The last couple of weeks of September are normally when we can start to get a sense of what to expect from migration. It’s also when we can start expecting our averages to climb to what we will likely get most days for the rest of the season. For our volunteers who are learning to extract, these are some of the best times because the pace is just right – enough birds in the nets to learn how to safely get them out, but not so many that it’s overwhelming or you feel rushed. Many of our new volunteers have grown a lot in these two weeks and “graduated” to extracting solo!
We’ve certainly been getting a lot more birds, with most days averaging above 30 birds. This is likely where this number will hover until we get into the middle of October and start getting more Black-throated blue Warblers moving through South Florida and the long-awaited gray catbirds arrive. The first week or so of this period was the most exciting, with several days over 30 and our biggest day of the season so far, with 81 birds! It’s amazing to see migration finally picking up and appreciate some of the occasionally strange gifts it brings to our nets.
We got our first and likely only Yellow-breasted Chat during this period. If you’re not familiar with chats, they were long a source of taxonomic confusion. Bulkier than a warbler, but bearing a striking resemblance, for many years it was classified as a member of the family Parulidae, where most North American warblers are placed (there are two exceptions on the continent, but neither occur in Florida). In the early 2010s, scientists recognized this bird was just a bit too weird – or how we might say in Spanish, a bit too “Ni de aquí, ni de allá” – to stay in Parulidae and they moved Chats to a group entirely of their own, Icteriidae. (Note: this is very close in spelling to Icteridae, the family of the blackbirds, but it is not the same!). The Yellow-breasted Chat is the only species in that family.
The Yellow-breasted Chat we banded on September 16th, 2023 – happy birthday, Michelle! (Photo by Nasim Mahomar)
If you take a look at their range map, it explains why we see them so infrequently. We still seem to manage to get one each fall, and normally right in this late-September window of time. Banding migrants in the subtropics definitely keeps all of us banders on our toes, learning how to age and sex so many different species, including the ones like Chats that turn up only once or twice a year.
The range map for Yellow-breasted Chats demonstrates why they’re such a rare bird at the station, as most stick to the Mississippi and Central Flyways (Map screenshot from All About Birds)
On the last day of September, we also caught an extra special first for the station – a Merlin! Raptors in general aren’t super unusual; we’ll definitely have a few more by the end of the season, and many more close calls with raptors that might run into the nets but work their way out on their own. But after 21 years of consistent fall banding, it’s not often that we get to say we’ve caught the first of that species ever at the station – so we’re going to be bragging about this tiny, high speed hunter for the rest of the season.
Migration is just starting to pick up, and we’ve banded more birds in the last two weeks than the first four. But we’re still missing some species that we know will move through in October. We picked up a few new species in the last couple of weeks, including Veery and Swainson’s Thrushes. We can expect to see Gray-cheeked Thrushes before the season is through. It seems that thrush migration may have started a little earlier than usual this year, as I saw many of them in Panama this last week, and even a wood thrush. Local guides told me that many migrants have appeared almost a whole month ahead of schedule! Most of our birds are island-bound, so it’s entirely possible that this won’t have as much of an impact. Perhaps the Mississippi flyway just got an early start, or had fewer interruptions due to our particularly active Atlantic hurricane season. We will see what it means for the rest of fall banding.
If you want to learn more about how migration is progressing along the Atlantic Flyway (or just have been missing Michelle), check out the webinar we co-hosted on September 21st as part of Tropical Audubon’s webinar series. You’ll learn more not only about our station and the science of banding, but even get some great insight into what’s going on to the North of us in the flyway at the Cape May Bird Observatory in New Jersey.
| SPECIES | NEW 9/16-9/30 | RETURN 9/16-9/30 | Season Total (new & return) |
| Merlin | 1 | – | 1 |
| White-crowned pigeon | – | – | 1 |
| Chuck-will’s widow | 3 | – | 5 |
| Red-bellied woodpecker | – | – | 1 |
| Traill’s flycatcher | 8 | – | 9 |
| Great crested flycatcher | 2 | – | 3 |
| Red-eyed vireo | 26 | – | 36 |
| White-eyed Vireo | 5 | – | 5 |
| Veery | 5 | – | 5 |
| Swainson’s Thrush | 10 | – | 10 |
| Blue-gray gnatcatcher | 2 | – | 15 |
| Northern parula | 14 | – | 25 |
| Cape May warbler | 11 | – | 12 |
| Black-throated blue warbler | 34 | – | 54 |
| Prairie warbler | 6 | – | 19 |
| Western Palm Warbler | 2 | – | 2 |
| Black & white warbler | 28 | – | 72 |
| American redstart | 76 | – | 148 |
| Prothonotary warbler | – | – | 4 |
| Worm-eating warbler | 45 | – | 115 |
| Swainson’s warbler | 28 | 1 | 37 |
| Ovenbird | 138 | 2 | 223 |
| Northern waterthrush | 26 | – | 61 |
| Louisiana waterthrush | – | – | 3 |
| Connecticut Warbler | 1 | – | 1 |
| Common yellowthroat | 24 | – | 32 |
| Hooded warbler | 1 | – | 6 |
| Yellow-breasted Chat | 1 | – | 1 |
| Northern cardinal | 1 | – | 7 |
| Painted bunting | – | – | 1 |
| Common grackle | – | – | 1 |
| 498 | 3 | 915 |
| # BIRDS CAPTURED | # SPECIES | # NETS | NET HOURS | CAPTURE RATE (BIRDS/100NH) | |
| TOTAL FROM 9/16-9/30 | 501 | 25 | 25 | 1452.67 | 34.49 |
| TOTAL FROM 8/15-9/15 | 414 | 24 | 25 | 3430.31 | 12.07 |
| SEASON TOTAL | 915 | 31 | 25 | 4882.98 | 18.74 |
Post by Steffanie Munguia