This morning was exceedingly quiet at the count, as a front began coming in at pre-dawn, too late to influence any nocturnally migrating songbirds to come to Cape May (ill-timed fronts are the bane of the Morning Flight Count). Ripping NW winds at 25 mph with gusts over 30 stifled any would-be activity, and the count closed early due to inactivity with 130 American Robins and 52 Yellow-rumped Warblers as the most abundant northbound birds.
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| The back of the front! |
Despite the quiet setting at Higbee, there was quite a bit of morning flight taking place on Cape May Point today, particularly in the later on in the day as classically diurnal migrants rode in on the back of the front. American Goldfinches bounded across the dunes, and Eastern Bluebirds softly murmured as they flew overhead on clear skies. Bluebirds are another one of those familiar, broadly distributed eastern species that aren’t usually seen in active migration in most places, but there can be good flights of them here in Cape May!
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| Orange and blue will always be a top-notch color combo. |
I spent some time at the HawkWatch platform today after the count and got to watch these sentinels of happiness do their thing (but then again, what bird isn’t?). It was really cool to see flocks of them over the platform and treeline amongst kestrels and Sharpies! Erik Bruhnke tallied 241 (!) over the course of the day in the midst of a fun late-season raptor flight.
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!
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