Megan's Nature Nook
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With warmer weather and spring bird migration underway, it’s a great time to get out and birdwatch! BirdCast is a great tool to help you know when the birds are migrating, and when to expect to see more birds in your area. Spring migration is always exciting because it seems like new bird species are arriving all the time! Many passerine (songbird) species migrate at night and in large enough flocks that they are often picked up on weather radars. In 2018 the BirdCast website launched and started forecasting bird migrations and predicting the number of birds that would be migrating at night. They also have a live migration map that reports how many birds actually were in flight. With these maps they’re able to gather information about when birds migrate, where they migrate, and how far they’ll fly on their migration journey. Over the years this information will be able to help us understand more about migration timing and pathways and how migration behaviors respond to climate changes, population changes, and much more. BirdCast is a website (birdcast.info) that is run by The Cornell Lab, Colorado State University, and University of Massachusetts Amherst. It is only live for a few months in the spring and fall during migration season. The two main things on their website are the 3-day Migration Forecast Map and Live Bird Migration Maps. The 3-day forecast shows you the predicted migration intensity across the continental United States and the live map shows you real-time analysis of actual nocturnal bird migration that is picked up on weather radar. Another neat tool on their website is the Local Bird Migration Alert. Just type in your city and you can see if there will be any birds passing overhead tonight. It will even estimate the number of brids/km/night. There is a lot of great info about migration and their different migration forecasting tools. I encourage you to check it out and look around the website!
I think it is fun to check BirdCast and see where birds are migrating and moving around. It’s interesting to see how weather can affect their migration and timing. And it is always exciting when there is high intensity of migration in your area, meaning you have a good chance of seeing some new species! Head over to the BirdCast website and see if there are any birds migrating in your area tonight!
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