Tom Auer's Blog

The birds are back at it in full effect and there’s only one squall line in the way.

If you live in the path of this squall line (central Mass, possibly northern Connecticut, most of New Hampshire) be on the lookout for fallout tomorrow. Strong squall lines like this can really pile up the birds, especially considering that birds are pushing north right into it, with very good densities. Behind the squall line, turnover will be less tomorrow.

We’re also getting to the time of year when a lot of these birds in the radar are shorebirds, so if it’s wet in the morning, check your inland lakes and shorebird traps. Shorebirds are likely to continue moving during the day if the weather is nice, but if there’s rain, they’ll put down.

If you don’t live in the path of this squall line, and do check the animation in the morning, but you still live south or east of it, I think turnover could be good. We’re still waiting for a lot of flycatchers and the later warblers, so be on the lookout!

Rain is pushing out of western New England, but birds are staying on the ground, probably because it was raining over most of the region as dusk settled and because there’s residual fog and southeast winds. Upper level winds are highly conducive from the south. Some birds are in the air over New Jersey and eastern New York, but I have yet to see any of them enter New England in any great number and the overall densities are much lower than the last few night.

Tomorrow, I’ll be interested to see how the radar looks over the course of the whole night. I think there’s a chance that birds might push into New England, run into rain and settle down, but at the very least, there should be a handful of new birds, if the birds on the radar make some progress tonight. The caveat, of course, is the weather. At least for Rhode Island, we’re forecast to continue seeing thunderstorms and heavy rain as the evening continues into tomorrow, so if that activity builds, it could really shut things down and make conditions difficult.

I think that my guess that birds were leaving southern New England last night ahead of the rain, but not filling back in, was correct, because the reports (and my own personal field experiences) were pretty thin. This storm has produced some interesting birds from parts further south and west, such as White-faced Ibis and Swallow-tailed Kite in Connecticut and three Mississippi Kites in Maine. This effect was also produced by the last storm like this a few weeks that came out of the south and west, with strong south winds. Something to keep in mind for future spring migrations…

Rain and birds tonight. The story is similar to last night, which proved to produce a rather diffuse, but noticeable, presence of new warblers throughout New England. Tonight, the rain is more imminent, and, unfortunately, may cut off the flow of migrants from the SW, since most of the rain started the evening over New Jersey and parts south and west of there. However, plenty of birds got up and hit rain over western Conn, western and central Mass, and southeastern New York. The rain is moving slowly to the NE, so these regions may continue to experience more bird-rain interaction as the night progresses, while eastern parts of New England may not get the rain overnight. The bummer about all of this is that the rain is forecast to stay across the region throughout the day tomorrow, which could make for some wet conditions. But those are good times for fallout (both warbler and shorebird)!

Another hot night for New England. The birds are cranking. Winds are light and conducive, forecast to stay the same. However, rain is pushing in from Pennsylvania! If this rain makes it to New Jersey and Connecticut tonight, it’ll create some fallout, I’m fairly sure. Rhode Island is not forecast to get those rains until 4-5am, which may be too late to cause fallout, but it may happen at that point anyway. I’ll do my best to update in the morning. Regardless, with this much activity, there will be significant arrival and turnover across New England tomorrow.

Velocities are very strongly ENE, so I would expect Rhode Island and eastern Mass to have above average activity tomorrow, except that was the case last night and today was pretty boring in Rhode Island. Bottom line, if you’re in the western half of New England and it’s raining when you get up, go birding.

To take this all another step further, looking at the lowest upper level winds, there’s a freight train of SW winds blowing clear from Virginia to Nova Scotia, I’m going to go out on  a limb and say that this pattern will bring something unusual to Nova Scotia in the next few days. See below to see the wind pattern for yourself.

Today was good in a lot of places across New England, but tonight’s the night. Migration is much bigger tonight than it was last night and conditions are a bit more conducive. Tomorrow should be good for mid-May migrants at all the traps you’d expect to see them in this time of year. There’s no rain forecast overnight, nor any switch in winds, so the birds are going to have a good clear shot tomorrow. I definitely think it’s worth it to be out birding tomorrow.

The rain has cleared, but the winds are cranking now. The birds don’t care, they’re making a move for it anyway. The most interesting part is that the howling W-NW winds are really pushing the birds due east. Check out this nearly due easy velocity out of Boston!

I don’t think the rain fizzling over New York is going to have much impact on migration over southern New England. If I thought birds were going to be able to make a strong northerly push tonight, I’d say be on the lookout for concentrations over central Vermont and New Hampshire, but I think the birds are going to continue to get blasted east overnight. This is important, because it may pin some migrants to east facing coasts. I’m guessing Maine might turn up some more western species and that’s also a possibility for most parts of coastal southern New England tomorrow. Also, there’s a good chance that these winds will blow birds out over the ocean and some will be struggling to get back to shore in the morning, considering that the NW wind speed and direction are expected to be sustained overnight.

Tonight is very similar to last night. Rain, but with birds trying to push through across New Jersey, Long Island, and Connecticut and then a lack of movement to the east and north. Tonight, there’s more rain and there’s going to be even more rain later. I think the advice from last night holds. Today there were some concentrations in Connecticut and I think that’ll be the case tomorrow. I don’t see any big fallouts developing in Mass or RI considering the strength of the rain and the fact that the rain intensity is supposed to increase overnight ahead of migration.

I remember the ]spring migration of 2006 in New England being similar to this one, with a lot of rain and the birds making an effort to push through it anyway, resulting in few good migration days and a slow, constant trickle of birds north regardless of the rain. Considering that, it’s worthwhile to make a point to hit the migrant traps on a regular basis, because there are singles of new birds appearing each day and the same thing could happen this year, with a slow, persistent trickle of birds northward and less big eventful days of migration. Multiple days of rain do tend to bottle migrants up to a point and I think there’s a chance that once this rain frees up this weekend could produce some good days.

I was all ready to write tonight off to rain blocking migration, and then I noticed that birds are pushing through the scattered showers over New Jersey and Long Island (you can see the background “doughnut signal” a bit in the static image, it’s even easier to detect in the animation). I still think that the rain is going to be substantial enough for most of eastern New England to prevent much from happening, but I think coastal Connecticut should be on the lookout for fallout tomorrow. The current movement of rain would indicate that flyways will open into most of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but there is more rain further to the west that will come in later tonight. This is another tough one to prognosticate, but I give tonight a better chance than yesterday for some migration concentration, considering that the movements out of Jersey are already much better tonight than they were last night. Hey, it’s the second week of May in New England, you should be birding anyway!

It’s probably a little too early in the evening to tell how things are going to shake out tonight, as there’s rain in the picture already. Not long after taking off, some birds are probably being put back on the ground by a line of rain pushing east through Connecticut and, eventually, through western Mass, then later, Rhode Island. It’s possible that for eastern swaths of the region, this band of rain will have the effect of letting birds leave, but blocking some from arriving. It may also create light fallout conditions through the region, but my prediction would be that more fallout will occur in the areas where birds run into the rain coming from the south and later tonight, that will be Connecticut. The movement out of Jersey has been lighter than in the past few days, so that event may not manifest itself either. These kinds of evenings can be the trickiest to evaluate.

All of this said, it’s still early. I think for tomorrow, the maxim that rain and birds can produce some concentrations if the right conditions occur holds very well, so it’s worth checking your concentration points, like those that fared well on Saturday morning when the combo of rain and birds was just right (at least for Rhode Island).

I didn’t make it to posting a forecast last night. I think the general bottom line for southern New England was the migration was poor across New Jersey and Long Island, but decent to the north, resulting in the partial departure of migrants in the area, or at the very least, a lack of arrivals. That showed in today’s reports, with very little turnover noted at migration hotspots, at least in Rhode Island.

Tonight, thankfully, is a completely different story, with one of the season’s strongest flights taking place from Delaware through to Boston. Winds are light to non-existent across the entire region tonight, with little change forecast. Neither rain nor fog are to be present either. This means birds are going to push hard tonight and make progress.

Tomorrow, I would expect plenty of arrivals, lots of turnover, and a general change in species mix and numbers. I don’t think there will be fallout like there was on Saturday in many parts of the region, as the nice skies will let birds find optimal habitat for the day.  That said, the classic migrant traps you rely on in the spring will likely hold new and different birds. Tomorrow is definitely worth birding. Velocities are all stations are tending a little more NE than of late, so I’m hoping that the southeastern corner will see more good arrival activity than usual.