Migration was apparent last night, as the winds over part of the state turned southeasterly by sunset. The radar shows some interesting patterns, so let’s dive in and see what we can make of it.
Here’s the radar from sunset last night through 5:30am.

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.

First, looking at the regional loop, we can see that migration was evident from New Jersey north and east to the Great Lakes. The absence of any migration to our south is a result of winds still out of the northeast. High-level clouds can bee seen moving from the W–>E, a result of strong high-level westerly winds (well above the typical migration elevation of most passerines).

Moving on to the single radars, the Fort Dix feed shows the typical migration signature, where bird enter the radar’s view just after sunset, although you can see that migration appears to be occurring only in the northern half of the radar’s view. Checking the velocity image confirms that these are indeed birds, and that they are moving in the expected direction. The lack of movement into the radar’s view indicates that more birds left from the northern half of the state, while there was little to no influx of new birds from the south. We can confirm this by looking at the Dover station, which shows no influx from the south, nor any movement from the eastern Delaware coast north into NJ.

What you can see, though, is a small pulse of birds moving up across the NW Delaware Bay, which suggests that winds were just favorable enough over that area to jumpstart some migration.

For today expect birding conditions to be best in the north part of the state, with the possibility of some new birds in the Delaware River basin. Central and southern locations should see a net loss of birds today as the winds last night appear to have “cleaned house”. Of course, this is only the view from the sky; now I need you to tell me what it looks like on the ground (so please stop back and let me know what you saw) 🙂

Good Birding

David

P.S. More birds are on the way tonight, so come check out my migration forecast for the Mid-Atlantic on Birdcapemay.org