Morning Flight

Blue-gray Gnatcatchers put in a good showing early this week. Photo by Gautam Apte. It’s been a fairly uneventful week up on top of the Higbee dike, but migration continues to push steadily on. As is typical in the early season, most days feature only a handful of neotropical migrants,…...

Bad photos of good birds are a common theme of morning flight watches and this Cerulean Warbler that came past on Wednesday was certainly no exception. Photo by Gautam Apte. After the unfavorable migration conditions that plagued most of last week, we saw a shift to north winds at the…...

This Worm-eating Warbler passed over the dike on August 3rd. The species is a low-density migrant and is always an exciting bird to see in morning flight! Photo © Gautam Apte.   BY GAUTAM APTE 2022 Morning Flight Counter The 20th official season of Cape May Bird Observatory’s morning flight…...

Sunrise over the back of the Dike. Photo by Jerald Reb November 15th was the final day of the 2021 Morning Flight season, so it’s time to take a look back at the highlights of this fall! We ended the count with over 335,000 individual birds counted and over 220…...

Sunrise over the Dike. Photo by Jerald Reb Hello everyone, I apologize for the lack of recent updates; it’s been a busy season on the Dike! Early October has seen a significant shift in diversity here, with many of our early season Warblers reaching the end of their time in…...

Sunrise over the back of the Dike. Photo by Tom Reed After several weeks of mostly slow flights in August, September got off to an excellent start this week with some northerly winds bringing a few significant flights. While Sunday and Monday remained slow, things kicked into high gear on…...

The second week of the count season was dominated by southerly winds, as well as some days of rain, making for poor flight conditions in general. Despite the less-than-ideal weather patterns, we had several days of solid movement and some fresh arrivals. Monday was our most active day of the…...

A Yellow Warbler blending in with the vegetation. Photo © Tom Reed. Hello everyone, and welcome to the fall 2021 Morning Flight count season! My name is Jerald Reb, and I will be the Morning Flight counter this year, returning from 2019. I look forward to seeing many of you…...

With late-November upon us and the 2020 morning flight count in the books, I’ve been meaning to post about the last few weeks of the season.  An incredible early season was equally matched by an unprecedented flight of northern finches throughout October and November. Species moving south in force this…...

It’s really looking like fall in Cape May with leaves changing, temps dropping, and winter species arriving. The overall trend this fall continued as consistent cold fronts brought northwest winds and lots of birds to Cape May. A couple impressive days that stood out were the 14th and the 17th,…...