woodcreeper

Birds and weather… there’s nothing else quite like it to get a Jerseybirder excited (even if he’s in Florida…). Here’s the radar from sunset last night through 5:00am this morning.

Frames are every 1/2 hour for reflectivity and velocity, and every hour for the regional composite. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.

Both the Fort Dix and Dover radars showed heavy migration after sunset, mostly on a SW–>NE trajectory. While some bird clearly moved out of the state, many more could be seen entering from both the south (across the Delaware Bay) and the west (via Pennsylvania). Heavy rain associated with last night’s cold front (which can be seen on the northeast composite image) appears to have caused some birds to put-down, although no major fallouts are apparent on the radar (winds were still favorable and precipitation not intense enough to create a strong migration barrier). That said, there will be plenty of birds around from this migration event. If you experienced any heavy rain during the early morning hours, it would be best to check around your local patch of woods, but if you were already planning to hit Garret Mountain or, especially, Sandy Hook, then go for it!
Both sites should be good this morning, in addition to any other spring migrant traps in New Jersey.

Good Birding

David

P.S. My migration forecast for the World Series of Birding weekend will be posted on Birdcapemay.org at 12:00 noon today. Things are looking great bird-wise, but the weather doesn’t seem to be cooperating otherwise…come on over and check it out, you won’t need a raincoat to read it.

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.

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Sorry for the recent absence, but May is my field season down in Florida, and usually coincides with some time when I’m away from internet access. I’ve tried over the last three years to make www.woodcreeper.com more “portable”, or “automated” but without a second person willing to take over downloading, assembling, and posting the radar (not to mention any interpretation), that task has become impossible. I thought (incorrectly) that the person doing the programming for my site would have the animations automated by now… I also thought that the satellite internet service we have down in Everglades National Park would be strong enough to download the imagery each morning. Unfortunately it’s barely even strong enough for me to post a message to a blog, or update the migration forecasts on BirdCapeMay.org, both of which are simply text-based.
Believe me, this is more painful to me than you can imagine; so when I receive emails telling me “to give up”, and that I “always bail out right when migration is picking up”, I get a wee bit upset. That said; I understand your frustration!

So here’s the deal. I’m in Florida for the next week and a half, with limited to no internet ability until I return on May 16th. I will have internet tomorrow night (Wed.) and Thursday morning, and will post the radar then. I will be without internet access from Thursday night through Sunday night, and then only very limited access for the rest of next week. From Monday to Friday of next week I will attempt to post text-only entries with respect to the radar, but I will still have a 5-day migration forecast on BirdCapeMay.org during the entire period. Once I get back to New Jersey on the 16th, I can work on rebuilding the archive of imagery, and continue to provide nightly migration reports with the radar.

As I said (and have said before), I’m sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. My intention is still to eventually provide a constant up-to-date radar interpretation website for New Jersey… in the meantime I hope you can bear with me.

Good Birding and Radar Watching,

David

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Very little migration was apparent on the radar last night.

Good Birding

David

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Randy Newman… brilliant.

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Unfortunately the anticipated push of migrants has not materialized, with the very unstable atmosphere appearing to keep birds on land. There’s plenty of stuff around to see, although with northwest winds in the forecast over the next few days, don’t expect much to change in terms of density or diversity.

Now we wait…

Good Birding

David

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I finally made it to the local public library where the internet connection doesn’t suck. Here’s the radar from sunset last night through 7:30am this morning.

Frames are every 1/2 hour for reflectivity and velocity, and every hour for the regional composite. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.

As you can see, there’s nothing on the radar but nasty weather, moving from SW–>NE. Unfortunately, the warm front to our south did not move far enough north to allow birds to enter the region. Large numbers of birds could be seen entering Virginia from North Carolina, so it only seems logical that these birds will reach the Delmarva on the next good tailwind (which could be as early as tonight, if conditions improve a bit). We’ll have to wait and see. Unfortunately woodcreeper.com isn’t going to be the best place to get up-to-date info regarding the weather, so until I get a better internet connection, please use the real-time radar link on the sidebar. I’ll try and post as often as possible, and let you know when my connection appears reliable.

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.

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