Birds were moving in and out of the region last night. While not as “mega” as Thursday night, migration was still quite heavy across New Jersey. In my opinion, the prospects for today are enhanced by the influx of birds from both southern New York State and the more coastal region that blanketed us with yesterday’s birds. 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.
Northwest winds across the entire northeast last night finally allowed the birds over the Great Lakes region to take flight. Hence, migration was heavy from Buffalo NY all the way to the New England coast and south along the eastern seaboard. The regional composite clearly shows birds leaving the northeast US and entering the Mid-Atlantic this morning, which will mean lots of new birds throughout PA, NJ, DE and MDÂ this morning. Northwest winds over New Jersey will concentrate birds along the coast, making Sandy Hook and Cape May the best picks for this morning. Unlike yesterday, though, where central and western NJ were snubbed by the coastal-bias of the migration event (most birds were arriving from coastal New England and NY), today we should see more birds at inland locations as well due to the flight out of southern NY and eastern PA.
Winds today will go from northwesterly to due west, and then eventually around to southwest by this evening. We should see another good raptor flight during the day today before migration shuts down for the night. The lack of migration this evening will cause birds to concentrate into optimal habitat instead of heading out, which will make for another great day of birding on Sunday. Interestingly, northwest winds build in again on Sunday which will kick start the raptor flight once more, and lead to anther night of heavy migration into Monday morning… could it get any better than this!?
Great birds abound right now- so get out and bird!
Good Birding
David
2 responses to “A changing of the guard”
Sandy Hook this morning had a heavy flight of the more common sparrows – large numbers of juncos, white-throated sparrows, field sparrows, song sparrows, swamp sparrows, some chippies. Notables were a few vespers and Lincoln’s. Yellow-rumps, ruby and golden-crowns still abundant also.
Kunkletown in eastern PA:
Very few warblers and sparrows today. The robin flight was also small. However, there was a good number of blackbirds moving during the morning hours (mostly RWBL with several RUBL and COGR). American Pipits were also more numerous than usual.