Hurricane Earl is making its way up the eastern seaboard, but far enough offshore so it’s only packing some quick showers and tropical-storm force winds for New Jersey. The general circulation of the storm, along with the cold front approaching to our west, have kept most birds from moving over the last two nights. Here’s the radar from sunset last night through 5:30am this morning.

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

With the high southerly winds aloft and still a fair amount of “aerial plankton” in the atmosphere (pollen, dust, insects, etc.) a quick view of the radar might suggest some bird activity. In fact, there is a little southbound signal at the periphery of the NJ radar images, raising the possibility that a few birds are moving south. I’m still not entirely convinced of this, though. Regardless, the southbound reflectivity at high altitudes represents a tiny fraction of the radar sample space, and therefore the detection of these birds would be highly unlikely this morning. Nope, for the most part expect some local shifting of birds, but otherwise no new migrants arriving en masse. Now onto storm birding.

It looks like Earl will bring northeast winds to New Jersey as it passes parallel to the coast. The highest winds and rainfall should occur around midday, and taper off through the afternoon, with the wind then turning northwest and remaining so into tomorrow morning. Storm birding should be best while the winds are northeast, as that would be the most likely direction to bring birds toward land. High and low tides will be best bets for finding resting terns on the beaches, so find yourself a nice spot out of the wind to scan the shoreline around those times. You can find your local tide tables at SaltwaterTides.com.

With northwest winds on tap tonight for New Jersey and the northeast coast, we could see a push of migrants into the area overnight. Unfortunately the winds over most of the northeast will still be out of the west-southwest tonight, limiting any major influx into the region tomorrow. Still, it doesn’t take a whole lot to jump-start the birding conditions on the ground, so check the twitter feed tonight for updates, and check back tomorrow morning for the whole run-down.

In the meantime, Good Birding, and be SAFE out there today!

David