Morning Flight Saturday October 3 and Sunday October 4

Saturday was a bit of a train wreck. The ratio of mosquito bites received to birds counted was about 3 to 1. I counted 2 Parulas, 1 Blackpoll, 1 unidentified, and 2 Indigo Buntings. We've had better days.

Like today! Sunday was certainly an improvement over Saturday, though the flight was not huge. We had the second and third Red-breasted Nuthatches of the season. In case you are wondering, that does not bode well for the nuthatch numbers for the winter and reports from farther north are similar. Otherwise we had a good diversity of warblers and overall quite a pleasant morning until an impenetrable bank of fog rolling in at the end of the third hour.

Location: Cape Island--Higbees Beach SWA--Dike
Observation date: 10/4/09
Number of species: 81

Blue-winged Teal 6
Northern Shoveler 5
Green-winged Teal 4
Double-crested Cormorant 12
Snowy Egret 1
Turkey Vulture 3
Osprey 2
Sharp-shinned Hawk 8
Cooper's Hawk 4
American Kestrel 2
Merlin 3
Peregrine Falcon 2
Black-bellied Plover 1
Semipalmated Plover 3
Killdeer 5
Spotted Sandpiper 1
Lesser Yellowlegs 5
Semipalmated Sandpiper 1
Least Sandpiper 9
Laughing Gull 45
Ring-billed Gull 3
Herring Gull 6
Great Black-backed Gull 35
Caspian Tern 2
Forster's Tern 7
Royal Tern 3
Black Skimmer 4
Rock Pigeon 8
Mourning Dove 2
Ruby-throated Hummingbird 1
Belted Kingfisher 1
Red-bellied Woodpecker 1
Downy Woodpecker 1
Northern Flicker (Yellow-shafted) 8
Eastern Phoebe 3
Blue-headed Vireo 1
Red-eyed Vireo 4
Blue Jay 28
American Crow 15
Fish Crow 1
Tree Swallow 15
Carolina Chickadee 5
Tufted Titmouse 1
Red-breasted Nuthatch 2
Carolina Wren 6
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1
American Robin 2
Gray Catbird 6
Northern Mockingbird 2
Brown Thrasher 3
European Starling 16
Cedar Waxwing 4
Northern Parula 17
Magnolia Warbler 1
Cape May Warbler 6
Black-throated Blue Warbler 5
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) 62
Black-throated Green Warbler 11
Blackburnian Warbler 2
Pine Warbler 2
Palm Warbler 46
Bay-breasted Warbler 1
Blackpoll Warbler 24
Black-and-white Warbler 1
American Redstart 8
Ovenbird 1
Connecticut Warbler 1
Wilson's Warbler 1
Chipping Sparrow 1
Savannah Sparrow 3
Song Sparrow 2
Swamp Sparrow 1
Northern Cardinal 8
Rose-breasted Grosbeak 1
Indigo Bunting 8
Dickcissel 1
Bobolink 4
Red-winged Blackbird 18
Common Grackle 5
Brown-headed Cowbird 4
American Goldfinch 6