News

BirdCast predicts medium to high migration traffic aloft over an extensive areas of the central US from Mexico to Canada this weekend. Let’s take a look briefly at why we think this will happen, and what species will be on the move.

Hurricane Zeta is powering toward the Louisiana coast, predicted to make landfall on Wednesday afternoon. This storm will certainly entrain Gulf of Mexico seabirds, as well as displacing some nearer shore species inland and dropping overland migrants. Given the storm’s arrival time, predicted track and speed, birders from the Louisiana coast to Cape May, NJ should keep safe, socially distanced, and watchful eyes on all bodies of water and your favorite birding patches.

Keep your eyes open for Northern Wheatear in northeastern North American in the coming days – go birding and help make us look good by documenting this species! Time of year and prevailing weather appear to be aligning to warrant us donning our prediction hats!

Watch for Wilson’s Warbler, a species on the move right now (and perpetually given this species’ energetic personality), whether you are birding east or west!

Late last week Teams BirdCast and eBird posted a story about some recent winter movements. Here, we decided to look a bit more closely at what seemed to be some rather drastic departures this winter in the patterns of distributions…

Team BirdCast wrote in November 2014 about Varied Thrush movements in the western US. Since November, the actual movements (or at least visible movements like morning flights) of these thrushes may have dwindled, but the birds – in terms of where…

This fall has seen some quite large movements of Varied Thrushes in California and across the West – birders around the region have been reporting larger (and larger than normal) flights of birds for a number of weeks. Some of these…

Upland Sandpipers are on the move (and they have been for a few weeks now). Check out our new map to show the progression of migration for this species!

Tanagers bring the most incredible splashes of color to spring migration across the continent. Check out the movements of three migratory species over the last month.

On our 28 March arrival update, we highlighted the late arrival of Chimney Swifts into the US this spring. In the last several days, we’ve seen a big increase in eBird reports of swifts, and the 10-day delay we wrote about earlier seems to have evaporated!

Snowy Owls staged a major invasion last year, one that was covered far and wide by birders and the news media alike. Check out this great album from Ryan Schain of Snowy Owl candids! This irruption was most likely related to an abundance…

BirdCast tracks migration from many angles, including with interactive maps that can give us a bird’s-eye view of migration in progress. Check out arrivals of waves of Purple Martins.