Bounded by a stationary front draped across northern New York, migrants pushed northward over the Mid-Atlantic 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.
As you can see from the regional composite, most of the migration occurred over Eastern PA, the Delmarva and New Jersey with lesser concentrations over New York State. Some locally heavy thunderstorms moved across the western part of NJ and may have knocked down some of the migrants, so if your area saw heavy rain between the hours of midnight and 5:00am, you should consider checking your local patch this morning. Otherwise birding conditions in NJ should be best at inland hotspots today as the main trajectory of migration was from S->N from the mid-Delaware Bay up to the NE corner of the state.
Sorry for being absent for the last few days- but World Series scouting had me in the field at all hours. The results are in, and while we didn’t come close to garnering the Cape Island Cup (nor the Carbon Footprint Cup), we had an awesome time. In the end The Rutgers Scarlet Knight-Herons (this year’s team was myself, Ben Baiser, and Bill Lynch) pedaled 42+ miles and tallied 104 species of birds on Cape May Island over a period of 20+ hours. In doing so we raised money for the Rutgers Ecology and Evolution Graduate Student Association to fund graduate research projects. Our donation this year will be in the name of Charlie Kontos, one of our original teammates who passed away suddenly last year. If you would like to support our cause, click here for information on how to donate. For those of you who have pledged support, a heartfelt thank you goes out to you from all of us. While our legs and butts are sore- our smiles are wide and our minds are full of the great memories of this awesome experience. Congrats to everyone who participated- and especially those who were able to take home the highly coveted awards. You deserve it!
Good Birding
David