While not the wallop of migrants I was expecting, we did get hit with a small wave of new birds last night which appear to have been grounded by the heavy rains and northerly winds early this morning. Here’s the radar from 7:00pm last night through 5:00am this morning.

Frames are every 1/2 hour. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.

I keep thinking of what Don Freiday said to me when I made him watch the weather forecast for the third (or was it fourth?) time yesterday afternoon.

“Man, we really need this in May”

Well, he’s right; these are the conditions that produce epic flights later in the season, when birds are much more eager to reach the breeding grounds. Last night we had strong southerly flow up the east coast from Georgia through New Jersey, and while I would have expected this to trigger heavy migration, it appeared that the speed of the wind coupled with the imminent precipitation prevented all but a small subset of birds from heading north. For today I would expect some concentrations of birds in Central New Jersey, where the majority of migration did occur (although it was still small) and to a lesser degree at locations along the northern bay shore (Cumberland and Cape May counties) and up at Sandy Hook in the northeast. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, since based solely on the radar it appeared to be a bust… but you never know…

Good Birding, and if you do go out and brave the weather, please come back and let us know what you saw!

Cheers,

David