With the last front still draped across the Carolinas, high pressure over the Mid-Atlantic has triggered another night of heavy migration into the region. Here’s the radar from sunset last night through sunrise this morning.

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

As you can see from the regional composite, migration was heaviest from western PA across to eastern New York. This was due, in part, to the variable wind directions further north. Looking at the individual radar feeds, you can see that most migration into the region followed a NW->SE trajectory throughout most of the night and early morning, eventually turning more N->S as the local winds turned more NE.Right now the wind reports from the Sandy Hook and Cape May buoys are reading NNE winds between 5-10kts, which would suggest that many birds would move inland this morning… but remember what happened over the weekend!

Based on the fact that there are plenty of birds in the system right now, good numbers of birds could be seen pushing off of the east coast last night, and that late-fall migrants tend to be less hydrophobic (Yellow-rumps clearly don’t mind being along the coast), I would guess that coastal hotspots would be quite birdy this morning. That said (and Tom Johnson is shaking his head right now, because he thinks I’m hedging my bets!) interior locations will have higher overall diversity today since the highest proportion of migrants did still move inland (I also think this played out last weekend if you look at the reports across the region on Sunday).

Thanks to everyone who posted comments over the season, and especially over the last week. I meant to respond to each of them directly but have been struggling just to keep the posts up in a semi-timely fashion.

Thanks again, and good birding!

David