Winter birds videos

During the month of December, we have had a crippling ice storm, a blizzard, temperatures ranging from -5° to 50° F. and a plethora of snow, rain and sleet. This kind of weather is hard on birds. Now, more than at any other time of the year, birds can use our help when deep snow packs makes it hard to for them to find food.

I shovel a patch down to bare ground under our feeding stations and sprinkle bird food on the area for the ground feeding birds. We also keep fresh water available and clean the snow and ice off of all feeders. The birds really appreciate it!

We took the following hi-def videos just before the blizzard struck on last Sunday morning. Fair warning: large file size, broadband connection recommended!

Dimension: 500×375 | Video bit rate: 1000Kbps | File Size: 20.0 mb
Playback: Click Play Button | Broadband Connection Recommended
Streaming Video of Downy Woodpecker | ©2008 birdingmaine.com

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This next hi-def video shows the many Sparrows and Junco’s that visited when the snow started to fall. Broadband connection recommended! Half the file size of the above video.

Dimension: 500×375 | Video bit rate: 1000Kbps | File Size: 10.6 mb
Playback: Click Play Button | Broadband Connection Recommended
Streaming Video of Sparrows & Junco’s | ©2008 birdingmaine.com

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We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. Here’s wishing all of you a happy and prosperous New Year.

Happy birding!

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!