These last two days, Sunday and Monday, have been very good for migrants in my yard. The main stars have been the Blue Jays, but they've had an excellent supporting cast both days. Sunday morning I was outside for just over 2 hours (7:07 to 9:18) and had 39 species, highlighted by 10 different warblers:3 Cape Mays, 1 Bay-breasted, 1 Blackpoll, 1 Tennessee Warblera Northern Parula 3 Yellow-rumped Warblers,2 Blackburnian Warblers,1 American Redstart,1 Magnolia Warbler and 5 Black-throated Greens. I also had a (getting late) Great Crested Flycatcher, 1 flyover Pine Siskin, and I got to watch as 2 Cooper's Hawks worked together to try and catch a Northern Flicker. (it got away) With the trees full of birds, I had to ignore the Blue Jays at times, but I still managed to count 4125 Jays migrating over and through my yard, and I can assure you that I missed many more.
This morning picked up right where yesterday left off. I had 44 species in the almost 5 hours that I was outside today (7:15 to 12:10). I had fewer warblers today: 1 Blackpoll1 Pine1 Parula1 Blackburnian3 Yellow Rumps but I had a lot more raptors: 2 Turkey Vultures8 Sharp-shinned Hawks4 Cooper's Hawks3 Bald Eagles1 Red-shouldered Hawk2 Broad-winged Hawks6 Red-tailed Hawks1 American Kestrel1 Peregrine Falcon Other notable birds were 2 Blue-headed Vireos, 1 Eastern Towhee and a flyover American Pipit. I tried to pay a bit more attention to the Blue Jays today and by 10:00 I was over 6000 Jays, but it slowed down after that. My final tally wound up being 6494, but I know that I was unable to count them all. At times the sky was full of Jays from end to end and on multiple levels. Plus I'm sure that many more were lost in the blue sky. Mickey ScilingoConstantia, Oswego Countymickey.scilingo@gte.net315-679-6299 -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
