15 September 2011 - Morning Flight

Songbird morning flight at Higbee Beach has continued to be very slow, with almost no northbound migrants counted over the last two days. Northwesterly winds are buffeting Cape May right now (Thursday night), and tomorrow has some serious potential, especially if the wind dies down (high winds over 15-20 mph tend to be a bit much for small songbirds to negotiate). If the morning flight is a bust, at least there should be some hawks on the move!
Below are a few flight photos of songbirds that migrate through Cape May in fall as nocturnal migrants but which do NOT typically fly out at the Higbee Dike - both of these were seen from a fishing boat during a pelagic birding trip out of Cape May last weekend.

Common Yellowthroats are frequently seen at the Dike, but they tend to skulk furtively in the phragmites rather than fly for any extended distance. This is a very unusual perspective on a yellowthroat during the daylight hours (photo by Tom Johnson).

Yellow-breasted Chat, not really a warbler and not really much of anything else (check the most recent AOU checklist supplement for more on that), is another songbird that migrates through Cape May but which is not known to exhibit morning flight behavior in autumn. The only times I've seen a chat overhead before were during lucky moments when I've found males performing floppy display flights while singing in springtime (photo by Tom Johnson).