Morning Flight - Tuesday, September 25, 2018

A decent amount of birds were flying this morning despite the ESE winds, but they were scattered and flying in both directions!

Northern Parulas barely edged out American Redstarts today (37 to 33 northbound), and a few uncommon warblers like Blue-winged Warbler and Ovenbird flew by. No single species was terribly abundant today, but the few we had pushed us over a good milestone: over 3,000 northbound American Redstarts! Excluding the falls of 2015 and 2017 that had mega flight days for redstarts (which we try not to let bias our expectations around here), this puts us a few hundred birds shy an average season. Given that we had terrible weather for practically all of their peak flight period, I’ll take it! I’m curious to see how many we’ll get as we close out this week, since there’s good conditions coming but redstarts tail out fast.

Common Yellowthroats continue to move along with Blackpoll Warblers, some of which look absolutely massive right now as they are loaded up calories to make their trans-Atlantic flight to South America (an equivalent feat would be if I were to balloon up to 350 pounds and then lose all of that weight swimming from Cape May to Venezuela). Belted Kingfishers, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Scarlet Tanager, and Dickcissel all made appearances as well.

There was also solid diversity this morning outside of typical Morning Flight fare, with raptors and seabirds notably moving past Higbee. The Merlin gauntlet continued, bolstered by a diverse smattering of raptors including my first *adult* Cooper’s Hawk of fall. Meanwhile, 270 Black Scoters, 4 Surf Scoters, and a couple of Common Loons provided a nice bonus. In accord with the movement I was seeing, the Hawkwatch and the Seawatch also had busy days today; over 100 Merlin and Peregrines from the Hawkwatch, and multiple Manx and Cory’s Shearwaters plus a good start for Black Scoters at the Seawatch. It’s a great feeling when all three of the counts have fun days; the zugunruhe flows strong in Cape May!

This winged wizard was content to snack on a Green Darner. 

Stay tuned for the days to come, as the coming days and the weekend still look good! You know where to find us (same Bat time, same Bat channel). And as always, you can find the link to the official count on Trektellen here and the complete eBird checklist here.

Bring on Day 57!

Not too many chances for flight shots, but some good 'ops in the little walnut!

There were three at once in the tree!