Morning Flight, 25 September 2016

Hip Hop Hooray!  It was another terrific northeast wind flight-day at Morning Flight Project! We're now going on the last 5 days producing significant morning flights with Friday being a little lower in magnitude than the other four mornings.  It's exciting to see so many astounded and enthralled faces new and old up there; a good flight, I think to be, is humbling, memorable, and fun, and a huge flight is just life-changing.

Today was very close in numbers and diversity to these last days (745 northbound warblers of 21 species) and had a decidedly early-October feel given the occurrence of a few species to indicate this like: 1 Yellow-bellied Sapsucker,1 Brown Creeper, 7 American Pipit, 4 Purple Finch, and 1 Rusty Blackbird. 

60 total landbird species were counted throughout the morning, just like both an Alder Fly and a new one, White-throated Sparrow shot through the walnuts and over the phragmites with just a few minutes before the close of the 4th hour, and when very little avian life was present, let alone showing signs of continued migratory behavior for most of that period.

North-swooping Northern Flickers stole some of the show to the order of 223 of them. Ten Red-bellied Woodpeckers jazzed it up, and I'm out of cliché descriptors by the time we add an adult-type Red-headed Woodpecker, a "Yellow-shafted" Flicker that had red-orange chromatic abnormality in the center of the flight feathers, 37 Red-breasted Nuthatches, and 20 Red-eyed Vireos.  

The southbound birds entered on today's count likely represent individuals that turned around after reaching the north edge of the dike impoundment or beyond (except Blue Jay, Fish Crow, European Starling, and the blackbirds, to the south).

Warblers were quick, often direct, and half in shade and half in full light, which experiencially pulsed from extremely challenging to outstandingly delightful.  50 Blackpoll, 220 Palm, 23 Cape May, 17 Black-and-white Warblers, 122 Northern Parula, 55 American Redstart, and 17 Northern Waterthrush, were the majority of the flight I detected, along with 178 warbler sp. 

Here's a list:
http://www.trektellen.org/count/view/1746/20160925

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