Morning Flight - 9 October 2012

Today's primarily warbler flight was fast and furious.  At sunrise, birds began funneling low over the slope at a frenzied pace.  Later, the warbler flight picked up noticeable steam well to the east, where individual scans could produce up to triple-digits of distant warbler shapes (= warbler sp.).  In the end, it proved to be another good Yellow-rumped Warbler flight, with nice numbers of Northern Parulas, Black-throated Green Warblers, and Palm Warblers.  Even the Common Yellowthroats - which move, if at all, as if they were filtering through the Phragmites - made some more obviously countable movements today.  Surprisingly, though, few other birds were in the air and the paucity of woodpeckers and nuthatches was especially striking.     

Red-bellied Woodpecker - 1
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker - 4

Northern Flicker - 18
Eastern Wood-Pewee - 1
Eastern Phoebe - 2
Red-eyed Vireo - 4

Red-breasted Nuthatch - 3
Brown Creeper - 1
Golden-crowned Kinglet - 3
Ruby-crowned Kinglet - 2
kinglet sp. - 1

American Robin - 12
American Pipit - 11

Cedar Waxwing - 38
Tennessee Warbler - 3
Nashville Warbler - 4
Northern Parula - 93
Magnolia Warbler - 3
Cape May Warbler - 1
Black-throated Blue Warbler - 20

Yellow-rumped Warbler - 2220
Black-throated Green Warbler - 12

Palm Warbler - 163
Blackpoll Warbler - 23

Black-and-white Warbler - 14
American Redstart - 12
Common Yellowthroat - 5

warbler sp. - 2947

Chipping Sparrow - 3
Savannah Sparrow - 6
Indigo Bunting - 8
Bobolink - 9
Rusty Blackbird - 1
Purple Finch - 4

Pine Siskin - 73

Total = 5725

Other highlights included a single adult light-morph Parasitic Jaeger offshore.