Today is my awesome wife’s birthday! Yesterday she got a Canada Warbler for her birthday bird, she can’t complain. This weekend we will be away from computers and any technologically advanced, this means we will not be able to post the radar. Sorry to all that will miss the radar, we will be posting back up on Monday morning.
Good migration to you all and enjoy the weekend.

Nature is Awesome
Angel & Mariel

This thing gets cooler everyday. Forgive the abbreviated animation loops today, as I was tinkering under the hood last night and screwed up the download script such that I only got data from 1:00am to sunrise this morning (which is what you see when you click on the images below). The cool thing is that I added the southeast composite image so you can get a better idea of where birds go after crossing the Straits of Florida (or after leaving any point on the Florida peninsula). Notice on the composite that last night birds are seen entering the Miami radar after crossing over from Cuba. These are probably a mix of birds from Cuba as well as from the Southern Everglades…okay East Coast birders, go see what’s out there! I think from now on I’ll need to download the Miami radar as well…this is about to get “out of hand”.

Good Birding

David

Frames are every 1/2 hour:

One small step for birds, one giant leap for a single Parula warbler. I’m not so sure that one works, but it’s early, and I’m punchy.
Here’s the radar- as you can see, a teeny tiny little puff of birds makes its way from Cuba to the mainland over the middle keys and Cape Sable.
Make sure you click on the images to see the animated loops.

Frames are every 1/2 hour:

I just checked the forecast discussion for Key West, and found this:

KEY WEST DOPPLER RADAR IMAGE LOOPS OVER THE LAST SEVERAL HOURS REVEAL
ONLY ISOLATED SPRINKLES OR VERY LIGHT SHOWERS IN A FEW CLOUD STREETS…
MAINLY SOUTH OF THE ISLANDS OVER THE GULF STREAM. THE RADAR LOOPS
ALSO SHOW A CLASSIC SPRINGTIME BIRD MIGRATION…WITH REFLECTIVITIES
EXCEEDING 25 DBZ AT TIMES…INDICATIVE OF NEARLY 10000 BIRDS PER MILE
ACCORDING TO STUDIES BY RADAR ORNITHOLOGISTS.

How cool is that!? Kudos to K. and L. Kasper for including birds in their report; and not simply writing them off as “anomalous propagation”

Now that’s some serious migration! Birds were on the move last night, with winds over Cuba and the Florida Straits ranging from southerly to southeasterly. Many birds are seen entering the radar several hours after sunset and settling down over the Keys and south Florida around sunrise (although some birds were still at altitude as of 6:30am). Since winds were more southerly than in recent past, more birds seem to be heading for the entire Keys and southern portion of the peninsular Florida. As for birding conditions on the ground, I’d expect the good Spring migrant traps in the Keys and on the West Coast (such as Indigenous Park in Key West, and coastal Naples) to have the best probability of an increase in bird diversity. Eastern sites such as Lucky Hammock, AD Barnes, etc. will probably not see much change due to this movement since birds don’t appear to have been pushed far enough to the West. Many birds are likely dispersed widely over the interior Everglades National Park, and so would be difficult to detect on the ground. Judging from recent reports, a movement of this size will probably not produce large numbers of birds in any one location, but will likely bring with it an increase in diversity given the time of year. Okay, that’s all the hand-waving I’m going to do for today- here’s the radar.

Good Birding!

Frames are every 1/2 hour: