We reached a milestone on Sunday, September 25 while the Phoebes women’s birding group was
visiting the station- the 1,000 th bird banded this season! We typically don’t get to that number until early
October, but the last two weeks have been steady. No big days since September 16, but 30 to 70 birds
every day has gotten us there. Number 1,000 was this feisty Worm-eating Warbler. The diversity is going
up right now, as is expected in late September, and we added 8 new species to the season total.
The Phoebes birding group with Bird # 1,000 for Fall 2022, a Worm-eating Warbler. (photo by Ana Lima)
Some of the new birds arriving include greater numbers of Common Yellowthroats and Black-throated
Blue Warblers, and they are becoming abundant at Cape Florida. Western Palm Warblers, an indicator
of winter in South Florida, also came in last week. Some more unusual birds were in the mix, too,
including this Blue-winged Warbler and a Seaside Sparrow, captured in one of our high canopy nets! We
suspect it was migrating overnight and we captured it as it dropped down right after sunrise, but before
it had a chance to find its preferred saltwater marsh habitat.
Blue-winged warbler (photo by Jeanette Rawls)
Seaside Sparrow (photo by Brian Cammarano)
We are currently closed for two or three days as Category 4 Hurricane Ian passes by to the northwest of
us. Surprisingly, the weather here isn’t too rough considering we are on what is typically the ‘dirty’ side
of a storm heading north-northeast, but dry air is getting wrapped around the center from the west and
it is dampening the wind and rain. He is riding the edge of a front with nice temperatures and lower
humidity on the other side. We are interested to see what Ian’s passage does to the bird numbers i
afterwards. Rain to the north of us could block migrants coming down from the Atlantic seaboard for a
few days, but maybe birds from the Gulf side will swing around into us on the backside of Ian, moving
under clear skies and northwest winds. There are likely also a lot of birds hunkered down locally,
awaiting the return of good travel weather. Hurricane Ian is proving to be devastating to Southwest
Florida, in particular the Ft. Myers area, so our thoughts are with the folks there dealing with the brunt
of the storm.
