News

For those in the greater New York City metropolitan area, September 11th 2016 brought the return of the Tribute in Light Memorial. The powerful, side-by-side beams of light aimed skyward were, first and foremost, a somber tribute to lives lost on September…

Welcome to this installment of BirdCast Traffic Reports, posts describing northeastern US nocturnal bird migration traffic rates, as calculated from a completely automated pipeline of algorithms. The images you see in Traffic Reports present the migration traffic rate (MTR), direction…

Favorable conditions for moderate movements featuring Northern Shoveler, Eared Grebe, Belted Kingfisher, Warbling Vireo, Orange-crowned Warbler, Townsend’s Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, and Savannah Sparrow highlight the beginning and end of the work week in the West, while the East experiences two pulses of moderate to heavy flights over the weekend and in the middle of the work week featuring Blue-winged Teal, Northern Flicker, Eastern Wood-Pewee, White-eyed Vireo, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, American Redstart, and Chestnut-sided Warbler.

Moderate to heavy flights were peppered across the nation and featured Sharp-shinned Hawk, Veery, Swainson’s Thrush, Northern Parula, Orange-crowned Warbler, Mourning Warbler, Fox Sparrow, Golden-crowned Sparrow, and Dark-eyed Junco during this past forecast period, with more widespread and regional movements generally limited by a few extreme weather events in the Desert Southwest and the Atlantic Seaboard.

Marginal migration conditions begin the period, give way to more widespread flights to end the week in the West, and feature Northern Shoveler, Killdeer, Belted Kingfisher, Yellow Warbler, MacGillivray’s Warbler, Wilson’s Warbler, Savannah Sparrow, and Western Tanager, while favorable conditions kicking off the period in the East in many areas of the East, featuring Blue-winged Teal, Bald Eagle, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Merlin, Least Flycatcher, Warbling Vireo, Red-eyed Vireo, American Redstart, Black-and-white Warbler, and Magnolia Warbler, give way to increasingly unfavorable conditions in part due to a decaying Hermine.

A busy week of migration across the nation featured light to moderate movements in the West and moderate to heavy flights in the East, with Northern Pintail, Caspian Tern, Swanson’s Thrush, Tennessee Warbler, Nashville Warbler, Magnolia Warbler, Baltimore Oriole, and Lincoln’s Sparrow on the move.

Welcome to this installment of BirdCast Traffic Reports, posts describing northeastern US nocturnal bird migration traffic rates, as calculated from a completely automated pipeline of algorithms. The images you see in Traffic Reports present the migration traffic rate (MTR), direction…

Each night, from local sunset to local sunrise in the Eastern time zone, a BirdCast server downloads radar data from 16 stations in the northeastern US. These data are composed of every scan of the atmosphere made by these radars during this time period, with a particular focus in our case on radar reflectivity products representing the magnitude of targets (whether meteorological, like rain and hail, or biological, like birds, bats, and insects) at a given radar. A pipeline of algorithms extracts information from these radar data about birds, and the resulting bird-specific summary imagery is published daily in early afternoon eastern time (give or take).

Locally favorable migration conditions increase in extent over the course of the work week in the East and feature Common Nighthawk, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Great Crested Flycatcher, Prothonotary Warbler, and Northern Waterthrush, while conditions in the west remain largely marginal for migration, with locally favorable patches featuring movements of Greater Yellowlegs, Western Sandpiper, Red-necked Phalarope, Warbling Vireo, Yellow Warbler, MacGillivray’s Warbler, and Western Tanager.

As spring migration winds down, light flights featuring late shorebirds, Eastern Kingbird, Cedar Waxwing, and Grasshopper Sparrow continue in the West early and late in the period primarily in montane areas, while the last vestiges of moderate to locally heavy flights featuring late shorebirds, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Cedar Waxwing, Sedge Wren, and Henslow’s Sparrow grace the East during the second half of the forecast period.

As the peak of migration in most areas recedes with another spring season passing, portions of the West experience light to moderate flights featuring White-throated Swift, Western Wood-Pewee, Warbling Vireo, Swanson’s Thrush, Cedar Waxwing, and Gray Catbird primarily mid and late period and patchily distributed moderate to heavy flights featuring Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Eastern Kingbird, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Cedar Waxwing, Orchard Oriole, and Bobolink occur in the East against a backdrop of a dynamic weather scene.

A period of generally favorable migration conditions featuring light to moderate flights of Common Nighthawk, Broad-tailed Hummingbird, Willow Flycatcher, Common Yellowthroat, Grasshopper Sparrow, and Western Tanager is in store for much of the West, particularly in the Rockies, while an unfavorable cool and wet start to the East gives way to later week moderate to heavy flights of White-rumped Sandpiper, Dunlin, Red-necked Phalarope, Black Tern, Black-billed Cuckoo, Red-eyed Vireo, Mourning Warbler, and Scarlet Tanager.