Overnight bird migration

With a combination of a full moon and light northwesterly winds, a heavy migration of birds occured last night over Maine. The Maine-Bird List was alive with reports of birds in-flight and calling during the overnight hours.

As evident in the following image of the 9:00 p.m. radar, you can see that the movement was spectacular.

9:00 p.m. radar image showing evidence of last nights bird migration (GRLevel 3 Radar)

 Good articles on “birding by radar” can be found at Derek Lovitch’s Blog and another at David LaPuma’s Woodcreeper.com. Reading these articles can help you better understand the relationship between night time bird migration and radar. You can view my radar images at anytime of the night or day at BathMaineWeather.com. There is a controller to loop through the images from the last several hours.

I leave you with a picture of the beautiful full Harvest Moon from last night. Click the thumbnail for a full sized view.

Happy birding!

About the author

John Briggs

I am a photographer/author from Bath, which lies along the Mid Coast of Maine. My love for nature and birds led to the development of this site and the Maine Birders Network. Comments, criticisms and feedback are always welcome. If you would like to be a guest author, please contact me. Happy birding!

Bird Feathers #6

The sixth in a series of occassional rundowns of what’s happening in the world of birds, birding and bird blogging.

Birding News

Alaska bird population has unique strategies | The strategies birds employ to survive Alaska’s upcoming season of darkness and cold, talking about the flighty birds that split, and the hardy few that stay.

Brain Birds: Amazing Crows and Ravens | No matter where you live, they’re your neighbors. You might want to watch them — carefully.

Building faux habitat to lure the cactus wren | Scientists have planted 15 green contraptions throughout Orange County’s Irvine Ranch Conservancy to entice a declining population of the birds.

PHOTO IN THE NEWS: New Bird Species Found in Gabon | A fiery throated bird spotted in the jungles of Gabon several years ago is a new African forest robin species, DNA studies prove.

Researchers study shrimp to learn more about shorebirds | Researchers from Mount Allison University have been making trips out to the Bay of Fundy mudflats to gather mud shrimp. It’s part of a project to study the eating habits of shorebirds and to find out if those habits are different between day and night.

Offshore oil rigs provide welcome stopovers for migrating birds | The Gulf of Mexico is important to migratory birds, too. Somewhere around a billion birds travel to their wintering grounds in Mexico, Central and South America every fall, and return to North America in spring.

Birding Blogs

About BirdPost | John Beetham of A DC Birding Blog gives his take on a new web service called BirdPost.

The BirdwatchRadio Podcast #9 | On this program, they observe the thirtieth anniversary of BirdWatcher’s Digest with editor Bill Thompson III.

A Quest | Jeff Wells, a senior scientist for the Boreal Songbird Initiative, has a post about a new show opening Wednesday evening, September 17, from 5:30 to 8:00 PM at the Jonathan Frost Gallery in Rockland, Maine. The show features artist Susan Beebe.

About the author

John Briggs

I am a photographer/author from Bath, which lies along the Mid Coast of Maine. My love for nature and birds led to the development of this site and the Maine Birders Network. Comments, criticisms and feedback are always welcome. If you would like to be a guest author, please contact me. Happy birding!

T.S. Hanna Aftermath

New England survived the remnants of Tropical Storm Hanna last night. Here at home, we received 5.80″ of rain in under ten hours and had a high wind gust of 31 m.p.h. The highest rainfall amount locally that I heard about was 6.92″ in Gray, Maine. At times last night, the torrential downpours woke me up but no lightning or thunder was observed.

I took a ride this morning to Popham Beach State Park. Several low lying areas had water across the road, a few branches and limbs were down and light beach erosion was evident at the park. We have a new pond beside our driveway, but it is receding nicely.

The birds seemed to fare well here at home. Hummingbirds and juvenile American Goldfinches were at the feeders before the sun came up this morning. Eleven Green-Winged Teals with 2 Blue-Winged Teals mixed in were observed this morning in the river just off our back yard.

Down at Popham Beach, not much activity was observed. A few Dunlin and a smattering of Semipalmated Plovers were feeding on the exposed flats.  A lone Osprey was seen hovering near the Seguin Island Lighthouse and several Double-Crested Cormorants were seen toward the Morris River. We had a juvenile Herring Gull follow us around like a puppy while we were on the beach.

All in all not a devastating storm except for a few flooded roads and basements.

The view early this morning from Popham Beach State Park:

Happy birding!

About the author

John Briggs

I am a photographer/author from Bath, which lies along the Mid Coast of Maine. My love for nature and birds led to the development of this site and the Maine Birders Network. Comments, criticisms and feedback are always welcome. If you would like to be a guest author, please contact me. Happy birding!