Not only that, but the wind forecasts were all weird last night (or maybe it was me…I’m still not sure). Here’s the radar from sunset last night through sunrise this morning.
Frames are every 1/2 hour for reflectivity and velocity, and every hour for the regional composite. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.
Okay, so if we look at the regional composite there’s an explosion of birds in the Northeast- and it appears that a band of movement occurs from NE to SW into our region…superficially this looks similar to the big push we saw a couple of weeks ago, which caused really high densities of passerines along the Jersey shore. If you check the two radar loops, you’ll see that initially movement across the radar is from S–>N, which reflects the light southerly winds we had early last night. At about 11:30pm, though, the motion across the radar switches to a W–>E flow, which is consistent with the WSW winds that built in around that time, but which is also greatly increased by the amount and speed of birds moving across the radar. Based on the radar, it appears that a good amount of birds did get pushed into New Jersey, with the densities highest in the northwest and decreasing as you move southeast. Because birds entered the area late last night, and were still migrating at 5:00am, it’s hard to tell where the best birding locations would be…but I’m guessing that Sandy Hook and Garret Mountain would be good bets, and Island Beach State Park could also be really good. The lack of migration activity over the southern peninsula makes me think that Cape May might not be the best bet- although it could also mean more birds are piled up down there given the lack of exodus. Okay, enough hand-waving- let’s go groundtruth!
Good Birding
P.S. Come see what’s happening down south on woodcreeper’s sister site: Badbirdz - Reloaded
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