Morning Flight - Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Another cold front has rolled through Cape May, bringing in good conditions for Morning Flight! I was worried that the front came in too late last night (there wasn’t much on the radar), but we ended up having our peak Blackpoll Warbler day of the fall! Blackpolls absolutely dominated the flight today, with 708 northbound individuals counted. This puts us at 2,519 for the season so far, which is the second best Blackpoll total for the official Morning Flight count. Surprisingly, other warblers, even Yellow-rumped Warblers, were few and far between, but that was mine by me since it made for easy counting! However, a couple of Bay-breasted Warblers were mixed in with the Blackpolls, which was great to see! Bay-breasted vs. Blackpoll is probably the outright trickiest fall warbler challenge, and it’s frustratingly tough to confirm Bay-breasteds in flight.

Classic October goodness. 

American Goldfinches were the other big mover of the morning, as 511 of them bounced their way north, usually in flocks of 20-50. We hadn’t seen many past the dike until now-- today represents 79% of our season total for them! And let me tell you, they can be a challenge to count as the bounce around and trade places.

Blue Jays were the boreal mover of the day this morning; 190 gradually made their way north, mostly along the far eastern treeline. In accompaniment were 13 Purple Finches and 15 Red-breasted Nuthatches, which also undulated their way through the migratory toll booth. Today’s nuthatch total puts us at exactly 1,000 northbound Red-breasted Nuthatches for the season so far, which is the third best nuthatch total for the official Morning Flight count!

Dedicated readers of the blog will recall a lot of “slow day” posts from the early season, especially in the first ⅔ of September. Things have certainly turned around here lately, with a paradigm shift in the weather occurring in the wake of Florence/Michael. We’re soaking up every second of these great conditions, which look great for landbird migration through Friday morning with these sustained NW winds and cool fall weather!

Lots of Sharpies tried to take advantage of the Blackpolls, but none had any (obvious) success.
It's full-bore fall here, so enjoy it while you can!  

As always, you can find our official count totals on Trektellen here, and our complete eBird checklist of the day’s observations here.

Bring on the next day!