This last front delivered as promised. It was passing all day on October 19, and the day actually got cooler as it wore on, dropping down to a bone-chilling 63 degrees by the afternoon. Thick cloud cover and a light intermittent rain accompanied WNW winds, and the birds came in strong.
Ho boy!!!! Get to banding (photo by Brian Cammarano)
We heard a lot of warbler flight calls at sunrise, and the first couple of hours were diverse with mostly warbler species, but Veery, Swainson’s and Gray-Cheeked Thrushes were also in the mix. Sometime around 1100 a huge wave of mostly American Redstarts and Black-throated Blue Warblers descended upon us and we closed all the nets after catching about 50 or 60 birds in one net run. This is to keep the birds from having to wait too long in the bags to be banded. We powered through the mass of warblers and then re-opened a section of nets once we were caught up. The day featured lots of individuals of some of our scarcer species such as Magnolia, Tennessee and Bay-breasted Warblers. The whole Florida peninsula participated in this migration extravaganza, and we were hearing reports of high numbers of these species all over.
By the end of the day we banded or recaptured 210 birds of 24 species, including a male Common yellowthroat originally banded on 5/11/2020 in Vermont. Here's the day's total:
Chuck-will's widow -2
Eastern wood-pewee -1
Acadian flycatcher -1
Great crested flycatcher -1
White-eyed vireo -3
Veery -1
Gray-cheeked thrush -1
Swainson's thrush -6
Gray catbird -13
Blue-gray gnatcatcher -1 (return from Fall 2021)
Tennessee warbler -3
Northern parula -13
Chestnut-sided warbler -1
Magnolia warbler -11
Cape May warbler -3
Black-throated blue warbler -66
Western palm warbler -6
Bay-breasted warbler -2
Black & white warbler -2
American redstart -58
Swainson's warbler -1
Ovenbird -4
Common yellowthroat -9 (including the guy from Vermont)
Hooded warbler -1
Passed out afterwards (photo by David Die)
Bird # 2000! Bay-breasted warbler (photo by Michelle Davis)
Tennessee Warbler (photo by Michelle Davis)
We encountered several warblers that were missing tail feathers and had marks on their backs from close escapes from hawks. Raptors were everywhere this week, rising up out of the canopy at dawn where they were sleeping overnight, or blasting through the tops of the trees and angering the squirrels and Gray Catbirds. This gorgeous adult Broad-winged Hawk was banded on Monday.
Broad-winged Hawk from Oct 17 (photo by Mare Martin)
The radar Wednesday night lit up with birds departing the area, and Bird Cast estimated 5 to 6 million birds crossed Miami airspace that night. These were the healthy birds continuing on south. Fewer birds were still to the north of us, and migration has quieted down a lot across the Eastern seaboard since then. As a consequence, we banded only 77 new birds on Thursday and 40 today. Today did feature an additional 20 recaptures; a pretty big proportion for our site! These are the individuals that came in with low or no fat reserves on the big wave Wednesday, so they are staying here to put on weight to continue the migration. Places such as Cape Florida are life-savers for these birds. They are consuming all the fruit and insects they can find so that they can pick up their travels.
