woodcreeper

While I won’t be posting the radar this spring, I will be posting the migration weather forecast for the mid-Atlantic over on http://Birdcapemay.org/bfma , and if you’re on Twitter, I’ll be sending out “tweets” when migration is heating up (think of it as a ‘rapid alert system’ for bird migration conditions).
Come join me on twitter here: http://twitter.com/BCMorgBFMA

Tweet Tweet!

David

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Hey Everyone,

I’m writing this to let you know that I’ll be stepping back from the radar posts this spring, in order to finish my dissertation (I’m planning to defend at the end of July). It’s impossible for me to keep up the site at the level necessary, and still finish in time, so I need to take a hiatus at least for this semester. I will still be posting the birding weather forecasts on http://birdcapemay.org/bfma/ and I have passed the torch to my friends, Angel and Mariel, for managing http://badbirdz2.wordpress.com (it’s like woodcreeper.com, but for Florida and the Caribbean). I hope you’ll find both of these sites useful during migration.

In the meantime I’m working on a grant proposal for postdoctoral research on migration and radar, which will eventually take woodcreeper.com to the next level of sophistication and complexity… more than anything else, that’s what I want to focus on, but first things first, I need to finish my phd!

Okay, that’s all for now. Thanks for understanding, and I look forward to seeing you in and out of the field.

Good Birding!

David

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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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I’m having a hard time finding the words to express how renewed I feel in my faith in our democracy. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I can say “I’m happy to bring a child into this world, which, for all of its problems, today seems much more full of opportunity”. I don’t expect this election to completely change anything, but I hope that many more people feel the way I do; engaged in the political system and ready to contribute to society, as a united people. A few days before the election my good friend Ben told me he was worried because ever since he’s been old enough to vote, the results led him to believe that his vote didn’t count. He felt betrayed by the system in 2000, and then by the electorate in 2004, by a president who preached “compassionate conservatism” and touted himself as a “uniter, not a divider”, but proved otherwise.

While I haven’t spoken to him today, I expect that he feels like he played an important part in what happened last night. Most importantly I think there are many people of all persuasions and political affiliations around the country to feel ready to change the way we govern, and to make government work for the people again. The media may still portray a country divided, but if you watched the celebrations last night on television, or spoke with family members who traditionally vote Republican across the board who, in this election at least, voted for Obama, I think it’s clear that our country is more united today than it has been in years. While the far right will paint Obama as a raging liberal, his call for personal responsibility is one rarely heard from any other politician with the same degree of sincerity and conviction. Can we make a difference for our children? Can we put aside our differences and unite under the idea that we all want prosperity, freedom, and equality? In the words of our new Commander In Chief, Yes We Can.

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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.

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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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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