning in decent volume. A total of 58 species and 1033 individuals were counted in active migration.
Songbirds were taxonomically diverse, and warblers had a strong showing with 15 species counted. Though many birds were lost to backlighting out in the eastern sky early morning, the flight gradually shifted west and many warblers appeared in nice lighting as the morning wore on. A big surprise was a close northbound Louisiana Waterthrush, notably late for this rare and very early season migrant on the Eastern Shore. Visiting photographer Max Nootbaar secured excellent flight shots of the bird. Notably, another Louisiana Waterthrush was found down “across the pond” at Back Bay in Virginia Beach today, suggesting more of these stream-side denizens were on the move today.
Louisiana Waterthrush
Other passerines were on the move including the first decent thrush flight of the fall, with 8 Veery and 9 Swainson’s Thrush counted. Irrupting Red-breasted Nuthatches also turned up with a solid dozen northbound individuals counted, hopefully hinting of more on the way.
Northern Flicker
The Kiptopeke Hawkwatch had a truly banner mid-September day with over 500 raptors counted, including very notable early season appearances of multiple species. The raptor floodgates were wide open all day, with seasonally remarkable tallies of 94 Sharp-shinned, 34 Cooper’s, 24 Northern Harrier, 244 American Kestrel, and 90 Merlin counted. Birds were ripping over all across the sky, and impressive scenes including seven falcons in one binocular field delighted counters and guests alike. A late Mississippi Kite added further diversity to the abundance of raptor migrants. Not to be totally overshadowed by the raptors, swallows also kept counters busy with 596 Tree and 247 Barn Swallows tallied.
Merlin by Will Burgoyne
Continued northeast winds in the coming days will hopefully continue running up the raptor scoreboard. Songbird migrants are likely to trail off slightly without a significant front or northwesterly wind in the forecast, but arrivals should continue to steadily stream in as we approach the celebrated peak warbler diversity in late September.
Keep up with the action right here on the CVWO Blog, and be sure to catch our counts live every day on Trektellen for real-time migration updates:
Sunset Beach Morning Flight Count: https://trektellen.nl/count/view/3748/20250912
Kiptopeke Hawkwatch: https://trektellen.nl/count/view/4022/20250912
