The weather on Thursday night into Friday presented a great opportunity to witness morning flight on coastal Long Island.
There were at least three groups of people doing dedicated morning flight watches that I am aware of: Shai Mitra, Taylor Sturm, and Brent Bomkamp were at Robert Moses SP in Suffolk County, Sean Sime was at Coney Island Creek Park along with Bobbi Manian and Tom Preston, and I was at Fort Tilden with Shane Blodgett and Luke Musher. All three parties had interesting mornings, and I will link to all pertinent eBird lists at the end. It was an especially exciting morning for us at Tilden, and Shane and I ended up spending just under 7 hours atop the Battery Harris hawkwatching platform before we finally called it quits despite the fact that some birds were still in visible migration. The most impressive movements came from swallows, swifts, and neotropical migrant warblers, though there was enough diversity beyond those taxa that we tallied 80+ species during our stationary vigil. Before the sun rose we had already tallied Common Nighthawk and Barn Owl from the platform, with the latter disappearing to the east (perhaps to roost in the old run-down building (machine shop?) that is not accessible and was historically a good location for the species). We ended up with 6 Common Nighthawks, the final one appearing just before noon, flying high over the outer dune scrub and beach. I'll mention some other select highlights here, and let the list speak for the rest: *Chimney Swift*-*1,625*. A huge flight of Chimney Swifts, starting with modest numbers through the first 2-3 hours or so of the morning, and then ramping up to several hundred an hour for the last few. We likely undercounted the final tally by not making a dedicated effort to count them by ones earlier in the morning. * Barn Swallow*- 1,315. A very impressive showing, they also picked up later in the morning, and started carrying other Swallow species regularly after 10:15 AM. Same caveat as above with Chimney Swift applies to these in terms of undercounting. *Bank Swallow*- *76* (a fairly (very?) high count for Queens county) *Cliff Swallow*- *13* (likewise a good tally for the county) *Purple Martin*- *11* (low density annual migrant, but most often seen in western Long Island on this context. Numbers probably peak on mid-to-late August) *Northern Rough-winged Swallow*- 1 (getting quite late for this species in the region, as most are gone). *Eastern Kingbird*- 108 (This flight characteristically didn't pick up until an hour or two after sunrise, but then it dried up very quickly as well, and there were very few later in the morning when the flight was predominantly swallows and swifts. On some migration days, these continue to move strongly into the later morning. *Warblers*- We detected 260 individuals apparently engaged in westbound morning flight, about half of which we couldn't conclusively identify. This isn't the best location to observe a morning flight of species that migrate mostly nocturnally, so this number is actually quite impressive compared with my previous experiences here. *American Redstart*- 62. The most abundant warbler detected today, which isn't a surprise given the date. *Cape May Warbler*- *17*. A strong showing of this species, and the highest daily count that I've seen in New York. *Dickcissel*-1 (a low density migrant on the coast, but a staple of strong morning flights like this one- at least two others were found in Brooklyn on Friday, including one on morning flight at Coney Island Creek Park). *Red-winged Blackbird*- 520. The largest flock numbered 33 individuals. Later in the season similar conditions will produce thousands of this species, but they actually start moving west as early as early August or even late July on the coast. We also had several empidonax flycatchers around, with a Traill's and a Least included among birds near the battery, and a bird near the Comminity Garden as we were leaving in early afternoon which looked to be an Alder Flycatcher. Complete eBird list for Battery Harris at Fort Tilden: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S38939903 Sean's list from Coney Island Creek Park: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S38938799 Three lists from Robert Moses, where they more meticulously kept hourly checklists during their monitoring: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S38938512 http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S38938205 http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S38938161 Good Migration Hunting! -Doug Gochfeld. Brooklyn, NY. -- 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/[email protected]/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/ --
