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Subject:

FW: truly MASSIVE fallout in s. NJ Friday

From:

Norm Saunders

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Fri, 21 Oct 2005 19:17:15 +0000

Jim Felley mentions his warbler fallout on the Mall in DC, and we are seeing high numbers of White-throated Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Swamp Sparrows, and other fallout birds here in the West Ocean City area that certainly weren't present last weekend.  See Paul Lehman's note regarding the massive fallout this morning in Cape May:

-------------- Forwarded Message: -------------- 
From: "Paul E. Lehman" <> 
Subject: truly MASSIVE fallout in s. NJ Friday 

Dear All, 

Today, Friday, there was truly one of the most impressive fallouts of 
shore-distance migrants seen in a very, very long time in a good part of 
southern New Jersey. Weather was cloudy overnight, with a few scattered 
showers, and a light north wind; more persistent rain started 
mid-morning. The radar images showed a massive late-night flight. The 
chief component was sparrows, of which the early afternoon estimate is 
of 50,000 in Cape May (on Cape Island) alone!! Most are Song, Swamp, 
and White-throated, but there has also been perhaps 2000 Chippings and 
2000+ Juncos, with lesser but good numbers of Savannah and Field; plus 
about 5 Clay-coloreds, 15 Lincoln's, and three Vespers. Also around 150 
White-crowneds, which must be a local record. What is even more amazing 
than these truly seething masses of sparrows is that they are truly 
everywhere, not just in pockets, and the folks 15+ miles north at the 
CMBO Goshen center report hundreds of sparrows in just the garden there. 
A teacher at a school in Cape May Court House reports impressive numbers 
of sparrows there. And there were gobs and gobs of birds in the pre-dawn 
gloom even farther northwest at Turkey Point in Cumberland County. So 
this flight was LARGE-scale. If one wished to extrapolate the sparrow 
numbers over the good sparrow habitat found in the eastern and western 
sections of these two counties, then the total must be FAR in excess of 
a million birds--but who knows!!! 

There were also 40,000 Yellow-rumpeds, and almost a thousand Flickers in 
just one hour, at the Higbee Beach dike. Thousands of Robins, lots and 
lots of kinglets, lots of Phoebes, lawns covered with many, many Palm 
Warblers, a fair number of Purple Finches, and a few Pine Siskins. A 
sprinkling of the usual late and lingering warblers, vireos, buntings, 
orioles, Bobolinks. A late Ruby-thr Hummingbird. A few Dickcissels. One 
Sedge Wren. 

How widespread was this event beyond southernmost NJ?? 

--Paul Lehman