News

We are nearing a seasonal window during which many records of Fork-tailed Flycatcher, a spectacular and elegant vagrant to the US from South America, have occurred. The BirdCast team thought you might like to know that conditions could be favorable for the arrival of this wandering species somewhere in the US … maybe.

23 May 2020 on the eastern shore of Virginia brought some migration magic to a small habitat patch for some lucky observers. Just over 200 migrants in a 10-acre patch. Our friend Ned Brinkley describes the action and puts it in proper perspective.

A stationary front in the Carolinas, evolving into a cold front and moving offshore with some strong storms and southerly flow in advance of its movement, could make for some interesting birding along the immediate mid Atlantic and Long Island coasts.

A massive migration event occurred on the Massachusetts coast on the morning of 16 May 2020. Several observers were fortunate to be on the ground in the right place and the right time. Here’s the story!

The passage of an unusually intense late May cold front will result in strong northwest winds along the Pacific Coast through the weekend and could bring pelagic goodies to shore.

Spring 2020 has seen some anomalously low temperatures in the northeastern US, and no exception is the coolest May going back to the 1990s. But changes are coming this weekend.

Although Tropical Storm Arthur is not predicted to make landfall, winds associated with the system’s passage will impact the coastal US from the Carolinas through southern New England in the coming days. These winds, depending on location, may be sustained at 20-30 knots for several days, and could bring an array of typically pelagically distributed species ashore.

17-19 May 2020 may bring an interesting shorebird event to the Pacific Coast of North America. An approaching strong storm system well timed to coincide with movements of spring shorebird migrants in the eastern Pacific could entrain and displace an array of unusual species.

Despite scattered medium to high intensity movements in the past 7-10 days in the northeastern US, punctuating some otherwise abysmally and anomalously cool conditions, tonight will see a significant change. Medium to high intensity movements are predicted across a wide swath of the region, including in areas where fallouts and concentrations may occur as a result of birds interacting with rain.

Global Big Day is here, and depending on your region you may have an exciting or depressing migration experience brewing: enter the polar vortex, shutting down movements in much of the East and spawning movements in the far West.

BirdCast reports on many aspects of bird migration, and sadly one scenario we encounter is mass mortality during migration. For example sometimes birds are downed when migrating over water, only to be found in the stomachs of tiger sharks; other…

We are nearing the window of peak migration through the US, and many species are on the move!