Thanks for sharing this…absolutely amazing.
Steve Kistler
Hart Co KY
From: birdky-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:birdky-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Ronan O'Carra
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2018 10:58 PM
To: BIRDKY
Subject: [birdky] An eBird report that has to be seen
If you want to know what a day of birding can be like you have to read this
eBird entry see link or just read the comments in the eBird entry. I had to
share this once I read it.
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S46116491
Ronan O’Carra,
Lexington
This was in the comments
Southwest winds overnight had led to high hopes for the morning, compounded by
dawn rain in the area. Our first stop had been fruitless, with a handful of
warblers moving, but nothing notable. We decided to head for the Tadoussac
dunes anyways.
On our arrival (545a), it was raining. A few warblers passed here and there,
and we got excited about groups of 5-10 birds. Shortly before 6:30a, there was
a break in the showers, and things were never the same.
For the next 9 hours, we counted a nonstop flight of warblers, at times
covering the entire visible sky from horizon to horizon. The volume of flight
calls was so vast that it often faded into a constant background buzz. There
were times where there were so many birds, so close, that naked eyes were
better than binoculars to count and identify. Three species of warbler flew
between my legs throughout the day (TEWA, MAWA, MYWA). For hours at a time, a
single binocular scan would give you hundreds or low thousands of warblers
below eye level.
The flight line(s) varied depending on wind direction and speed. When calm,
birds were high, often inland or farther out over the river. High winds
(especially from the W, or SW), brought birds down low, sometimes feet from the
ground and water. Rain also lowered birds, and the most intimate experiences
with migrants occurred during a rain squall and strong wind period. Hundreds of
birds stopped to feed and rest on the bare sand, or in the small shrubs.
Counting birds and estimating species composition was the biggest challenge of
the day—balancing the need to document what was happening with the desire to
just bask in the greatest avian spectacle I’ve ever witnessed. A significant
effort was made to estimate call rates throughout the day, and those rates
combined with species-specific movement estimates were used for the below
totals. See the full checklist for species-specific notes.
Movement rate estimates were made by looking through binoculars at a flight
line, and counting the number of individuals passing a vertical line in that
field of view, per second. This was repeated multiple times for each bin view,
and repeated throughout the sky so that all flight at that moment was accounted
for. The average birds/second was then used for that time period, until another
rate estimate showed a different volume of movement. Non-warblers were counted
separately. I took several attempts at video, and will aim to add these before
too long. These were my warbler rate estimates:
6:29-6:43 8s — 6720
6:44-7:02 3s — 3240
7:03-7:14 15s — 9900
7:15-8:02 30s — 84600
8:03-8:27 10s — 14400
8:28-9:12 15s — 48600
9:13-9:31 12s — 12960
9:32-9:48 15s — 14400
9: <tel:49-1038%2025> 49-1038 25/s — 73500
10:39-11:03 40/s — 57600 (during and after a rain squall)
11:04-11:52 30/s — 86400
11:53-12:17 20/s — 28800
12:18-12:37 15/s — 17100
12:38-12:48 25/s — 15000
12:49-1:13 50/s — 72000 (winds switch to strong WSW)
1:14-2:36 30/s — 147600
2:37-2:56 20/s — 22800
2:57-3:04 10/s — 4200
3:05-3:14 3/s — 1620
3:15-3:18 1/s — 180
Total number of warblers: 721,620
To our knowledge, the previous warbler high for a single day in the region was
around 200,000, which was the highest tally anywhere in the world. Other
observers in the area today had multiple hundreds of thousands, so there were
likely more than a million warblers moving through the region on 28 May 2018.
There’s no place like Tadoussac.
