Dunno how I missed this thread.
Anyhoo.... I’ve been watching winds over the Gulf on the Windy website. North winds had been unusually prevalent over the Yucatán/East Coast of Mexico most of last week. Gotta figure fifty million songbirds a day wanting to cross the Gulf second half of April/first week of May. Contrary winds are like stopping up the flow, creating a backlog.
Friday into Friday night strong south winds over the Yucatán woulda pushed a kazillion songbirds into launching out over open water, two thirds of their way here on Saturday northeast winds over the northern Gulf would put them in crisis. When you’re cruising at 25 -35 mph a 15 to 20 mph headwind will slow ya right down. Presume a bunch ran outa gas and went down over the Gulf.
I figured survivors would be pushed west by those northeast winds and make landfall northern Mexico/South Texas.
Holy crap, I went down to Corpus/Port A Saturday. INUNDATED with birds. Chuck-wills-widows and whippoorwills practically in every tree. Hordes of Baltimore Orioles, indigo and painted buntings, bunch of different kinds of warblers, Swainson’s thrushes, catbirds, ruby-throated hummingbirds.
Each such occasion is like a snapshot of what was over the Gulf that day, every species migrating on its own particular timetable. One species I always look for is scarlet tanagers because they’re just gorgeous. Ordinarily I would expect to see maybe one a year. Friday musta been a big push of Scarlets over the Gulf because on Saturday I saw more scarlet tanagers in one day than I’ve seen in my whole life up to this point, they were everywhere.
The effect is most pronounced on the dry barrier islands like at Port A where desperate songbirds will pitch into any patch of low cover where they make landfall and then try to feed all day while waiting for the north winds to shift. Birds coming from the forests of Central and South America headed for our own forests, packed into low bush and scrub along the beach.
Survivors will be arriving up north in two or three weeks, racing against time and each other. They gotta set up territories, breed, replace all or most of their feathers and then hurry the fugg back south again to repeat the cycle. Survivorship in any given year runs about 50%
Rene, I ain’t gonna judge, what happened with that hummingbird is between you and God. Poor little guy, survived crossing the Gulf at least twice, only to run into some guy in the woods with PTSD and a shotgun