Low pressure over NY State last night caused southwest wind flow over the region into this morning and triggered light to moderate migration into NJ. Here’s the radar from sunset last night through 5:00am this morning.
Frames are every 1/2 hour. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.
On the regional composite you can really see the low pressure system churning counter-clockwise over NY State. Migration out of central and northern NY was heaviest, but the densities of birds leaving VA and DC for NJ was still quite promising for birders in the area. Given the abundance of southeast winds over the last three weeks, the coasts have been pretty well “dried up” of migrants. This should change this morning as the radar suggests that birds were pushed up onto the Delmarva, over Cape May, and out to Sandy Hook. Even though I don’t expect a major coastal fallout, when the signs of spring migration have been few and far between for weeks, any influx will be glaringly apparent.
Given the coastal push and the already improving birding conditions yesterday (WWDO and multiple MIKI) I would say that Cape May is a good bet from now through the weekend. Sandy Hook should see new birds today, and Garret Mountain as well should have a nice new crop of migrants flitting about.
For those of you in town for the spring Cape MAYgration festival, I’ll be teaching a worksop on using radar and weather to forecast migration. The workshop will be held this afternoon at the NJAS Center for Research and Education in Goshen from 1:30 – 3:30pm, and will be followed by a birdwalk tomorrow morning (6:30-10:30am) where we’ll groundtruth our predictions from today’s workshop. Whether at the workshop or just in the field somewhere, I hope to see you out this weekend!
Good Birding
David
One response to “Birds push to the Jersey Shore”
Sandy Hook was fairly birdy this morning, more-so than I thought it would be as the sandy hook buoy wasn’t indicating a southwest flow. Hooded Warbler and Mourning Warbler (first heard by Stuart Malmed) singing between the rusty barn and the maintenance building. Trina Anderson and I had an extremely drab second year summer tanager (the only red I could detect was in the upper tail coverts) along the road to nowhere. Several Least and Yellow-bellied flycatchers in the same area, and an abundance of redstarts(many more than yesterday) and blackpoll warblers. From 5:10-6:00 am there were quite a few birds moving overhead, including several large flocks of Bluejays (2 flocks of at least 30 birds), seems late for so many to still be moving.
cheers,
tom brown