Friday, May 15, 2009

Heaviest Migration Yet

Weather systems south of Minnesota have kept our winds out of the south and very strong for the past several days. The movement of birds has appeared to be the heaviest of the season. The images below show the concentration of migrants over Minneapolis from about midnight to about 9 am on Friday May 15th. Note that at midnight the radar returns over the Twin Cities were in the range of 25dbz. This is near the maximum we see in this area.


Heavy movement continued through the night the image below is from approx. 2 am.


By 6 am the birds are starting to land as the sun comes up. However it looks like there is still some movement into mid-morning.

The last image show a bit of movement still going on at 7 am. I would expect a significant difference in species present from just a few days ago, maybe even from just yesterday.

2 comments:

Richard said...

I'm surprised that the migrtion was that heavy last night considering how strong the winds were out of the northwest. Guess I can be looking for some of those abcent warblers now.

BTW - I live right on the left of the migration image.

MarkN said...

I think banding results from today (and hopefully tomorrow) supported the theory quite nicely. Looking forward to your photos!