Day Moon
We tend to think of migration as a nightly event as we enter the spring – watching birds pass in front of the moon on a clear evening, catching them on radar, hearing flight calls in the darkness or finding new faces have joined us in our yards and patches when we wake up in the morning. While we often ignore the moon shining in the bright blue sky all day we also ignore the fact many birds are flying over us then, too. Yes, we see geese and certainly are aware of hawk watches and the many raptors that use thermals, but shorebirds might be migrating nonstop over the continent, while...
Read More“Fall” Radar Migration
Welcome to fall migration season, and it is heating up already! These radar grabs from Buffalo and Upton, New York show you some avian migration after the cold front passage a couple days ago. Thursday night into Friday morning saw the arrival of new birds for many areas as flycatchers, vireos, warblers, shorebirds, swallows, blackbirds and more are hitting various staging and roosting areas, following coasts on nonstop trips, or slowly making their way south across our lands. All of the blues and darker greens you see are mostly birds with some insects mixed in. Bright greens, yellow,...
Read MoreWired world of swallows
Sometimes I think the swallows would hate a wireless world most of all. Tree, Barn, Northern Rough-winged, Bank, Cliff and a Purple Martin or two can still all be seen trying to head south. Aerial insectivores have to go where the food is flying or they’ll be in deep trouble. We need to rely more on them to clean our skies rather than chemicals which harm us all.
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