National Overview
A frontal boundary extending from West Texas to Lake Michigan imposed the western boundary of nocturnal migration last night, while high pressure over eastern Canada kept birds down over the northeastern U.S. This combination of synoptic weather resulted in the image you see below, where migration was concentrated along the southern coastal states and narrowed as you move up into the ‘mitt’ of Michigan. Given the conditions, both of the regions I cover here on www.woodcreeper.com experienced little to no nocturnal migration last night! Still, since I’ve moved to a new radar source, I wanted to give you something to look at, so here it goes…
Below are the radar loops from sunset last night through 5:00am this morning
In an attempt to get the radar posted as quickly as possible, I will be publishing “as I go” each morning. Therefore you may see some incomplete posts throughout the early morning hours (5-6am Central; 6-7am Eastern Time). We’ll test out this method for a few weeks and see how well it works… your feedback, of course, is most welcome!
New Jersey (Mid Atlantic)
Frames are every 1/2 hour. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.
In the words of James Brown: Aint nothin’ goin’ on now, but the rent!
Neither radar shows any significant migration and not until the early morning hours do we see anything moving on the Dover station. The SW->NE flight probably represents gulls or other seabirds making an early morning bay crossing. Maybe shorebirds? Your observations are most important here!
Wisconsin (Upper Midwest)
Frames are every 1/2 hour. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.
It’s a beautiful day for an Easter egg hunt (which is also why I’m so late posting this), and plenty of birds are already around as of yesterday, but don’t expect much in terms of new birds from last night. The bunny might have left some chocolate, but the new arrivals are still south of us. Neither radar showed any migration last night with winds out of the WNW and poor migration conditions to our south and east. Look on the bright side, any birds that have been found over the last few days are probably still there today- so go chase your FOS Pine warbler!
As always, woodcreeper.com depends on YOU to report your sightings and be our ‘eyes on the ground’, so please come back and give us an idea of how we’re doing predicting birding conditions in your neck of the woods.
ÂFor migration updates covering other regions check out-
Badbirdz Reloaded – Angel & Mariel cover Florida and the Southeast
Birds Over Portland – Greg blogs about the Pacific Northwest
Nemesis Bird – Drew and company give you the skinny on Pennsylvania
Tom Auer (aka The Skua) – Tom’s blog covers New England