Clear skies and light winds made for another perfect night for migration. Here’s the radar from 6:00pm last night through 6:00am this morning.
Frames are every 1/2 hour. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.
Winds aloft were light and northeasterly, while at the surface things were pretty still. The radar indicated moderate to heavy migration just after sunset, continuing through daylight this morning. The peak appeared to be around midnight, which is typical given the conditions (no strong tailwind to push birds further and longer than normal). Birds should be dispersed across the landscape this morning, as no major wind was present to concentrate them either along the coast, or further inland. It’ll be interesting to see what gets reported from the dike at Higbee’s today, which will tell us whether geography or winds are the deciding factor in a big flight for that location (although I think it’s pretty well established, that winds make-or-break a big morning flight at the dike).
Please stop back and let us know what you saw!
Good Birding
David
3 responses to “Another night of heavy migration”
Good flight in Cape May this morning. Pre-dawn from the yard (5:30-6am) had 26 Veeries, 7 Wood Thrushes, 6 Redstarts, 1 N. Waterthrush and 1 Ovenbird.
Dike flight was dominated by Redstarts. Also a triple-digit day for Gnatcatchers. 2 Louisiana Waterthrushes, 2 Ceruleans, 1 Protho, 1 Worm-eater and a Lark Sparrow were the best of the bunch. Half a dozen each of Nashville and Prairie, a few dozen N. Waterthrushes, a couple Warbling Vireos and a steady trickle of Baltimore Orioles.
Here’s a few numbers of note from this morning-
908 warbler, sp.
840 Kingbirds
181 Gnatcatchers
92 Black-and-whites
652 Redstarts
44 Northern Waterthrushes
total was 3,217.
Awesome! Thanks Tom!
Wow… what a difference Cape May makes… I had one Redstart at my place, aside from the usual suspects. Looks like I need to relocate! 🙂