Warblers in the Night

[Yellow-rumped Warbler landing pre-dawn along the beach at Cape May City, having just come in off the ocean. Watch especially around lighted areas for arriving migrants before dawn. Photo by Michael O'Brien, click to enlarge.]

[Michael O'Brien "killed" this Yellow-rumped Wabler in flight, which is to say, he took a great photograph of a difficult subject - but that's not how photographers say it. Click to enlarge.]

[Karl Lukens sent this Golden-crowned Kinglet photo, at the hawk watch yesterday, to go with the Ruby-crowned (see below). I neglected to note about the Ruby-crowned that it is a male with its crown feathers raised. Seeing that much red on a Ruby-crowned is not usual. Karl's Golden-crowned is a male, too - told by the orange center to the golden crown. Click to enlarge.]

Chuck and MJ Slugg report: "The Two Mile Beach walk [every Tuesday 8:30 a.m.] had long strings of migrating Double-Crested Cormorants and swirls of Tree Swallows peppering the sky." Close to 50 species were found on this walk, which has a bit "kinder" start time than some other CMBO weekly morning walks.

Winds seem to be west now (pre-dawn), and are forecast to go light southwest mid morning, which means there easily could be passerine migrants today (Michael had 20 calls/minute going on overhead in Cape May around 5:30 a.m. ), and that hawks will be moving early and kettling quite a bit in the light wind, in some ways making for the most interesting hawk watching if difficult counting.