Eastern Shore Migration Update: October 14, 2025
North winds continued last night and allowed for ideal migratory conditions. Unlike last night, nocturnal migration was more moderate following the massive push the night before, but there were still lots of birds moving around today. The Sunset Beach Morning Flight Count totaled 54 species and 1834 individuals.
Highlights at Sunset Beach included more flocks of Fish Crows totaling 160, 28 Ring-necked Ducks, the season’s first three Pine Siskins, and a solid diversity of winter passerine movement. Birds today were a little more disorganized with notably southbound and northbound movements. A Chimney Swift on the late side hung around for most of the morning, readily recognizable as the same individual due to a distinctive bent primary on its right wing.
The Kiptopeke Hawkwatch also had a diverse overall flight with 4500 individuals and 56 species. A nice total of 24 Northern Harriers continue a good streak for that species lately as our counters steadily approach 1000 harriers for the season. Other highlights included a nice blackbird flight, a couple Purple Finches, and a Dickcissel.
The biggest surprise of the day came when an adult Swainson’s Hawk was spotted circling low over the town of Cheriton in the early afternoon! Already a significant rarity, it is especially unusual that multiple Swainson’s are detected on the Eastern Shore in a given fall, and an adult bird is even more exceptional! Hopefully this bird will stick around the area and be detected on one of our counts in the coming days.
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/3748/20251017
Kiptopeke Hawkwatch: https://trektellen.nl/count/view/4022/20251017
