It has been a busy couple days on the Eastern Shore! Tonight’s double feature Eastern Shore Migration Update will include summaries for the past two days of our counts as well as some more exciting rarity news elsewhere on the shore.
South-southwest winds on Sunday Oct 19 did not yield a major reverse morning flight at Sunset Beach, but a significant southbound movement of Yellow-rumped Warblers tallied 16,762 in three hours of nonstop clicking! Thirteen first-of-season Brant were another highlight. The Kiptopeke Hawkwatch had a solid flight led by 51 Sharp-shinned Hawks and 16 American Kestrels.
A cold front moved through overnight and brought blasting west winds over the Chesapeake Bay to Sunset Beach this morning, suppressing activity and moving the Yellow-rumped Warblers far to the east, though a total of 2,716 were still counted moving south. There was some action at the Kiptopeke Hawkwatch with a few more falcons on the move today including 25 American Kestrels and 12 Merlins. A couple nice surprises were a late immature male Ruby-throated Hummingbird and 22 American White Pelicans way out to the east.
Monarch butterflies also had big news today, with two Monarchs at Kiptopeke receiving Bluetooth transmitters from Cellular Tracking Technologies to track their migratory movements! We will be eager to see where CVWO’s first two Monarchs, Nancy and Brian, flutter past on their migratory journeys this fall.
Now for some rarity action! The biggest news of the weekend was the confirmation of Virginia’s first European Golden-Plover on Arbuckle Neck Road up in Accomack! Present since October 14, this plover was rediscovered and identified on the 19th and showed well for many today including many flashes of the diagnostic white underwing. This is only the seventh record of this species in the lower 48 United States. (Photo by Mario Balitbit)
Just a couple days after the shore’s second Swainson’s Hawk of the fall, a third was discovered yesterday along Seaside Road near Machipongo! This bird, an intermediate juvenile, entertained a crowd of birders this afternoon as it hunted praying mantises along the edge of a woodlot. (Photo by Mario Balitbit)
South winds return tomorrow, followed by a switch back to west later in the week. There’s no telling what might happen at this point in the season on the Eastern Shore, and there’s bound to be more surprises 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/3748/20251021
Kiptopeke Hawkwatch: https://trektellen.nl/count/view/4022/20251021
