Steady north winds following a strong night of nocturnal migration made for an active morning flight of reverse migrants at Sunset Beach, were totals of 61 species and 4196 individuals were counted.
Passerine flights this time of year are inevitably dominated by Yellow-rumped Warblers, though their flights are dynamic and vary considerably depending on the weather conditions. Today, essentially all 3114 of them were northbound low over the parking lot on the main morning flight line, with few other warblers mixed in including seven Cape May, six Palm, four Northern Parula, one Blackpoll, and one Common Yellowthroat. Tree Swallows were also streaming north in good numbers with 588 counted, and many more surely went uncounted far to the east over the refuge.
There was a fair bit of other passerine diversity including 27 Pine Siskins in ones and twos mixed with the Yellow-rumps, a notable uptick in these irruptive finches’ numbers. Two first-of-season Purple Finches were also counted, along with eight Red-breasted Nuthatches for a nice little flight of boreal irruptives. Today also saw the first good sparrow flight of the season, represented by 10 Chipping, four Field, six Dark-eyed Juncos, 16 White-throated, one Savannah, eight Song, three Swamp, and four Eastern Towhees. Rounding out the winter songbird roster was a first-of-season Hermit Thrush, seven Eastern Phoebes, 10 Brown Creepers, and eight Golden-crowned Kinglets.
Larger birds were in shorter supply today, though there were still a handful of waterbirds migrating including 10 Surf Scoters and 43 Black Scoters moving south over the bay, one Common Loon, one Northern Gannet, twelve Double-crested Cormorants, and 27 Brown Pelicans. Up at the Kiptopeke Hawkwatch, a total of 83 raptors were counted, on the slower side for a clear day with strong northerlies. The slower day did not stop the first Golden Eagle of the season, an immature moving back north in the afternoon.
Similar conditions continue tomorrow, and it will be interesting to see how both morning flight and the raptor flight differ from today.
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/3748/20261020
