As is typical for this time of year, a single good night of migration can catch things up, and bring millions of birds in just a few hours of darkness. In fact, the tower has seen a staggering 28 new species just this week. Migration is clearly in full swing.
Sunday began with a nice strong south winds that brought the first major flight of Blue Jays over the Dunes. The spring migration of Blue Jays often goes unnoticed to the layman. A general replacement occurs, where wintering birds at your feeders aren’t the same ones that were there in the summer, and vice versa. Some morning totals of Blue Jays in early May can top 1,000+, with the state record of 7,264 having taken place right here at the tower. By yesterday, 701 were seen flying past. You can expect the peak flights of Blue Jays to take place over the coming 7-10 days.
For the early birds, the tower continues to hear Eastern Whip-poor-wills before dawn. Standing on the tower deck allows you to hear both whips and woodcocks calling in the prairie below. It’s worth the visit to hear them and the subsequent dawn chorus.
But now that it’s May, warblers are where it’s at! Nearly a 1/3 of the new birds this week have been our bright colored jewels from the tropics (not hummingbirds, but we got one of those too this week!). While seeing Cape May, Nashville, Palm, Tennessee, and Yellow-rumps, are pretty par for the course with morning flight migration, a few warblers are a little harder to spot at the tower. They move in smaller numbers or are more secretive in their movements near the high dune woodland site. So it’s always a treat to score both a Worm-eating Warbler and Prothonotary Warbler on Monday.
American Goldfinches are just now ramping up now too. They will peak later in May, and will often be joined by Pine Siskins that can stage late May migration movements. This year’s movement has kicked off a little early. Over 2,000 goldfinches were seen on Monday, but doubled on Wednesday, when over 4,000 were recorded flying over. As usual, a few siskins were mixed in on Wednesday.
Many of other great highlights took place this week, including a late Golden Eagle, Summer Tanager, a flyby Yellow-headed Blackbird, and a Blue Grosbeak. The magic has begun, keep your eyes out!
Wanna stay updated on the monthly totals? Here are our monthly trip reports:
March Longshore Flight Report (110 species)
April Longshore Flight Report (150 species)
May Longshore Flight Report (96 species and counting!)
Cover photo: Blue Jay by Michael Topp
Indiana Dunes Migration Birding 