Well, the first official day of the Morning Flight Songbird Count for the 2018 fall season is in the books! Regular readers of this blog will recognize that I am writing this post about two weeks earlier than we normally begin. Since its inception in 2003, the Morning Flight count has started on August 16th, but this year we began the count on August 1st in an effort to better understand the earliest migrants passing through Cape May. This is includes species like Yellow Warbler, Louisiana Waterthrush, and Prothonotary Warbler (and on the other end of things, the season will extend all the way to November 15th this fall for late season specialities like Yellow-rumped Warblers, American Robins, various sparrows, and hopefully some finches). Kudos to CMBO for continuing push the envelope of visible migration study!
Although the date may seem early to some, the first Morning Flight surveys that were conducted here during the 80s began in late July, just as Higbee Beach was beginning to be recognized as a world-class hotspot for visible songbird migration. To that end, Tom Johnson and I witnessed a wonderful early season flight on July 29th, a few days before the beginning of the official count! The morning consisted of solid numbers of Yellow Warblers (137), a good showing of both waterthrushes (5 Louisiana and 10 Northern), with a handful of American Redstarts and Black-and-white Warblers. The undoubted highlight was a female Cerulean Warbler and an extremely early Tennessee Warbler! We are right in the window for Cerulean migration, but encountering them in Cape May is always tough. The one we saw was actually being chased by a redstart-- maybe a warmer welcome from their fellow migrants would encourage more to show up!
Hopefully we get another round of frontal activity in early August to produce another flight like this, and we’ll keep our fingers crossed for some more (officially countable) Ceruleans. You can find the link to that checklist and the photos therein here.
But what do you want to hear about July for! Without further ado, here are the results from today's count. The wind has been coming out of the south since last weekend's weak cold front rolled through, so south winds were what greeting the count today. Accordingly, individuals were engaging in what I would call "resumed" or "onward" migration, since most everything was headed directionally south, which what we tend to observe on days with southerly winds (although there's always a few individuals that change their mind once they reach the point and come back north).
We are a still ways away from peak songbird migration, but one thing Cape May has in abundance at this time of year is aerial insectivores, which happen to be one of my favorite groups of birds. So it's no surprise that I was thrilled when they stole the show this morning! Specifically, we observed 313 southbound Purple Martins, followed by a smattering of Barn Swallows, Bank Swallows, Tree Swallows, a couple of Chimney Swifts, and a lone Northern Rough-winged Swallow. We even watched a female Purple Martin feed a juvenile in midair! That was something I had never seen before, and I was too awestruck to get a photo.
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Just like Swallow-tailed Kites, Purple Martins always leave too soon.
But at least they both get back early!
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On the warbler scene, Yellow Warblers predominated the small flight with 31 southbound individuals; to add a little diversity, singles of American Redstart, Prothonotary Warbler, and Worm-eating Warbler flew past the dike. Both Prothonotary and Worm-eating are a real treat to see in Morning Flight, since there’s not a huge amount of breeding real estate for either species to our north.
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Much potential remains for good photos of Prothonotary Warbler in flight.
Come try your optical luck before they leave for Central America!
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Oddly, we didn’t have a single waterthrush of either variety today. There are certainly lots of Northerns headed our way, but we need to savor every Louisiana we get while they make their all too brief passage through Cape May.
Nearing the end of the taxonomic order, we had a bit of southbound Icterid movement with 430 Red-winged Blackbirds, 62 Common Grackles, and best of all, 9 Orchard Orioles, another earlier speciality. House Finches also made their presence known as well 46 southbound migrants in attendance. And that just about does it for the morning! Thanks to Brett Ewald, David Weber, and Melissa Roach for their company and assistance on my first official day as counter.
Some readers may have noticed that the CMBO website is under construction, so our live migration count page is currently not functioning; if you are interested in looking at live counts from Morning Flight, please check the Trektellen website directly.
As always, the link to the Trektellen migration count can be found here, and the full eBird checklist is here.
Bring on Day Two!
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