Morning Flight - Thursday, October 18, 2018

The Yellow-rump train was moving in force again today, and American Robins were chugging along right beside them!  The sky over the dike was practically full of them in the first few hours of the count. We ended the count with 3,576 Yellow-rumped Warblers and 1,872 American Robins.

One of the few close robins this morning!

What’s truly mind-boggling to think about is that while these totals feel very busy to count in the moment, they are quite small compared to the highest single-day totals for both of these species. The peak flights for the official Morning Flight Count are 74,337 Yellow-rumped Warblers on October 18, 2005 and 73,570 American Robins on October 25, 2014. It’s near-impossible to wrap one’s head around that level of abundance without witnessing it firsthand. And those declining counts raise the timely question of whether our current, comparatively smaller flights are more representative of population declines or migratory dynamics (both are likely at play, but it’ll take empirical research to tease apart the answer!).

Myrtle Yellow-rumped Warblers really deserve more photo coverage here.
It's just hard to take photos when you need to count them by the dozen!

Non-Yellow-rump diversity was scarce after yesterday's big exodus of Neotropical migrants, but we logged another 100 Blackpolls, pushing us over 3,000 for the fall! To complete the October feel, finches were once again on the wing in solid numbers. We had 149 Purple Finches and 407 American Goldfinches northbound today, and we haven’t even hit their peak passage! The extended count period into November should also tell us more about their numbers and movements through Cape May (huzzah!).

A little comparison between adult male and female PUFI here.
If only a hatch-year/juvenile bird had been in frame!

We also had a solid flicker flight this morning with 195 northbound individuals, which is good since we are now past their peak passage through Cape May. That puts us squarely at an above average season for Northern Flickers with 2,673 northbound. All in all, it was another wonderful fall day in Cape May. I’m thrilled that these winds will keep up during our Fall Festival, which has just started!

Thanks again to Adehl Schwaderer for your great help counting! It’s been great to watch your morning flight skills grow by leaps and bounds-- you are a true success story of the count, proving that learning warblers in flight really is possible and even over short amounts of time! Practice, practice, practice, as they say...

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!