News

High intensity migration and evolving tropical systems are on deck for this week. We estimate movements 400-500 million birds on each of the coming nights over the continental US. Plus, a very active Atlantic Ocean Basin has a number of tropical systems of the move, entraining and displacing a diversity of birds in the Gulf of Mexico region and Bermuda.

With the departure to the Northeast of Hurricane and Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy, westerly flow prevails outside the Northeastern US across a huge portion of the Eastern US from the western Great Lakes through peninsular Florida. In many areas, despite the…

A tropical system is building in the Gulf of Mexico, forecast to intensify in the coming days and then move ashore in central or southern Texas. Whether this system intensifies to hurricane strength or continues as a tropical storm or depression, it is likely to bring an array of seabirds ashore in southern and central Texas and possibly northern Mexico.

Last week, Team BirdCast forecast that conditions looked favorable for spring overshoot migrants to occur in areas far to the north of their expected seasonal range. Here, we provide some additional discussion and speculation for what actually transpired. After a frontal…

Several weeks ago, Team BirdCast highlighted a set of conditions for spring overshoot migrants, or “slingshot” migrants, to occur substantially farther north of their intended and seasonally appropriate destinations. We see potential for such conditions over the coming 24-48 hours,…

Although we are still quite early in the season to discuss the potential for a “slingshot” event that might cause typically southern spring migrants to overshoot their intended destinations along the Atlantic Coast, and although these events are relatively rare…

As a reminder to what the team is working on here at BirdCast, we return to a previous post we wrote. With spring soon arriving and preparations for migration underway, here is a primer on what we do. We turn weather radar data into information on the numbers and flight directions of birds aloft in order to expand the understanding of migratory bird movement. After several years (and hundreds of posts) describing migration, species on the move, and unique migration events, we want you to have a better understanding of what happens at BirdCast. Here is a brief overview and a behind-the-scenes look at the ways we apply radar data to study bird migration.

Would you like more information on ways to use and to understand new BirdCast migration monitoring tools for spring 2018? Read on!

The BirdCast forecast model predicts just over half a billion birds to be flying during peak flight hours tonight! Turn out your lights! Go birding!

We said BILLION twice before in BirdCast history, on 6 October 2023 and on 25 September 2025! Amazing! Welcome back to the billion bird night club! Again! For the third time! 8 October 2025! The third epic night did not stop at a billion either: no, it grew beyond that, and beyond 1.1 billion, beyond 1.2 billion, all the way to 1.25 billion, becoming the biggest night of migration yet recorded by BirdCast!

The BirdCast team led a study published today that uses two decades of data to show that migration magnitude, light output, and wind conditions are important predictors of collisions at a high-profile building in Chicago. This research has global implications for conservation action campaigns aimed at eliminating an important cause of bird mortality: light pollution and resulting collisions with structures.

The BirdCast team led a study published today in PNAS that uses two decades of data to show that migration magnitude, light output, and wind conditions are important predictors of collisions at a high-profile building in Chicago.