NFC-L, eBird Team (Steve Kelling, Brian Suillivan, Chris Wood, Marshall Iliff) was in North Dakota last night (7-8 Sep) enjoying a substantial nocturnal movement under clear skies and light N winds. About 8-15 calls/min. From 8:25-9:45 approximate totals (and in some cases, approximate IDs) have been:
Great Blue Heron - 5, seen migrating at dusk Upland Sandpiper - 4 Killdeer - 1 Yellow Warbler - 75 Swainson's Thrush - ~20 Veery - ~2 Bobolink - ~10 Clay-colored Sparrow - ~200 Savannah Sparrow - ~120 Grasshopper Sparrow - ~20 Lincoln's Sparrow - 1 Song? Sparrow - 4 Lazuli/Indigo Bunting - 1 Certainly lots of unidentifiable calls, but nothing that fell well outside of these groups. This composition matches well with what we had on the ground today in a full day of very intensive birding (e.g., 200 Clay-colored, 75 Yellow Warblers, 60 Savannah, 8 Swainson's, 3 Veery). I don’t think any of us feel fully comfortable with Wilson's Warbler flight call, but there were 10-15 seen in today's birding. Chipping Sparrow was common by day and should have been identifiable in tonight's flight, but we didn’t hear any. A very enjoyable flight. Thrushes and Grasshopper Sparrows seemed to increase over the 90 minutes of listening; Yellow Warbler seemed to decrease. 10 minutes of moonwatching at about 10:10-10:20 revealed a rate of about 3 birds/min--all moving very fast. Best, Marshall Iliff Miliff AT aol.com -- -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html --
