After receiving my PhD this January, I’ll be heading south to start my new job at New Jersey Audubon Society, where I’ll be (amongst other things) writing up the results from a long-term radar analysis used to quantify stopover habitat of nocturnal migrants. I can’t wait to dive into some real radar data, as opposed to simply looking at the post-processed data available from weather websites. This has been a long-term goal for me up until now, and being able to realize it down in Cape May will be an excellent experience. I plan to use this experience as a jumping-off point for developing a more sophisticated radar-based migration forecasting tool.

At the very least, though, I’ll be able to ground-truth some of my forecasts in one of the hottest migrant traps on the east coast… and that alone is very exciting!

Thank you again for your support, and I hope to see you in the field sometime soon!

Good Birding,

David

This is a notice that an invoice has been generated on 11/12/2009.

Your payment method is: PayPal

Invoice #2014
Amount Due: $200.00 USD
Due Date: 11/20/2009

Invoice Items

WC Custom – woodcreeper.com (11/20/2009 – 11/19/2010) $200.00 USD
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Sub Total: $200.00 USD
Credit: $0.00 USD
Total: $200.00 USD
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See, I wasn’t kidding. At the bare minimum, It really costs $200 per year to keep woodcreeper.com and badbirdz-reloaded running. Thanks to two lovely donors, one of which doesn’t even use the site to track migration, we are up to $60. For that I am grateful, but if everyone who does use these two sites would pitch in a couple of dollars, we’d have this AND next year covered. So I guess it comes down to whether you value the service enough to support it financially.

If you find either woodcreeper.com or badbirdz-reloaded to be a useful service to you, then consider pitching in a buck or two to keep the archives archived, and the radar flowing.

I hate to ask for money, but it’s either all out of my pocket (which is pretty empty right now) or spread across all of our collective pockets (which means very little from each of us). As always, I am grateful.

Thanks for your consideration.

Good Birding!

David

You can use the Paypal button below to join the Woodcreeper/Badbirdz Flock:

Or, if you’d rather not use Paypal, you may send a check or money order to the following address:

David La Puma
2150 Amwell Rd
Somerset, NJ 08873

In the past, many of you supported both of these sites by making donations, or purchasing bumper stickers, or whatever I was hocking on any given day. For that I have always been grateful, and your support has kept the sites going for the last five years.  As we near the end of fall migration, and head into winter, we also approach the time when my website hosting fees are due. As much as I hate to ‘pass the hat’, keeping woodcreeper.com and Badbirdz-Reloaded running does cost about $20/ month. Additional costs include hiring a programmer to write and update the download scripts, and developing a means for automating the process so that we can spend less time making the image loops, and more time analyzing them. Any donation you can make will be greatly appreciated, and all of the money will go directly into supporting the two websites.

You can find more information, on supporting the web site, on the following page:

http://www.woodcreeper.com/become-a-member/

Thank you, as always, for your support.

David La Puma

Angel & Mariel Abreu

Good Birding!

David

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