More birds are on their way, but the persistent northwest winds were just enough to hold them at bay to our south. Here’s the radar from sunset last night through 5:00am this morning.

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

Again, the most telling part of this series of images is not what they show you, but what they don’t. Last night the radars over the southeast and Gulf states were ablaze with migrants. While clearly heaviest over the Central and Mississippi flyways, the Eastern Flyway was still cranking as far north as the Carolinas. Despite heavy migration to our south, the northwest winds from the surface to 3000 feet did their job keeping birds from entering the Mid-Atlantic. Only a very few birds were detected crossing into Southern NJ last night, as can be seen on the Dover radar loop, and none were apparent over Central NJ or Eastern NY. That is all about to change tonight.

As the latest front pushes eastward tonight we will see winds turn southerly and then southeasterly across the region. Migration should be heavy tonight if the rain and thunderstorms can hold off until the late hours (which I suspect will happen).Unfortunately, for the Cape May peninsula, southeast winds are never ideal in spring and most of the migrants are expected to pass to our west. The rest of the state, though (and especially those locations lying west-of-center) should see a good influx of new birds by tomorrow morning. Northwest winds should build in on Wednesday, helping to push some of those recent arrivals back down the Cape May peninsula later in the day on Wednesday and definitely by Thursday. On Thursday night we should see another big push of migrants into the Mid-Atlantic, this time with some more birds crossing over the Delaware Bay and reaching the eastern shore of New Jersey.

For the extended outlook, I’m expecting the last big push of migrants to be on Thursday evening, arriving across the state on Friday morning. After that, winds are forecast to shift northwesterly and shut down any nocturnal movements through the weekend. That could mean some interesting things for the World Series of Birding, this Saturday, as migrants scouted on Friday should stay put through the Big Day. What this means for nocturnal calling rates on Friday and Saturday nights remains to be seen…

Either way, it’s gonna be a fun ride. I start going full throttle tonight- so hopefully I’ll be seeing some of you in the field over the next four days.

Good Birding, and Good Scouting,

David