Although the radar signatures were fairly light last night, there was a great end-of-the-regular-season flight to be had at Higbee this morning! That’s the power of a cold front and WNW winds for you.
As expected, the flight was utterly dominated by American Robins (13,978 north) and Yellow-rumped Warblers (9,052 north). Watching robins and Yellow-rumps fill up the orange early-morning sky with flocks upon flocks of silhouette pepper flakes is truly a magical experience.
On top of this, finches put in another strong showing late into the day with 227 northbound Purple Finches, 154 southbound Pine Siskins, and 1,955 American Goldfinches! The latter number is a new single day high count for American Goldfinch, more than doubling the previous record set earlier in the season of 998 (to be fair, American Goldfinches were not always counted at the Morning Flight Count since the initial focus was long distance Neotropical migrants, but hey-- you gotta start at some point!).
A Dickcissel, two Eastern Bluebirds, and a northbound Hermit Thrush late in the morning (!) were all great bonus birds for the count. Another highlight of the morning was a great dune flight of Sharp-shinned Hawks, making for my second day with over 300 of them. The combined songbird and raptor flights along the bayshore at Higbee are so entertaining to watch, as Sharpies dive through cover and harriers and Red-tails hover over the impoundments looking for songbirds. Of course, Erik had many more Sharp-shinneds (1,091) from the State Park today-- it’s been a great October for the HawkWatch as well as the Morning Flight Count!
As always, you can find our official count totals on Trektellen here, and our complete eBird checklist of the day’s observations here, along with photos! Blogger was glitching out on the photo uploads tonight for some reason.
Bring on the next day!
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