Posted by Underground Holisitic Birding Movement on October 02, 2001 at 10:37:00:
In Reply to: Re: Key West Kicks A%#*! posted by Steve Siegel on October 01, 2001 at 21:41:44:
Steve,
We were there on both the evening of the 28th and the day of the 29th. On the 28th the diversity and numbers were definitely not as extreme as on the 29th, but there were still many birds around including the 200 common yellowthroats, kentucky warbler, assorted tanagers, and blue grosbeaks. The night of the 29th into the 30th, the storm line seemed to move right over Key West, creating what we think of as a hugh bird-barrier. It seemed to have worked, because as the storms and rain cleared by 11:30am on Saturday (the 29th) more birds than ever were spread over the entire park. The interesting thing (and I think the question your were originally getting at) was what happened on Sunday with a stiff north wind and (mostly) clear skies. We waited on the beach for a few hours to see if we could hear any massive movements under the almost full moon....but only a few night calls were heard. I slept in the car that night with the windows cracked and didn't hear much. The next day, on our way to the Tortugas ferry we heard many warblers in the trees around Key West, a possible indication that many were sticking around. When we got to the Tortugas we didn't find nearly 1/100th the amount of birds that we had seen in Key West the day before, either indicating that the Tortuga birds took the north wind out the night before, or that the islands are not on the trajectory of this last huge movement. Unfortunately we don't know what the birding was actually like on Sunday because we were headed out to the islands....but it's possible that Chris Borg could shed some light on it.
We wish you were there with your video camera Steve!
cheers
UHBM