Another good night for migration, as birds are currently migrating from Florida up through New Jersey. Conditions are better to the west of us (PA, OH) but we’re not doing too bad ourselves. I’d expect birding conditions tomorrow to be similar to today. I’m REALLY going to Garret tomorrow morning, Evan or not! A light easterly component to the wind should reduce the bird activity on the coast, but I’d like to hear a report from Sandy Hook tomorrow just to confirm. I’ll post the radar in about an hour, but I won’t be updating in the morning since I’ll be leaving early- so use the real-time radar tomorrow for your pre-dawn update (I suspect there won’t be a need to check since there’s no precipitation in the forecast- just go birding!).

UPDATED 2:53pm 05-05-05 HAPPY CINCO de MAYO!
Here’s the radar from sunset to 10:45pm this evening. Here’s the radar from sunset last night to sunrise this morning. The radar shows a good movement over New Jersey. Don’t be fooled by all the green signal. If you look at the velocity plot you’ll notice that some of the green over the western portion of the state has no velocity associated with it (birds will always have an associated velocity indicating flight speed), hence it is anomalous propagation caused by temperature inversion after sunset. Still, with this area discounted the radar still shows a good flow of birds across the state.

You can click “read more” to see the results from our morning at Garrett

A nice morning at Garret Mountain in the company of the Almighty Ear
(Evan Obercian) and our spiritual leader Jebediah (Blake Mathys). This
morning I heard someone complaining about today being a letdown, and not
having a “Neotropical Experience”. That person should mail their
expensive binoculars to the address at the end of this email.

To everyone else, Good Birding 🙂

Here’s as complete a list as I can remember…

* Great Egret
* Green Heron
* Mallard
* Canada Goose
* Red-tailed Hawk
* Sharp-shinned Hawk
* Wild Turkey
* Mourning Dove
* Rock Pigeon
* Red-bellied Woodpecker
* Northern Flicker
* Downy Woodpecker
* Eastern Phoebe
* Least Flycatcher
* Great-crested Flycatcher
* Blue-headed Vireo
* Yellow-throated Vireo
* Blue Jay
* American Crow
* Common Raven (!)
* Barn Swallow
* Black-capped Chickadee
* Tufted Titmouse
* White-breasted Nuthatch
* Ruby-crowned Kinglet
* Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
* Wood Thrush
* Hermit Thrush
* Veery
* American Robin
* Northern Mockingbird
* Gray Catbird
* Brown Thrasher
* Cedar Waxwing