Regular readers of the blog may be getting tired of hearing me wax romantic about the flights lately, but things have just been that good! It’s truly a blessing. With lots of birds on the radar last night and winds light out of the west in the morning, today’s flight was truly one of astounding abundance and surprising diversity for the date. And the best part was that it was enjoyed by the Fall Festival crowd! The flight was great not only at Higbee, but also at the HawkWatch and the South Cape May Meadows (Cape May is a whole system, as they say). There were simply birds everywhere, all day.
Tom Reed was swing counting at the Higbee dike this morning, but I am writing the blog today because TR broke his right index finger last week, and I just love sharing the good word about Morning Flight. The off-day allowed me a much-needed morning to bop around the Bayshore, the Point, and of course Higbee, soaking up the spectacle without having to worry about counting (although I couldn’t resist chipping in a little while on the dike). But thank goodness someone much more experienced was counting today-- I think I would have been flooded by the onslaught tide of Yellow-rumps, Robins, and finches!
We had our peak flight so far for Yellow-rumped Warbler and American Robin (11,892 and 5,511 northbound), entering the realm of rate-of-passage estimation for the Yellow-rumps. Both of these classic short distance migrants are such joys to watch move in big numbers. We also surpassed the previous all-time season total for American Goldfinch for the official Morning Flight Count today! The previous season high was 1,563 from 2015, and today’s flight of 545 northbound lands us at 2,044 with much more finch flight window to come! On top of that, a great Purple Finch flight of 330 northbound puts us within striking distance of another Top 3 season total. If you had asked me in the dregs of mid-September whether I was writing blog posts like this, I wouldn’t have known what to think.
But perhaps the biggest surprise of the morning was the stellar Northern Flicker flight for the date, which just yesterday I had mentioned as getting late. Tom counted 1,058 of these golden stunners winging their way north, our peak flight for them this season. This fall has been full of wonderful surprises (when TR is surprised by something in Cape May, that’s how you know it’s a big deal), and this is now a Top 3 season total for Northern Flicker in the official count database!
The other surprise was the awesome movement of Black Scoters along the Delaware Bay today, which poured south in shifting, racing waves past the count (TR estimated ~18,000 during the MF count period). Although these scoters were cheating across the Bay (there are always a subset that do that), it is a great time to visit the Avalon Seawatch, which is really ramping up now! The photography conditions from the jetty there in the clear orange, afternoon light are tremendous.
But who am I kidding-- there’s great birds to be witnessed everywhere in Cape May right now, so COME BIRDING!!! Thanks to Evan Obrecian (a veteran Morning Flight counter from the early 00’s) and Jerald Reb for their help with the count today.
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!
No comments:
Post a Comment