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A belated end of the radar study

Sorry for taking so long for closure, but it’s been a whirlwind of activity over the last two months! On October 1st Inga gave birth to our daughter, Corinna Wren La Puma, and we’ve been busy learning how to be parents ever since.

Following that, the next biggest event was the presidential election, which (if you’ve been reading this blog at all over the last year) made me extremely excited. I’ll save my politics for an upcoming post.

As for migration, as it does every year, it continues to occur in one form or another even after the big nocturnal flights of songbirds have dwindled. I’m currently focusing on finishing my dissertation by this summer so that I can pursue a postdoc on the topic of migration. This study really deserves to be taken to another level in terms of scientific rigor. I think the last four years has proven that the infrastructure exists to have consistent feedback from the birding community, which is a very important component to ground-truthing any predictions I might make. The next step will be to make those prediction more quantitative, basing them on maasurable weather and environmental variables and quantifying the numbers of birds moving over an area. My plan now is to develop a postdoctoral research project to do just that, so if anyone out there is interested in taking on a postdoc, please let me know. 🙂

For all of you who participated by providing field observations, thanks so much for all of your help. For those of you who contributed to the site financially, I cannot thank you enough. I just received the bill for this coming year’s hosting fees, and was able to pay it off because of you. Thanks again.

While I will be focusing primarily on completing my dissertation over the coming months, I will make every effort to summarize the data we have collected on this site. If you are doing research on migration and would like any of the data collected here, email me and I will provide whatever I have.

In the meantime, I wish you well, and hope you will continue to visit the site and participate in whatever discourse should arise.

Kindest Regards,

David

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Heavy migration down the East Coast

Strong northwest flow over the northeastern US triggered heavy migration into the mid-Atlantic region last night. Here’s the radar from 8:00pm last night through 5:00am this morning.

Frames are every 1/2 hour. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.

Base Reflectivity image from Fort Dix Base Velocity image from Fort Dix Base Reflectivity image from Dover AFB Base Velocity image from Dover AFB Composite Base Reflectivity image from the Northeastern USA

Happy Halloween everyone! Well, if you’re out looking for treats today, you may want to head south to Cape May because the southeast tip of New Jersey should be littered with goodies this morning. Judging by the radar most birds were pulled from the eastern seaboard, and to a lesser degree from western NY and the Great Lakes region, but with the strong northwest winds north of the Great Lakes one should never rule out the possibility of a western vagrant. The raptor flight should be good again today, as it was yesterday, increasing the possibility of Golden Eagles and Northern Goshawks along the Kittatinny Mountains.

It’ll be very interesting to hear about species composition of this flight, so if you head out today, please make sure to stop back and let us know what you saw… there may even be a little candy in it for you.

Good BOO! (rding),
David

P.S. Come check out my haunted migration forecast for the Mid-Atlantic on Birdcapemay.org

Please don’t forget to become a member of the creepy, crawly Woodcreeper/Badbirdz flock today. For more information, please check out the Become a Member post.

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Heavy migration truncated by Nor’easter

Unfortunately my radar feed went down during the storm last night, but after watching the real-time radar this morning, I can see what went down. Migration was heavy just after sunset last night with most birds heading due south, or slightly southeasterly on north/northwest winds. As the frontal boundary associated with the strengthening nor’easter made its way across the region during the night, heavy rain caused birds to land across the mid-Atlantic. As the front crossed Central NJ around midnight, the peak of migration, these areas and points east will see the most dramatic fallout conditions. Garret Mountain, Chimney Rock and the Delaware Bay shore will be good bets this morning, as well as Cape May where birds appeared to be funneling into as the storm passed.

It’ll be very interesting to know what people see out there today, so if you get a chance, please report back.

Good Birding
David

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Very little migration over Jerze

Northwest winds aloft appear to have countered the southwest surface winds just enough to trigger some light migration over the mid-Atlantic. Here’s the radar from 7:00pm last night through 5:00am this morning.

Frames are every 1/2 hour. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.

Base Reflectivity image from Fort Dix Base Velocity image from Fort Dix Base Reflectivity image from Dover AFB Base Velocity image from Dover AFB Composite Base Reflectivity image from the Northeastern USA

Well, it wasn’t much, but it was something! It’ll be interesting to see the report from Higbee’s Beach today, since what little did move was moving to the southeast. I would think whatever birds were in motion were likely to be strong fliers given the opposing winds at ground level.

Good Birding

David

P.S. Come check out my migration forecast for the Mid-Atlantic on Birdcapemay.org

Please don’t forget to become a member of the Woodcreeper/Badbirdz flock today. For more information, please check out the Become a Member post.