Morning Flight Sunday September 19, 2010

Today's morning flight at the Higbee Dike was a bit underwhelming, but that was certainly fine with me. Instead of the expected warbler flight, observers got to see an absolutely fantastic spectacle of Monarch butterflies winging their way down the Delaware Bayshore in staggering numbers. Since there were no songbirds flying, I clicked Monarchs for a while, trying to replicate some of the 1 minute scans that others have been doing around Cape May Point in recent days; I managed a few one minute passage counts that averaged out to 1200 Monarchs per minute passing the Dike. Additionally, a single binocular scan during the heaviest part of the passage turned up 5200 butterflies in about 2-3 minutes. Incredible!