fall-migration

I again waited until the last possible morning to conduct my seasonal feeder watch. I headed out to out to California on the 24th for the third and final run of the course for the year. As I mentioned in my last post, fall is a great season for migrants, so I was hoping to add something new to the yard list. When I get back to North Carolina in mid-November, migration will be mostly over and our winter residents will already be back in town!

7:00 Start of the observation hour. The only sounds are very loud crickets chirping.

7:01 I hear my first bird, a Northern Cardinal chip call.

7:03 American Crows call distantly.

7:07 A Downy Woodpecker calls from the neighboring yard.

7:08 Chimney Swifts circle overhead—my first seen bird. A White-breasted Nuthatch calls.

7:09 A Blue Jay flies into the yard calling.

7:10 Officially sunrise.

7:11 A Carolina Wren sings loudly in the yard. Carolina Chickadees join in.

7:15 An American Robin calls from the trees above.

7:17 A Northern Flicker calls.

7:18 I see a Brown Thrasher hopping around in the back bushes. A Song Sparrow calls from back there as well.

7:20 The local cardinals are calling loudly, but there is generally less bird song than any of my other three dawn feeder watches.

7:25 House Finches fly over calling.

7:33 A couple Eurasian Starlings fly over.

7:35 It is extremely quiet in the yard!

7:39 Three Mourning Doves fly over.

7:40A Tufted Titmouse calls

7:55 Wandering around to the front of the house, I see two small birds at the top of the large oak across the street. After staring for a few minutes, I finally identify one as a Cape May Warbler. The other bird is also a warbler, but I can’t make out which kind.

7:59 A Red-Bellied Woodpecker calls, the last new bird of the count.

Total: 19 Species

Most notable: Cape May Warbler! This is a true long distant migrant. The closest breeding populations are in Maine, and they all fly to the Caribbean for winter. While they are relatively common in the area in migration, they tend to prefer conifer trees. This was new yard bird #63.

Strangest miss: Eastern Towhee. I’m sure these large, resident sparrows were around somewhere, they just didn’t make their presence know during the hour. I was also hoping to tally a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, as several have been around lately. Unfortunately, they didn’t put in an appearance either.

Comparisons: With everyone so quiet, I totaled five fewer birds than summer, only beating my winter tally by 1 species! All but two of the species overlapped with my summer watch, and only the Cape May Warbler was new (I had a flicker in the spring, but missed it in summer). Across all four seasons, I found 36 species of birds on these dawn watches—over half of the birds I’ve ever seen in the yard!

September is one of the best months for birding in much of the United States. That’s definitely true in Forsyth County, North Carolina. Birders like me wake up at dawn most days this month to go stare into the trees. We’re hoping to catch a glimpse of migrating songbirds. Each year, billions of these guys travel from the Northern U.S. and Canada to the Caribbean, Mexico, Central, and even South America and back. Folks in the middle of the country get two shots a year to see them—spring as they hasten north toward breeding grounds, and fall, as they make their way back south. Some species take different routes on their northern and southern journeys, so it’s definitely worth it to bird during both!

All songbirds forage during the day, however they mostly migrate at night. When the winds are right, millions of birds can pass over favored corridors each night. Amazing, their movements are detectable on Doppler radar. The folks at Cornell, in collaboration with Colorado State and UMass Amherst, take that radar data and publish real time and predictive models for each night about where and in which direction migrants are. The predictive capabilities of BirdCast are an amazing conservation tool, as they allow the issuing of “lights out” warnings. Migrating birds can be easily disoriented by light pollution, and getting folks to turn off lights, especially in tall buildings on heavy migration days, can dramatically improve survivorship. The forecast is also helpful for knowing what days might be the best for finding birds the next morning.

In the weeks before I needed to head back to California, and in between trips to the coast, the mountains, and Pennsylvania, I submitted 23 eBird checklists from Forsyth County. Across these lists I found 16 different species of songbirds that don’t breed or winter anywhere in the county—definite migrants. This list included Warbling Vireo, Baltimore Oriole, Gray-cheeked Thrush, and an amazing 13 species of warbler:

Worm-Eating Warbler

Golden-winged Warbler

Blue-winged Warbler

Tennessee Warbler

Cape May Warbler

Magnolia Warbler

Bay-breasted Warbler

Blackburnian Warbler

Chestnut-Sided Warbler

Black-throated Blue Warbler

Palm Warbler

Black-throated Green Warbler

Canada Warbler

While that’s a pretty good list, there are 36 species of warbler that have been seen in the county, and I’ve only seen 24. Finding the rest is a great motivation to keep peering into trees for many Septembers to come.

botanicalramblings

September 23, 2025: Fall Feeder Watch

September 22, 2025: Just passing through