After trying to go to sleep last night like a kid on Christmas eve, I excitedly ran up to the top of the dike this morning and found that it was strangely...quiet. There were a few calls coming from the treeline, sure, but nothing really flying. The wind was blowing NNW, but distant clouds muffled the sun’s glow.
Fear crept up my spine as the nightmarish thought of an “empty front” crossed my mind. There were certainly birds moving in large quantities over the mainland east coast during the weekend, but surely they hadn’t all slid past us? Had I just hyped up the expectations for the morning to all of the doe-eyed and eager naturalists? Fortunately a text from Tom Reed at the HawkWatch gave us a hopeful heads up that birds were coming in off the ocean and landing on the point. About 15 minutes later, the sun was fully up, birds were headed back up the península en masse, and it was off to the races!
We had a wonderfully diverse morning flight with a solid showing from 18 warbler species in active morning flight and a total of 64 actively migrating species, which caused the flight to last until 11:00 AM. This was not a super-abundant warbler flight by a long shot (like I said, a lot of that bottled-up abundance slid by us over the weekend), but it was a joyously classical Cape May morning in late September, arguably my favorite time of the fall. Northern Parulas tried hard to steal the reins of the “most abundant warbler” spot from American Redstarts this morning. We “only” had 251 American Redstarts this morning and had 134 Northern Parulas (northbound total only). I am ay-okay with these two spectacularly beautiful species being the most abundant warblers right now.
 |
| As the Brits would say, "Phwarrr." |
 |
| Lots of ad. males in today's flight, expected after lots of cold front-induced drift. |
Although not the most abundant, the real star warbler of the morning was very fittingly Cape May Warbler!!! We had 73 (!) northbound individuals past the dike this morning, which is the highest single-day total for the species in the history of the *official* count! The previous high was 52 from September 24, 2016, but I must note that there have been higher counts of Cape May’s namesake warbler (such as the 150 that Michael O’Brien had from Higbee on September 30, 1996). However, that was before the inception of the official count, so I’ll take it! Cape May Warblers have a funny tendency to migrate higher than most warblers, to fly later in the morning, and to travel in single-file groups of two to three (perhaps to conceal their numbers). They couldn’t escape being counted this morning though, and it made for a heartening spectacle to see real *flocks* of them in morning flight; I think the most we had was 12 in a single burst. Special thanks to Morning Flight count veteran Sam Galick for being extra keyed-in to them--that total would not have been possible without you!
 |
| We salute you, Alexander Wilson! |
We also had good showings from (in order of decreasing abundance): Blackpoll, Palm, Yellow, Northern Waterthrush, Black-and-white, Black-throated Green, Black-throated Blue, Pine, Bay-breasted, Tennessee, Nashville, Magnolia, and Prairie. Despite our hopes, we did not have a Connecticut, although Tom Reed had one from the HawkWatch and another was reported from the Higbee fields. Guess they haven't felt like getting up past the dike. Perhaps tomorrow, which should also be a good day!
We also saw the real beginning of the Palm Warbler influx as well as the tricklings of Yellow-rumped Warblers that will soon turn into a Myrtle-flavored tide. While the dam hasn’t burst on those species yet, the levee really broke on Northern Flickers this morning (special thanks to interpretive naturalist Adehl Schwaderer for helping count them on her day off!). We had 187 northbound individuals and some fabulous opportunities for photography from both the platform and the dike. The flicker spectacle from late September through October is truly one of the best things about Cape May.
 |
| Why, what a nice mustache you have, sir! |
On the boreal front, 21 northbound Red-breasted Nuthatches signaled the resumption of their irruptive movement; we had been having one to several each day since the first major influx on August 24th, but this was likely due more to poor conditions for coastal migration rather than a lack of nuthatches. Today also brought about something I had been hoping for since the start of the count-- the first sign of a Purple Finch irruption! 14 Purple Finches undulated north past the count, some of which heralded their arrival with the classic “drip drip” call, and all of which looked like messy hatch year birds (all those young-of-the-year have to irrupt somewhere!). The Morning Flight Songbird Count dataset shows an interesting pattern when it comes to Purple Finches: they closely follow a classic “boom-bust” pattern, so we record larger flights of them every other year. There’s some low-hanging research fruit for anyone interested in undertaking a study comparing the count data with that of boreal sites and trying to link that to environmental variables like food resources (and putting transmitters on some!). Hopefully the extended count period into the middle of November will tell us more about this movement and that of other late-season species.
 |
| Purple Finch count data. Photo copyright Cape May Bird Observatory. |
I gotta wrap this post up fast because it’s coming up on the late afternoon and there’s still raptors flying! The dune flight of raptors past Higbee on the morning after a cold front can be quite good, and today was no exception. Our Hawk Counter Erik Bruhnke actually joined me on the dike this morning, and he was quite giddy about watching Sharpies and kestrels zip and swoop their way up the Bayshore, making predation attempts along the way. I watched an American Redstart and a Northern Parula dodge separate dives from Sharp-shinned Hawks. I’ll stake my hat on there being better photo ops for American Kestrel and Sharp-shinned Hawks along the dunes along the point than the HawkWatch itself, especially with that orange morning light (you heard me, Erik! It's a challenge!).
The bonus diversity component of the morning was pretty awesome too. We had a bold adult male (!) Summer Tanager along with two female-type Scarlet Tanagers. A female-type Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a Common Nighthawk, three Eastern Wood-Pewees, a Belted Kingfisher, a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, and six Dickcissels were all particularly good highlights. Thank you to all of the visitors who came to the count this morning! It was lovely sharing such a great flight with all of you.
As always, you can find the link to the official count on Trektellen here and the complete eBird checklist here. More photos from this wonderful day can be found in the eBird checklist once I upload more tonight!
Bring on Day 51!
No comments:
Post a Comment