Today’s Sunset Beach Morning Flight Count had yet another day of south-southwest winds. It was a slow day with a few interrupting downpours following a night of heavy rain and thunderstorms, so not a ton was on the move. As always there were still a couple of nice highlights in the flight, and a total of 24 species and 94 individuals were counted.
The big highlight of the morning was an Olive-sided Flycatcher that dropped into the snags just south of the count area in the third hour. The bird looked around for a few minutes before a feisty cardinal kicked it off its perch, and it then flew north over the parking lot. Though typically a very rare migrant on the Eastern Shore, this has been a fantastic season for this species and is also our second at Sunset Beach.
The Kiptopeke Hawkwatch had a very nice later afternoon and evening flight after a wind shift to the west northwest with 161 American Kestrels counted from 5 to 6 pm! A nice late flight of 13 Common Nighthawks also accompanied the kestrels in the evening movement. Other species were moving in good numbers including Northern Harriers which were even coming over in small groups. The total raptor count for the day was 473 birds.
As south winds and rain clear out overnight a massive migration movement is underway, though rain tomorrow may interfere with morning flight. If the rain holds off we may see a very nice movement, and hopefully enough birds will be “in the pipeline” for some notable movements over the next few days as well.
Keep up with both of CVWO’s counts with our daily migration update on Facebook, Instagram, and the CVWO Blog:
https://vawildliferesearch.org/cvwo-blog-1
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
