Betsy and I covered our usual portion of Section 3 on the annual BOS October Count on Sunday. This area is bounded by the Niagara River, Lake Ontario, Rt 78, and Rt 104 in Niagara County. We have been doing this section for about 25 years. This was a truly remarkable day for BLACKPOLL WARBLERS. We have never had more than two Blackpoll Warblers on this count, which is always held on the second Sunday in October. Today, we had 43! When talking with Jim Pawlicki, we discovered that he had 70 BLACKPOLL WARBLERS in Section 4, to the east of us! Also, as posted by Bob Beal, he had at least 32 BLACKPOLL WARBLERS further east, at Braddock Bay and Island Cottage Woods! These would all be very respectable numbers during the peak of this species fall migration, which generally falls in the second or third week of September. At this time of year, however, these numbers are simply incredible. The average count for Blackpoll Warbler on the entire BOS October Count (that is, over the entire huge BOS Region with 70 years of count data) is three and the maximum count is 23 in 1954. The maximum count since 1980 is only 7 in 1994. (Note that I am missing the data from 2005 to the present.) Also note that Betsy and I only counted Blackpolls that we could identify visually. Betsy could have probably added a dozen or so to her total had she elected to include calling birds but she chose not to (Bay-breasted Warbler has a very similar call though we saw none this day). I cannot hear their call notes. All of the Blackpoll Warblers were seen very near Lake Ontario. We spent over an hour at an inland site, Joseph Davis State Park (about 3.5 miles inland), and had none. Jim Pawlicki mentioned making the same observation in Section 4 - his birds were also near the lake but not inland. What is also intriguing about this fall's Blackpoll migration is that this species has been our (Betsy's and mine) most common warbler since September 17th, mainly at sites along Lake Ontario. That is almost four weeks! It sure seems like they had a very successful breeding season.
Good birding! Willie ------------------ Willie D'Anna Betsy Potter Wilson, NY dannapotterATroadrunner.com http://www.betsypottersart.com <http://www.betsypottersart.com/> -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
