This last week did prove to be much more active, and our overall total for the season jumped from 241 to 605 birds captured. We added Yellow-billed cuckoo, Gray-cheeked thrush, Blackpoll warbler and Summer tanager to the species list, and caught a lot more of species such as Black-and-white warbler, Black-throated blue warbler, American redstart and Common yellowthroat. Several fronts worked their way down Florida in the last week, causing brief windshifts to the west and bringing us birds. The overall volume of migration has been steadily increasing, with large pulses of birds coming up overnight from western Cuba or from the southeast through the Bahamas. There have been a lot of strong southerly winds this spring which have made for a quick passage through Florida; great for birds but less exciting for birders in deep South Florida. Still, we managed to have better days this last week and broke out of the 5 to 20 birds a day rut we were stuck in for the previous 5 weeks with 46 birds on the 21st, 142 on Earth Day, 60 on the 23rd and 72 birds today. All the new volunteers were finally able to practice their extraction skills and get up to speed.
Sometimes excellent migration conditions take birds away from the Cape without replacing them. This happened over the weekend with the ripping southerly wind overnight on Saturday; all the singing Gray catbirds were gone as well as the lingering birds from the big movement on the previous Thursday. We caught 2 new birds on Sunday but were back up to 72 new birds today when the wind came around to the NW then W overnight. Flocks of warblers trickled in all morning, and they had collected in a couple patches of fruiting ficus and budding trees of other species by the afternoon. Black-and-white and Black-throated blue warblers as well as American redstarts were well-represented today. A Black-whiskered vireo sang his head off all day but never stumbled into a net. Blackpoll warblers have been noticeably absent so far this spring; I was expecting some to come in later today but nope! Usually they are moving through in good numbers by late April.
TOTALS TO APR 26 2021
| SPECIES | NEW | RETURN |
| Yellow-billed cuckoo | 1 | – |
| Chuck-will’s widow | 3 | – |
| Blue-headed vireo | 1 | – |
| Black-whiskered vireo | 1 | – |
| Gray catbird | 92 | 4 |
| Gray-cheeked thrush | 1 | – |
| Hermit thrush | 1 | – |
| Northern parula | 14 | – |
| Cape May warbler | 2 | – |
| Black-throated blue warbler | 99 | – |
| Western palm warbler | 7 | – |
| Blackpoll warbler | 2 | – |
| Black and white warbler | 49 | 4 |
| American redstart | 86 | – |
| Prothonotary warbler | 1 | – |
| Prairie warbler | 44 | 2 |
| Worm-eating warbler | 31 | – |
| Swainson’s warbler | 4 | – |
| Ovenbird | 30 | 4 |
| Louisiana waterthrush | 2 | – |
| Northern waterthrush | 32 | – |
| Common yellowthroat | 67 | 1 |
| Summer tanager | 1 | – |
| Northern cardinal | 2 | 9 |
| Indigo bunting | 3 | – |
| Painted bunting | 5 | – |
| TOTAL | 581 | 24 |
| # BIRDS CAPTURED | # SPECIES | # NETS | NET HOURS | CAPTURE RATE (BIRDS/100NH) | |
| SEASON TOTAL | 605 | 26 | 23 | 5250 | 12.27 |