Thursday, May 13, 2010

Tomorrow (May 14) still looks good

Well, we must be in northwest Ohio. The temperature has gone from near freezing a couple of days ago to near 80 right now (late afternoon Thursday May 13) -- there's a strong, hot wind out of the southwest, and Broad-winged Hawks have been passing over the Black Swamp Bird Observatory and other spots near the lake, the last of the raptor migrants making their push through the area. Blue Jays, too, have been blasting by along the lake shore. These diurnal migrants, riding the wind, probably foreshadow what's going to happen with the larger numbers of nocturnal migrants tonight.

There's still rain in the area, and thunderstorms are likely to roll through around 10 pm tonight. But it looks as if southwest or WSW winds will continue for much of the night, switching to west by morning, with chance of rain diminishing after dawn and temperatures cooling down to something moderate in the morning. The wind flow out of the southwest is coming from a long way south, and there are still a LOT of migrant songbirds that haven't made it here yet, so we could have a massive arrival on Friday morning. I know that a lot of us are going to be out there looking! And we'll report as soon as we have an idea of what's going on.

If you can't make it out to the migrant traps on Friday, it looks as if Saturday also could be quite good -- maybe some more arrivals overnight Friday night, with winds shifting around to northwest on Saturday to hold some things in place. And even if huge numbers don't materialize, the overall diversity of migrants in the area is good enough to make for good birding.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I can not make it to Magee on Friday. I hope warblers will stick around as I will be there on Saturday. Thanks for updates!

Sandip

 
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