National Overview

A stationary front draped west to east across middle America formed the northern boundary of significant migration last night, with heavy movement over Texas, Louisiana and Florida evident. Northwest winds aloft, across much of the rest of the country east of the Rockies, appears to have kept birds on the ground or restricted to lighter localized movements. The extreme east coast is a good example where migrants appeared have taken advantage of the lighter southerly winds close to the ground.

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.

If you only focus on the national composite you might be inclined to think that migration didn’t occur over the Mid Atlantic last night. Looking at the local radars, though, it appears that some birds did move over New Jersey last night, and they were heading at a pretty good clip to the ENE. The Dover radar, in contrast, showed little to no migration, therefore we should expect a net loss in birds from southern New Jersey with the chance of some new birds at places such as Garret Mountain and Sandy Hook this morning.

Wisconsin (Upper Midwest)

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

All’s quiet on the (mid)western front! Looking at the radar I can’t see any sign of nocturnal migration over the Upper Midwest last night. The velocity images show only N->S movement consistent with the winds, and the reflectivity only shows a little ground clutter and a few low-altitude and localized weather features. I would expect little change in terms of bird density and diversity today, with the chance of some birds making localized movements into optimal foraging habitat. The end of the week is looking good for the next big push into the region so stay tuned!

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.

For migration updates covering other regions check-
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
The new BirdCast migration forecast is up on the eBird site. Be sure to check that out and keep eBirding your sightings!