Neo tropical Migrants

April 23 2013. A bit of a diversion from my usual post, but this is about billions of Birds of the Day.  Our woodlands will soon be teeming with bird life.  It’s getting busy already but the bulk of what we call neo-tropical birds, the colourful warblers, shocking tanagers, cuckoos, vireos and the like, has yet to arrive.   Many, maybe most of them are streaming  northwards from Central and South America up through Mexico towards Texas and Louisiana, and from there they’ll disperse throughout the north and eastern parts of the continent.  Some species island-hop up the Antilles island chain to Florida and move north from there.  The mass of animal life may seem trivial, after all it’s just a bunch of birds each no bigger than a chicken egg; but there’s millions of them, maybe billions.

In the early days of the development of radar, observers were puzzled by ghostly images that appeared when there were no planes flying.  To cut a long story short, it was migrating birds they were seeing; and now you can too.  All you need is access to good live night time (because that’s when the birds fly) radar images. The good news is that it’s available on line at the U.S National Weather Service’s radar loop. What you’ll see on many, or even most, nights between late April and late May is vast agglomerations of birds on the move. Look again at 7.00 in the morning and the eastern half of the continent will likely have gone quiet while the west, which is still in darkness, has birds in the air. You’ll can either take my word for it that it’s birds, but if you need more information, read this article. 

I’ve added a screen shot taken at 10.30 pm April 23 2013.  Most of those big blue blobs are birds.  The more linear yellow, green and blue cudgel shaped bit at the top is a weather system.  Along the coastline of Texas you can make out streamers of birds just offshore, heading for land.