Conditions were perfect for a big flight last night, with northerly winds dominating the landscape from the Midwest to the East Coast, down to the Florida peninsula. Over the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, these winds were overwhelmingly out of the northwest under clear starry skies. Birds were on the move! Here’s the radar from 6:00pm last night through 6:00am this morning.
Frames are every 1/2 hour. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.
Wow, that was a big flight! All radars indicated heavy migration right after sunset, peaking between midnight and 2:00am, and then tapering off thereafter. Birds were headed in a general NW->SE trajectory, so expect coastal locations today to hold significant numbers of birds first thing in the morning. All spring migrant traps should be checked today, though, as inland ridges will also likely pick up a few new birds given the overall densities. Higbee’s Beach is a sure bet this morning, but the entire Cape May Point will have birds moving around throughout the day as they look for good foraging habitat. Sandy Hook is also a great pick, as the Sandy Hook buoy was reading NW winds all night and into this morning. This might just be one of those ::cough cough:: days you have to call in with the Swine Flu (in fact, you might want to call in sick for the next three days… see below).
So I’m heading to South Jersey for a few nights, and will probably not have an internet connection at my disposal, so you may not see any updates until Thursday. That said, the next three days are going to be AWESOME in terms of birds migrating over NJ and big morning flights at Higbee’s Beach (and the east coast, in general). Clear skies and NW winds are forecast, and the “migrant superhighway” from the boreal forests of Canada all the way to Cape May, NJ will be fully stocked with new birds over the next two nights. GO BIRDING.
Good Birding
David
5 responses to “Mega-flight across three flyways last night!”
Location: Hutcheson Memorial Forest
Observation date: 9/14/09
Notes: Heavy flight last night. Birds were dispersed across the landscape, but concentrated in several large (20+) mixed feeding flocks
Number of species: 42
Rock Pigeon 1
Mourning Dove X
Ruby-throated Hummingbird 1
Red-bellied Woodpecker 1
Downy Woodpecker 1
Hairy Woodpecker 1
Northern Flicker (Yellow-shafted) 1
Red-eyed Vireo 4
Blue Jay X
American Crow 1
Carolina/Black-capped Chickadee X
White-breasted Nuthatch X
Carolina Wren X
House Wren 1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1
Eastern Bluebird 1
American Robin X
Gray Catbird X
Northern Mockingbird 2
European Starling X
Cedar Waxwing 20
Northern Parula 12
Chestnut-sided Warbler 1
Magnolia Warbler 2
Black-throated Blue Warbler 1
Black-throated Green Warbler 4
Prairie Warbler 1
Bay-breasted Warbler 1
Black-and-white Warbler 5
American Redstart 6
Common Yellowthroat X
Wilson’s Warbler 1
Scarlet Tanager 2
Eastern Towhee X
Field Sparrow 3
Song Sparrow X
Northern Cardinal X
Rose-breasted Grosbeak 4
Indigo Bunting X
Brown-headed Cowbird X
Baltimore Oriole 2
American Goldfinch X
This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)
LSP this morning
10sp. of Warbler – mostly Redstarts, Paula and B&W, rest were singles inc. Wilson’s and Bay-breasted.
Not hopping, but somewhat birdier than of late.
Chimney Rock was decent this morning..
Nashville, Canada, Blue-winged…few BT Blues and BT Greens…mostly Maggies and Redstarts, black and whites..
I had half a dozen swainson’s thrushes and two veeries throughout the morning
most interesting was a lone juvenile white-throated sparrow though. Struck me as fairly early
When I left the day was shaping up just fine…somewhere between 150-200 broadwings, few dozen sharpies, double digit kestrels, a few each of harriers and ospreys, and one juvenile bald.
Most of the birds must have gone straight to Cape May because Sandy Hook was very slow. We came up with 8 species of warbler . Most numerous as usual was common yellowthroat and restart. We had a few Magnolias, couple of no.parulas, singles of B & w, northern waterthrush, palm. Best 2 birds of the morning were a Lincoln’s Sparrow and a Philadelphia Vireo. The north end had a few hundred tree swallows staging as they usually do this time of year. Maybe tomorrow will be better.
Cumberland County bayshore – I didn’t hit until 8:00AM, Brian was there at dawn. Here’s what we had there – it was very good. I’ll just give some overall highlights – the species with the most numbers – we did have 17 species of warble:
20 BLACK and WHITE WARBLER
12 MAGNOLIA WARBLER
8 BLACK-THROATED GREEN
REDSTART – ??? 50 or so. They were everywhere.
15 PARULAS
15 COMMON YELLOWTHROATS
3 CAPE MAY WARBLERS
20 BLUE-GRAY GNATCATCHERS
20 or so ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAKS
6 VEERY
many RUBY-THROATED HUMMERS
4 EASTERN PHOEBES
Etc.
It did die down very quick though for some strange reason. The birds went somewhere!