Today’s Sunset Beach Morning Flight Count continued the trend of southwest winds. Unlike yesterday there were a handful of reverse migrants moving today. A total of 21 species and 207 individuals were counted.
The songbird flight this morning had a more montane feel than usual, with the species composition of the flight closer to what one might expect this time of year in western Virginia. Many birds were very high and difficult to spot, but a decent number were low enough to work with. Cape May Warblers were surprisingly dominant, and they ended up with one of their best days so far with 28 counted, 18 of which were southbound. Two Black-throated Green Warblers were also nice to see. It was our first day in almost three weeks without an American Redstart, and just three Northern Parulas.
Forward migrants had a decent morning with a nice liftoff of American Kestrels, with 26 counted. A Peregrine Falcon was nice to see shooting south out over the water just before sunrise. Three Chimney Swifts were still moving through as well. The Kiptopeke Hawkwatch had another good day for American Kestrels and Sharp-shinned Hawks, with 203 and 171 counted respectively.
South winds build through tomorrow before a front moves through with chances of rain at the beginning of the weekend and should switch winds around to northeast by early next week. As today showed, sometimes southerly wind days can still be very interesting!
Keep up with both of CVWO’s counts with our daily migration update on Facebook, Instagram, and right here on the CVWO. You can also follow along with our counts live every morning on our Trektellen pages:
Sunset Beach Morning Flight: https://trektellen.nl/count/view/3748/20250924
Kiptopeke Hawkwatch: https://trektellen.nl/count/view/4022/20250924
