Last night’s radar shows a moderate departure from the Garden State with little replacement to follow.

Here’s the radar:

Now, the first frame in the animation is from 11:30pm last night (the radar download crapped out between sunset and 11:30pm). At this point migration appears to be peaking, and steadily decreases over time until 6:00am this morning. If new birds had been entering the radar at the same density that others were leaving, then one would expect the signal to remain constant over time until sunrise. This pattern (big signal just after sunset decreasing drastically after midnight) is typical of anomalous propagation; but after checking the velocity data the signal did indeed appear to be birds that were moving in a SE direction.

From my own experience at our new place in Somerset, there have been huge numbers of sparrows (many White-throated, Song, Swamp and Field with smaller numbers of Savannah, White-crowned, Lincoln’s, and Chipping) Robins, Cedar Waxwings, Ruby and Golden-crowned Kinglets forming dense feeding flocks.