Saturday, April 4, 2009

Big movement in southeast and a little in California



A few of us did some banding this morning ahead of the predicted lousy weather that is on it's way. We had a busy time with a new catch for the year, this handsome little Fox Sparrow (photographed by Amber Burnette).

It looks like a lot of his friends may be moving north tonight in the southeast.


There is a strong winter storm spinning across Iowa and southern Minnesota but the winds out of the south ahead of the low appear to be helping migrants all across the region. The storm will head basically straight east with cold northerly winds coming in behind the low. This will probably stop any more movement into the upper midwest for a few days.



It appears like there my be some movement in California tonight too. I don't know west coast topography as well as I should but it looks like the movement is essentially up the coast and central valley. I'm not sure what the bulk of the species will be in this movement but folks out west should check their yards Sunday morning.

1 comment:

dawn said...

thank you Birdnerd! I'm a bander out here in the central valley (northern) CA. Yesterday during our banding session we had really low diversity- tons of Orange-crowns but many winter residents still here. Heard a few new migrants, Cassin's vireo and Blue-gray gnatcatcher. I'll be excited to verify your suspected migrantion last night.