Despite all the clutter on the radar, none of it appears to have been birds. Here’s the radar from sunset last night through 5:30am 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.


The velocity image confirms that the movement across the radar is something other than birds, given the S–>N flow and low speed.
What does this mean for birding? Well, given the amount of birds that entered our area two nights ago, and were dispersed across the landscape yesterday, it means that today is the day you head to your favorite “optimal foraging habitat” and see what’s around. Birds should be moving into areas of good food supply as they prepare for the next leg of their journey. These are the days that Bill Elrick (aka Bander Bill) refers to when he talks about his banding station “improving” a day after the front. These are also the days when there seem to be more birds around my place, in the Piedmont region, which usually gets overshot by fall migrants otherwise. Anyway, it’s a good time to go check out this phenomenon, and see if it really does play out wherever you think “optimal habitat” does exist. It will also be interesting to see the results from the morning flight, to confirm whether there were or were not birds mixed in the radar images. We’re also under west winds- so what might this mean for birds that are already here? Will it act to push transient birds to the coast even in the absence of migration? So many questions waiting to be answered. I await your observations!

Good Birding

David

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