News

New study finds both positive and negative impacts possible Ithaca, NY—Under future climate scenarios, changing winds may make it harder for North American birds to migrate southward in the autumn, but make it easier for them to come back north…

Researchers predict the movements of millions of birds across the United States Ithaca, N.Y. & Oxford, U.K.—September is the peak of autumn bird migration, and billions of birds are winging their way south in dramatic pulses. A new study published in…

The BirdCast team loves a report from the field, and today we have one from Colorado – the home of our western base of operations, Colorado State University, where Dr. Kyle Horton directs the AeroEco Lab.

The BirdCast team loves a report from the field, and today we have one from Colorado – the home of our western base of operations, Colorado State University, where Dr. Kyle Horton directs the AeroEco Lab. We are especially pleased to introduce Mikko Jimenez, a PhD student in the Lab, to describe his experiences with the amazing and cool BirdScan MR1, a compact radar for monitoring the atmosphere (bird migration in particular, of course!) at resolutions far finer than those we typically discuss for WSR-88D operations.

Team BirdCast is highlighting an area where fallouts and concentrations may occur over the course of the day. An areas of significant storms and precipitation is moving slowly north and east over the western Gulf Coast, impacting Louisiana and nearshore off the immediate coast.

Last week, Team BirdCast highlighted at potentially complex scenario for inbound Neotropical migrants in the Gulf of Mexico. Let’s get a brief update to see what happened.

Continental Summary This week’s migration forecast highlights the effects of a strong frontal boundary crossing the country, facilitating light and scattered moderate movements with its approach to a region and shutting down migration in its wake. West Generally unfavorable conditions…

West Light and variable winds will facilitate scattered, light migration in many areas through the weekend, with some coastal areas experiencing slightly larger movements. By Sunday night, more favorable winds spread across coastal areas and into the Great Basin, and…

The West continues to see conditions that favor light to moderate migration, whereas continued pulses of heavy movements occur over much of the rest of the East. Birders should watch carefully in the East for conditions that spawn fallouts and…

Although some portions of the Western US will see light and scattered migration by the middle or end of this week (e.g. the Desert Southwest), this week’s weather is dominated by the passage of Winter Storm Saturn across the Central…

Light to moderate movements continue to be widespread in the West this forecast period, whereas periods of moderate to heavy movements in clear, fall skies are punctuated by periods of widespread rain and southerly flow. West Light to moderate migration…

As the fall migration continues past its peak, the big story of the forecast period is the passage of Hurricane Sandy, the havoc it may wreck, and the intense northerly and westerly flows that will spawn large movements before and…