Great article (evidencing a ton of hard work) by Shai and Pat proposing a slingshot event to describe the migration of early 2005, and which showed the same pattern as our current April migration.
There is corroborating evidence on radar to suggest a weather related boost for the most recent migration wave. Looking at the radar loops at Paul Hurtado’s radar site: http://www.pauljhurtado.com/US_Composite_Radar/ , you can see that on the nights of April 24 and 25 there was storm activity from the southeast which reached landfall along a broad area in of the mid-Atlantic coastline. This was followed by a pattern of fairly heavy migration starting from Delaware and Maryland on the 26, and fully reaching our area over the night of the 27th. This corresponds well to the most recent surge of “southern” migrants with ebird and listserv reports starting 4/28 of summer tanager, blue grosbeak, and kentucky warbler, along with smaller numbers of prothonotary warbler and yellow throated warbler. In light of this phenomenon, this might be a good time to get out and check some of our underbirded parks. Who knows? There might be a Swainson’s out there somewhere waiting to be discovered. Good spring birding Peter > On Apr 29, 2017, at 8:47 PM, Shaibal Mitra <shaibal.mi...@csi.cuny.edu> wrote: > > An unusual number of Hooded Warblers were found on Long Island and vicinity > today, in conjunction with Blue Grosbeaks and Summer Tanagers--and also > seasonally early examples of female Indigo Buntings and Rose-breasted > Grosbeaks. In contrast, the migrant species typically most abundant at this > date--Myrtle & Palm Warblers, Savannah & White-throated Sparrows, etc.--were > present in at best modest numbers at Long Island's migrant traps today. This > disparity is the signature of a slingshot event, set in motion days ago and > hundreds of miles away, with the displacement of trans-Gulf migrants over the > Atlantic. > > Please be sure to report or eBird all Hooded Warblers seen in coastal New > York, so that an accurate total can be tabulated. > > Whereas most rare-scarce warblers in southeastern NYS tend to occur during > the biggest spring flights of common warblers, Hooded and Prothonotary tend > to occur here in association with grosbeaks and tanagers, on otherwise slow > days. For a discussion of slingshots and different kinds of spring flights, > see: > > http://www.nybirds.org/KBsearch/y2005v55n3/y2005v55n3p213-227mitra.pdf# > > Shai Mitra > Bay Shore > -- > > NYSbirds-L List Info: > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm > > ARCHIVES: > 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html > 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L > 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 > > Please submit your observations to eBird: > http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ > > -- > -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
