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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Migrants around and nobody there to watch the Golden-winged warbler

As it turns out the birding was quite good at Higbee beach this morning. In fact yesterday morning was not that bad either. Sure slower by a bit but still good biring. When I woke up this morning and turned on The Weather Channel (yes, that's the first thing I do in the morning. Don't act like most of you out there don't check to see what the weather/winds are like in the morning at this time of year.) I was surprised to see that they we saying NNW at 6 mph. Given the way things had been I was expecing a NE to SE direction wind.

What surprised me more was that there was only one car in the parking lot at Higbee when we arrived just after 7 a.m. I said to myself, surely there is a rare bird around and everyone is there looking at the bird! I know it's a regular work weekday for everyone else in the world pretty much, but I expected there to be a few more cars.

Well either way, if you weren't able to catch the small fight this morning make sure you keep watching the weather channel and checking out the Birding Forecasts http://www.birdcapemay.org/forecast/ because this weekend looks like it could shape up to be pretty good. Saturday especially.

By the way, make note that the "official' Hawkcount and Morning Flight start in earnest on this Saturday Sept. 1. I can't believe that it's Sept. already. If you don't know what the hawkcount or Morning Flight is, check out these pages on BirdCapeMay.org; http://www.birdcapemay.org/hawkwatch/ and http://www.birdcapemay.org/morningflight/

With the winds still from the NNW when we left the island, there may possibly be a little hawk flight today. I heard that there was a nice assortment of hawks over Cape May yesterday. Heck in the WNW winds on Sunday, when we went to look for the Baird's sandpiper, we had a few hawks up and circling. I guess it's just that time of year.

So, for the birding today, there are still good number of kingbirds around. Today also brought a good flight of Baltimore orioles and Red-eyed vireos as well. The birds of the day for me were a beautiful breeding male Golden-winged warbler and a Warbling vireo. We were able share the Golden-winged with only one other person!

So as per usual the list of species is below. The second list is from yesterday 8/27. I wasn't able to enter my numbers into eBird as they were doing some server maintenance. So, I figured that I'd post it along with today's list.

One more note, the numbers today by all means are very conservative estimates. It was very difficult to keep track of the individuals moving around. In fact eBird has a few excellent articles on their site about counting/estimating bird numbers. In my opinion a must read, especially for anyone who is currently or contemplating entering data into eBird. There is also a great article about how you classify the data you submit. Here are a couple of the links. http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/CasualObs.html, http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/Bird_Counting.html

Remember to watch the weather and get out this weekend! Heck, get out even if it doesn't look great weather wise. You never know what you'll tern up. Make sure to at least hit your favorite local patch.



Location: Higbee Beach
Observation date: 8/28/07
Number of species: 49
Double-crested Cormorant 4
Snowy Egret 2
Laughing Gull 18
Rock Pigeon 4
Mourning Dove 12
Chimney Swift 1
Ruby-throated Hummingbird 1
Red-bellied Woodpecker 1
Downy Woodpecker 1
Northern Flicker 3
Least Flycatcher 1- We had a good 6-8 un-id Empids around today. By no means am I an expert in flycatchers plus they didn't give very good looks. In fact, I'm going to do a little brush up reading right now.
Great Crested Flycatcher 26
Eastern Kingbird 280
White-eyed Vireo 12
Warbling Vireo 1
Red-eyed Vireo 42
Blue Jay 1
American Crow 1
Purple Martin 2
Tree Swallow 18
Barn Swallow 4
Carolina Chickadee 8
Tufted Titmouse 4
Red-breasted Nuthatch 8
Carolina Wren 8
House Wren 4
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 10
Veery 3
American Robin 6
Gray Catbird 1
Northern Mockingbird 1
Cedar Waxwing 22
Blue-winged Warbler 4
Golden-winged Warbler 1
Yellow Warbler 1
Prairie Warbler 1
Black-and-white Warbler 9
American Redstart 21
Northern Waterthrush 1
Common Yellowthroat 3
Yellow-breasted Chat 2
Northern Cardinal 9
Rose-breasted Grosbeak 3
Bobolink 35
Red-winged Blackbird 25
Common Grackle 8
Baltimore Oriole 24
House Finch 3
American Goldfinch 2
This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org/)

Location: Higbee Beach
Observation date: 8/27/07
Number of species: 37
Great Egret 4
Cooper's Hawk 1
Laughing Gull 12
Mourning Dove 8
Black-billed Cuckoo 1
Chimney Swift 1
Ruby-throated Hummingbird 1
Eastern Kingbird 368
White-eyed Vireo 4
Red-eyed Vireo 2
American Crow 1
Tree Swallow 13
Barn Swallow 3
Carolina Chickadee 2
Tufted Titmouse 3
Red-breasted Nuthatch 4
Carolina Wren 12
House Wren 4
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 3
Veery 1
American Robin 2
Northern Mockingbird 1
Cedar Waxwing 15
Blue-winged Warbler 5
Yellow Warbler 2
Magnolia Warbler 1
Prairie Warbler 1
Black-and-white Warbler 5
American Redstart 9
Worm-eating Warbler 1
Northern Waterthrush 1
Northern Cardinal 4
Bobolink 65
Red-winged Blackbird 30
Baltimore Oriole 2
House Finch 4
American Goldfinch 3
This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org/)

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