woodcreeper

The latest cold front passed across the region on Halloween night, allowing for high pressure to build in throughout the day yesterday. Northwest winds last night, coupled with a cloud-free sky, again set the stage for more migration into and out of the Mid-Atlantic. 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.

Well, given the recent switch to Daylight Savings Time, it looks like I’ll need to set the radar download an hour earlier as well. As you can see from the images, birds were already in the radar at the beginning of the recordings! Migration was heavy across the NE and Mid-Atlantic last night, with most birds heading from N->S. Northwest winds aloft will result in a nice influx of birds into New Jersey, while northerly surface winds will allow many birds to disperse across the landscape (check both inland and coastal migrant traps this morning). The Sandy Hook buoy is showing strong NE winds, which usually means The Hook will be a bust today (at least for any appreciable numbers of nocturnal migrants). Cape May should by flooded with the common late-fall/early-winter species today.

On another note, I did some moonwatching last night from 7:30pm – 9:00pm, and counted an average of 52 birds every 10-minutes. I only heard a couple of nocturnal flight calls, one of which was a White-throated Sparrow. It’s possible that my proximity to a busy road severely limited my ability to hear them… but the moonwatching show was definitely spectacular! I took some video, and will upload it later today.

Good Birding

David