News

A few moderate movements in the East highlighted an otherwise quiet part for migration across the nation, as large scale and diverse movements for this season are long gone. Species on the move this week included Snow Goose, Common Goldeneye, Bufflehead,…

Light to locally heavy flights, particularly in the first half of the period, occurred in the West and featured Common Loon, Black-bellied Plover, Say’s Phoebe, Swainson’s Thrush, White-crowned Sparrow, and Lincoln’s Sparrow, while numerous moderate to heavy flights featuring Gray-cheeked Thrush, Swainson’s Thrush, Blackpoll Warbler, Tennessee Warbler, Orange-crowned Warbler, Wilson’s Warbler, and Lincoln’s Sparrow were the norm across the East following the passages of a significant frontal boundary.

Diminishing returns aside (no pun intended), the West saw local light to moderate movements continue as the East saw a last large pulse of moderate to heavy movements. Birds on the move this week included Lesser Scaup, Bufflehead, Red-breasted and…

Continental Summary

Need a review of our definitions for regions, species on the move, and migration amounts? Please visit this link.

Upper Midwest and Northeast
Gulf Coast and Southeast

Great Plains
West

Upper Midwest and Northeast

Species,Increase from Last Week,% of Checklists Reporting
Baltimore Oriole,256%,40.5
Chestnut-sided Warbler,922%,12
Rose-breasted Grosbeak,213%,23
Magnolia…

Moderate movements including White-faced Ibis, Swainson’s Hawk, Nashville Warbler, MacGillivray’s Warbler, Lazuli Bunting, and Black-headed Grosbeak highlighted the period in the West, particularly along the Pacific Coast and in the Desert Southwest, while moderate to locally heavy movements featuring Spotted Sandpiper, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Chimney Swift, Red-eyed Vireo, Cliff Swallow, Northern Parula, and Blue Grosbeak graced the southern reaches of the East.

Generally favorable conditions across much of the West brought continuing light to moderate movements, but the parade of fronts across the East brought widely varying size and distribution of movements in conditions changing rapidly from day to day. Species on…

Since its beginnings, BirdCast has been fortunate to receive media attention from a diverse array of outlets. We’ve assembled some of these below in this post to keep you all updated on the outreach and education. Some of the links…

Purple Gallinules are well known as champions of long-distance vagrancy, with records from as far north as Iceland, as far south as South Georgia Island, as far west as the Galapagos Islands, and as far east as Italy and South…

This spring, we’ll be tracking migration from many angles. New interactive maps made with eBird data will give us a bird’s-eye view of migration in progress. We’ll also make use of line graphs showing the percent of eBird checklists reporting species through time. And follow us on Twitter!

Next Friday, BirdCast begins its official Fall 2017 season of weekly migration forecast and analysis reports. Additionally, we will soon be introducing a few new members of Team BirdCast, some new visualizations, and of course discussions of any interesting patterns we see (or hear). Stay tuned!

Team BirdCast plans to include a more diverse array of forecasts and analyses for this season. You may have already seen some of the new graphics that we started to employ earlier in March. Now, we present another new feature: BirdCast World Edition.

Team BirdCast is taking a break from forecasting this week to focus on the Global Big Day on May 13. We’ll be back next week!