Blue Ridge Parkway, VA 10/9/2019

All photos are © Marshall Faintich

I was keen to go birding up on the parkway and parallel Route 610 this morning. The Birdcast website had forecasted strong migration through Virginia overnight, and the actual radar showing bird movement overnight was strong and persisted until about 7:30 this morning. It usually dies down well before sunrise. Perhaps the overnight rains delayed some of the migrating birds, and they were on the move later in the early morning hours. I got to the parkway at 9:15, and I could see that that there was fog that was starting to lift as the low October sun angles were keeping the fog from lifting more quickly.

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Fog at the cirque (mm. 7.5)

I took my usual route all the way to 3 Ridges Overlook (mm. 13) and returned along the same route. Although I ended the day with 33 avian species, I saw all but 5 of them on Route 610 between mm. 2 and mm. 4 of the parkway. When I was at Hickory Springs Overlook (mm. 12), it was close to 10:00, the temperature was 48 degrees with some wind, and the sunlight had only started to illuminate the trees there. Birding along Route 610 was much better. I saw 6 warbler species this morning, and all of them were along 610. This included my first of season Yellow-rumped Warbler (other than the summer residents of this species at very high elevations in the Allegheny Mountains).

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Common Yellowthroat

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Common Yellowthroat

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Female Black-throated Blue Warbler

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Female Black-throated Blue Warbler

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Female Black-throated Blue Warbler

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Female Black-throated Blue Warbler

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Black-throated Green Warbler

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Black-throated Green Warbler

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Black-throated Green Warbler

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Black-throated Green Warbler

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American Redstart

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Northern Parula

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Yellow-rumped Warbler

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Yellow-rumped Warbler

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Yellow-rumped Warbler

The non-warbler species were plentiful.

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Scarlet Tanager and Red-eyed Vireo

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Blue-headed Vireo

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Blue-headed Vireo

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Blue-headed Vireo

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Brown Thrasher

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White-throated Sparrow

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Common Raven

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Rose-breasted Grosbeak

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Eastern Phoebe

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House Wren

I saw a small flock of three or four thrushes, and I think that they all were Gray-cheeked, but backlighting made viewing (and photography) a challenge.

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Gray-cheeked Thrush

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Gray-cheeked Thrush

The arrival of Yellow-rumped Warblers, central Virginia's only wintering warbler species, marks the unnofficial end to my yearly warbler photography quest, and I now plan to focus on non-warbler species. Of course, late migrating warbler species and stragglers will certainly be around, but I won't be making as many trips up to the parkway until next May. But I'm not unhappy, as my 2019 total for photographed New World warbler species is 40, with 34 warbler species photographed in Virginia this year. Both numbers are my personal yearly highs, and will be hard to top in the coming years.


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