Date: 5/10/26 11:32 am From: Yaukey, Peter via groups.io <pyaukey...> Subject: Re: [ALbirds] thoughts on fallout morning flight
Douglas-
I would not recommend Pelican Point Park for looking for birds leaving the Ft. Morgan peninsula in spring, primarily because the bayshore is trending back northwest at that point. Birds that follow the Ft. Morgan peninsula eastward are (I would guess) jonesing to head north or northeast, and will simply head overland in those directions once they clear the blockage of the bay. Thus, they would not bend back northwest and would not pass Pelican Pt.
Regarding flight paths overland vs over water: I would expect them to stay onshore, except perhaps when they reach the corner, and fly overwater to make a shortcut across it. However, flight paths at Lake Pontchartrain are often a bit inland from the actual shore, some even beyond the reach of binoculars from the shore. So, if you don’t get much on the shore itself, consider re-positioning further south.
Be aware, I suspect that the flight off the peninsula might wane as soon as an hour after sunrise, because birds (judging from Lake Pontchartrain) progress along the shore at about 20 mph, so that at Ft. Morgan even a bird from as far away as the tip would have rounded the corner and headed inland within that first hour. But who knows- could be lengthened by birds delaying starting the movement, birds moving east across the bay mouth from the barrier islands farther west, birds coming in off the ocean after sunrise, etc. We have more questions than answers at this point.
Which is a good thing to reiterate- this is all in its infancy, and many of my suppositions are guesswork. But it is fun to sleuth out!
PY
Peter H. Yaukey, Ph.D.woul
Departmental Chair and Professor of Biology
Department of Biological and Physical Sciences
University of Holy Cross
4123 Woodland Drive
New Orleans, LA 70131
504-398-2312 Direct
504-394-7744 Main
[cid:91D4B89B-2D58-4695-9437-0B7014880A72]
________________________________
From: <ALbirds...> <ALbirds...> on behalf of Yaukey, Peter via groups.io <pyaukey...>
Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2026 12:43 PM
To: Albirds <albirds...>
Subject: Re: [ALbirds] thoughts on fallout morning flight
Thanks Bob-
Intriguing- I believe I know that gas station. Nice view out over the marsh from behind it.
Since you are describing movements on the east side of Mobile Bay, that raises another scenario when the bay might funnel migrants. Namely, by blocking westbound circumgulf movements in fall.
I know you are keen on Yellow Warbler morning flight- I read your paper in FFN years ago when prepping my paper on South Pt. Have you visited that spot in early fall before, any thoughts on Yellow or Kingbird movement along the shore there?
PY
Peter H. Yaukey, Ph.D.
Departmental Chair and Professor of Biology
Department of Biological and Physical Sciences
University of Holy Cross
4123 Woodland Drive
New Orleans, LA 70131
504-398-2312 Direct
504-394-7744 Main
[cid:91D4B89B-2D58-4695-9437-0B7014880A72]
________________________________
From: <ALbirds...> <ALbirds...> on behalf of Lucy & Bob Email via groups.io <RobertADuncan...>
Sent: Saturday, May 9, 2026 3:38 PM
To: <albirds...> <albirds...>
Subject: Re: [ALbirds] thoughts on fallout morning flight
Hi,
Lucy and I have witnessed good movements of birds moving N in Spring and S in Fall along the east side of Mobile Bay from our position behind the Shell station at Spanish Fort (just S of I-10),These appeared to be migrating birds and not foraging forays. This makes sense. It is a good location, unobstructed by trees. These were incidental stops while leading field trips.
Bob Duncan
Gulf Breeze,FL
On Saturday, May 9, 2026 at 01:28:29 PM CDT, Douglas Hamm via groups.io <dhamm72...> wrote:
The shoreline of Mobile Bay is fairly well defined. There are a few indentions, at Oyster Bay and Weeks Bay, but otherwise very distinct. Check out the Pelican Point hotspot at Weeks Bay. Does that look like a good spot to you? Also, would the migrants fly over land just inshore or could they be over water but within sight of land?
On Saturday, May 9, 2026 at 01:17:21 PM CDT, Yaukey, Peter via groups.io <pyaukey...> wrote:
Douglas-
Thanks for your interest. There was a comment on an eBird list (yeserday I think) of eastward movement of dozens of warblers along the Ft Morgan peninsula. If you can think of any place to watch the sky for birds doing so and rounding the southeast corner of Mobile Bay to head north, that would be cool to check out. Not sure how the shoreline access is there, or how clean the bayshore is (when a shoreline gets diffuse, it is harder to predict flight paths).
Peter H. Yaukey, Ph.D.
Departmental Chair and Professor of Biology
Department of Biological and Physical Sciences
University of Holy Cross
4123 Woodland Drive
New Orleans, LA 70131
504-398-2312 Direct
504-394-7744 Main
[cid:91D4B89B-2D58-4695-9437-0B7014880A72]
________________________________
From: <ALbirds...> <ALbirds...> on behalf of Douglas Hamm via groups.io <dhamm72...>
Sent: Saturday, May 9, 2026 12:48 PM
To: <albirds...> <albirds...>
Subject: Re: [ALbirds] thoughts on fallout morning flight
First of all, I greatly appreciate the updates. Keep them coming.
Secondly, if I can help look for fallouts for you, let me know. I am retired, so I can go out any time. Also, I live in Gulf Shores, AL, so I am right in the middle of the area you are interested in. I regularly bird the areas you mentioned anyway, so it wouldn’t even be out of the way for me.
Again, if there is anything I can do to help, just let me know.
On Saturday, May 9, 2026 at 12:01:04 PM CDT, Yaukey, Peter via groups.io <pyaukey...> wrote:
ALBirders:
There was a large fallout reported at Fort Morgan two days ago, with about 2500 transgulf birds arriving, dominated by Swainson’s Thrush, Redstart, and Maggie. Here is the eBird list https://ebird.org/checklist/S334095331 Many of you are probably aware of a massive fallout in rainy conditions at Dauphin Island on 4/27/23 reportedly involving c. 50,000 birds passing from the island to the mainland, viewed as a skywatch, led by 15,000 Red-eyed Vireos. Here is that list https://ebird.org/checklist/S135307185 The fact that the birds in the latter case were moving northward in daylight onto the mainland, begs the question of what situations lead to fallout birds continuing movement, and what we can do to crack that code so that we could witness such events. The weather map for 7am on 4.27.23 is pasted below. Another stalled front situation, apparently. That frontal boundary is along the northern Gulf coast for the three mornings previous to that map, as well.
In New Orleans, we have large morning flights on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain in FALL, at its east end (South Pt). In fall the best mornings are 20-30,000 migrants in 2-3 hours. We have known about it since 2002. This appears to be a corrective movement, happening after fall cold fronts, with the birds heading back northward in the morning into the wind, apparently attempting to correct for wind drift the night before.
It wasn’t until about 5 years ago that we discovered that spring flights sometimes happen there too, with as many as 9,000 birds in a morning detected so far (that flight was dominated by Indigos and Blue Grosbeaks). We have only seen four or so of those spring flights, but the mechanism seems to be continued diurnal forward movement of birds that had been grounded in a frontal fallout the night before. They continue northward in the morning (against a headwind), low to minimize the wind resistance, and get deflected by the Pontchartrain shoreline until they come to South Pt and launch across the 5 mile water gap (into the wind).
This begs the question of whether any of the other large water indentations along the northern Gulf have similar concentrating effects. Do the birds continuing north want to go due north, or northeast? Those with a NE inclination, do they accumulate into a larger flow along the western shore of Pascagoula River Marsh, or Mobile Bay, or Escambia Bay?
I spend lots of time in Pensacola, and have contemplated the shorelines of Escambia Bay (and connected features) for some time, but have presumed the water crossings were too short to force birds to deflect instead of crossing. However, out of curiosity last fall, I searched the eBird high counts for Santa Rosa County (which forms the southern edge of the Bay), and there is a fall report (Oct 2002) of 1000 Palm Warblers streaming east along the bayshore in the early AM, akin to what South Point birds do in fall in their approach along the Pontchartrain shoreline. Then, last Nov, I tried out a spot at the southeast corner of the bay (the Tom King Bayou Bridge), and had 3000 robins heading northeast around the corner of the bay, also parallel to the Lake Pontchartrain phenomenon. So, continuing the analogy with Lake Pontchartrain, could there be an exodus of spring fallout birds around the eastern end of the Bay as well? I haven’t been able to free up my schedule on the right mornings to go and check yet, but I am itching to do so.
Bob and Lucy, I know you live near the other corner of the bay; if you have insights to bear on this, I would love to hear them.
Apologies for my verbosity folks,
Peter Yaukey
PS- just because birders have not keyed in on morning flights along these Gulf bays before, doesn’t mean they can’t be happening regularly. Indeed, two of the best morning flight locations on the continent were discovered just in the last decade or so in two of our most heavily birded cities, within the actual city limits, somehow undetected previously (Bear Divide, Los Angeles, and Battery Godfrey on the Presidio in San Francisco).
PPS- yes, I apologized for my verbosity, and then promptly added more. *sigh *
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