Today’s Sunset Beach morning flight count experienced mostly clear skies and building southwest winds. Southwesterlies stifled overnight migration, and there were few migrants aloft to reorient come morning. There was a decent push of forward migrants, though the southwest winds pushed the flight east of the count site into backlighting for more challenging views. Totals of 32 species and 837 individuals were counted.
One nice first-of-season migrant new bird today came shortly
after sunrise; a southbound Blue-winged Teal over the bay close off the beach. The
rest of the flight took a little while to get going overall, and peak movement
occurred in the second hour. Eastern Kingbirds were still moving following
yesterday’s massive flight with 287 counted, and Barn Swallows trailed closely
with 285.
Other diversity was a bit lacking, though the stronger winds
had a few birds moving over the Chesapeake Bay including six Black Terns. Purple
Martins and Blue-gray Gnatcatchers were moving in small numbers overall, with
17 and 9 respectively. Warblers continue to move in very low numbers, and only
four American Redstarts and two Pine Warblers were counted today.
There are some signs of change in the forecast with a weak
cold front passing through the area tomorrow and into Tuesday, though subpar winds
to our north combined with precipitation chances may once again limit the
volume of migrants arriving in the area. Still, we should be poised to see a
greater number of reorienting nocturnal migrants and hopefully some more new
arrivals in the wake of this front before southerly winds return.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s daily migration update on CVWO
social media and the CVWO blog: https://vawildliferesearch.org/cvwo-blog
And follow along with the count live every morning on
Trektellen: https://trektellen.nl/count/view/3748/20260823
