Last night the winds turned northwesterly again, and although it paled in comparison to the big flights from only a few weeks ago, we did see another solid push into New Jersey last night. 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.

A quick look at the regional composite reveals much about last night’s flight. On the radar, very little could be seen moving out of western and southern New York although during the night it appears that some birds did leave southern NY and enter into the airspace over New Jersey. Movement over New Jersey was moderate and picked up considerably in the later hours (after 11pm). The general trajectory was NW->SE for most of the night, suggesting that coastal migrant traps in the southern half of the state will be birdy this morning. The reason I stress “southern half” is because the migration out of eastern New York was pretty light, and therefore the source pool for places like Sandy Hook was considerably less than that for Cape May (the entire state of New Jersey AND southern New York). New York City should see some new birds today as well, as birds could be seen entering the NYC radar from the northwest throughout the night.

Flights these days are comprised mostly of short(er) distance migrants and winter residents so expect to see good numbers of kinglets, sparrows, robins, sapsuckers, etc. Since we’re winding down the fall season, I wanted again to thank everyone who has contributed to the site in one way or another. November is bill-paying time, so anything you can do to help offset the bills and keep us running for one more year would be most appreciated. All of the info for doing so can be accessed via the link on the right-hand sidebar, under my Twitter feed. One of the great things about this site is that it provides a historical record which anyone can return to and use to try and understand migration patterns over New Jersey. One of the side effects of that is every year it gets a little more expensive to maintain because of the space we’re taking up with archived data. So, if you find this service useful, please consider making a donation to sustain Woodcreeper.com into the future.

Thanks again for a great season, and most importantly: Good Birding!!

David

ps. White-tailed Kite back at Barnegat- see this post for details