We were pretty excited this morning to see what we would get with the largest overnight movement of migrants we had seen so far this season. Bobolinks could be heard in the dark and as the sun rose warblers were dropping down onto the Cape in decent numbers. They were calling their flight notes as they came in and then the palmetto scrub and edge of the hammock filled with the chip notes of Common yellowthroats, American redstarts, Northern waterthrush and Ovenbirds. An oriole or two kept going along with the Bobolinks. The birds eventually settled in for a day of quietly foraging in small flocks here and there. Most of the birds we captured today were very fat and are ready to continue their trip to the Greater Antilles tonight.
We were surprised to not catch any new species for the season in this wave, but it brought us our first numbers of Common yellowthroats and we ended up with our second highest capture total for the day. With clear skies overnight we weren’t expecting a huge day since for each bird that landed, many more continued their journey even during the daylight. The west winds overnight apparently weren’t strong enough to blow us birds heading towards Central America, so our species diversity remained pretty normal.
One Ovenbird ended his journey today at Cape Florida, his winter destination since 2014. He was banded in the fall and then recaptured in December and color-banded as part of a pilot study on wintering Ovenbirds in the urban landscape. The project didn’t get funding, but several of the color-banded birds returned year after year and we removed the colors since there was no need for them anymore. This bird we called Sherbet because his colors were white and orange and we were likely hungry at the time.
| SPECIES | NEW | RETURN | RECAP |
| Red-eyed vireo | 2 | – | – |
| Blue-gray gnatcatcher | 2 | – | – |
| Northern parula | 2 | – | – |
| Prairie warbler | 1 | – | 1 |
| American redstart | 8 | – | – |
| Black-and-white warbler | 3 | – | – |
| Black-throated blue warbler | 4 | – | – |
| Northern waterthrush | 3 | – | – |
| Worm-eating warbler | 4 | – | – |
| Ovenbird | 6 | 1 | – |
| Common yellowthroat | 12 | – | – |
| # BIRDS CAPTURED | # SPECIES | # NETS | NET HOURS | CAPTURE RATE (BIRDS/100NH) | |
| DAILY TOTAL | 48 | 11 | 23 | 138.75 | 35.32 |
| SEASON TOTAL | 650 | 28 | 23 | 3828.55 | 19.04 |