Hello, all. With a general northerly windflow continuing, there was again a decent push of nocturnal migrants over Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado, earlier today, Thursday, Aug. 20th. (30 miles northwest of Denver.) It was clear overnight, with just some thin, high haze. Birds sounded higher up than 2 nights ago, when it was partly cloudy and substantially hazy. Lots of birds "on the ground" (or near the ground) at sunrise, especially Brewer's and Vesper Sparrows--combination of fallout and "dawn flight." Thus, I imagine the flight was actually better last night than what I detected; i.e., I missed some birds too high up to hear.
We're getting into the peak time of year for both diversity of flight calls and intensity of nocturnal migration. Here in the Front Range region of northern Colorado, I'd call that period Aug. 20th through Sept. 15th. The few truly heavy (EastCoast-style) flights we've had have been concentrated entirely in the period Aug. 25th-Sept. 1st (2006-2008). Wonder if that will pan out this year... Details on last night's flight available here: http://tiny.cc/UPGaT Brief highlights, as usual, available here: http://twitter.com/NightBirding ------------------------------- Ted Floyd Editor, Birding ------------------------------- Please support the American Birding Association: Click on http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=884482 to search the internet. Check out the American Birding Association on FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22934255714 Check out the American Birding Association on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abaoutreach Please visit the website of the American Birding Association: http://www.aba.org -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html --
