Wow, what a great morning for the penultimate day of the count! Moderate NW winds and overcast skies characterized the scene from the dike this morning, and a quiet first fifteen minutes were soon met with a busy flight of American Robins and American Goldfinches. The robins started out strong as expected, but goldfinches weren’t waiting until the late morning to move in numbers and comprised a significant part of the flight early on. We finished with 12,800 American Robins for the morning, another solid flight for the season that puts us at 78,000 northbound individuals for the season!
Goldfinches, however, did not taper off and instead only increased in magnitude! I estimated that the average flock size coming by was 40, and there were a few 100+ ones too! Flocks came wave after wave over the impoundments and the far treeline, with a bonus line low along the leeward side of the dike. American Goldfinches have continually outdone themselves this season, and while they were not counted at the onset of the count, this is certainly an exceptional season: we finished with 13,996 northbound birds!
60 Pine Siskins and 38 Purple Finches accompanied the goldfinches, but House Finches were notably absent from the flight this morning. Yellow-rumped Warblers made a final push, as 518 of them went north past the dike. The bonus highlights of the morning were a flock of 21 Tundra Swans (a new species for the dike hotspot), and two Fox Sparrows, which are not annual for the count.
It’s strong ENE winds before day-long rain tomorrow, so there likely won’t be much happening for the final (!) day of the count tomorrow. Today is close enough to the end though that I’ll call it going out on a high note!
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 final day!
No comments:
Post a Comment