The radar sure did light up last night! Most of the activity was to our west, but we still had a good flight over half of the state. Unfortunately most of those birds were heading north, out of New Jersey.

Here’s the radar from sunset last night through 5:30am 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.

What an interesting night of migration!
As you can see from the composite image, the western sector of the flyway was really cranking last night, with high densities of birds departing from southern Georgia all the way up into Maine. Movement of mostly SSW–>NNE across the flyway.

For New Jersey, all migration activity was located north of an imaginary line from Salem, NJ northeast to Long Branch; everything south of this line showed no migration, or at least it was so light as not to be detected by the radar.
Based on the radar, it appears that New Jersey did experience a massive exodus with a minimal influx of migrants last night, the vast majority of which were restricted to the northwest half of the state (as defined by the line I mentioned previously). Since concentrations of birds moved north from the central and southwest part of the state, places like Washington Crossing along the Delaware Bay, Garret Mountain, Stokes State Forest and High Point should all be good bets for this morning.
No fallout conditions are expected given the lack of precipitation last night, and many areas at the origin of migration (again, the imaginary line) should have experienced a marked decrease in bird density.

The frontal boundary that caused last night’s migration pattern should shift eastward today and we should see some heavy migration over the entire state overnight tonight.

Good Birding

David

P.S. Come check out my migration forecast for the Mid-Atlantic on Birdcapemay.org

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