Morning all,
 This posting reminded me of something that I just read in the new (October 2009) issue of Winging It (American Bird Assoc. newsletter). In it Michael O'Brien, previously of Montgomery County, writes an article about what he likes about living and birding in Cape May, N.J. He recalls a weekend in early November 1999 that locals refer to as "The Robin Flight", when they had a HUGE overnight migration of robins, ending the following day with an estimated 1.25 MILLION birds passing through! And this was just the robins, which he says was an underestimate, based on radar images of the nocturnal flight, which showed many more birds passing overhead that night than they counted the next day.

 Amazing!!

Rick Sussman
Woodbine,MD
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Shenot <>
To: 
Sent: Fri, Oct 23, 2009 1:48 pm
Subject: [MDOSPREY] major morning robin flight



This morning from 7:10-7:22, I watched a major flight of robins heading more or 
ess south/southeast.  I was at Brown Station Rd (at the County landfill) and 
ou could not miss it.  I had just dropped off my trash there and was trying to 
ook at the geese on the pond but the light was pretty low.  The flight may have 
egun before I noticed, since the light was so low light at first and the geese 
ere so noisy (counted 220).  The robins were merely impressive at first, but it 
uickly ramped up to spectacular!
They may have been roosting somewhere nearby, just a guess.  I estimate they 
ere flying only about 300-400 feet high as they passed over me.  The flock was 
ery loose and seemed to be fanning out over about a quarter mile width.  It was 
o amazing trying to count; I held my bins in one place and counted the number 
hat passed my field of view in one minute (using my watch), and counted groups 
f hundreds.  I missed some that I could hear passing behind me (out of view), 
ut I have no estimate for how many I missed.
7:10-7:11 ~ 700
:11-7:12 ~ 1,200
:12-7:13 ~ 1,700
:13-7:14 ~ 2,500  This was the peak, and it got hard to count, requiring 
onsiderable effort, but it did not seem to exceed this level
:14-7:18 ~ 2,500 per minute!
:18-7:19 ~ 2,100
:19-7:20 ~ 1,700
:20-7:21 ~ 1,300
:21-7:22 ~ 900
Then it tapered off very rapidly and I stopped counting.   Total was 22,100!
Cheers-
eff Shenot
room MD