Hi everyone,
For the spring migration season I am going to try to post weekly "migration forecasts", with predictions for the following 6 days. These are mainly focused on southern Ontario, as that is the region I am most familiar with, but I will include comments on other areas of Ontario occasionally. *Please note that these are just my personal predictions & are by no means a sure thing. So if you consult only this to plan your trips, don't blame me if there aren't many birds that day : ) Ontario Migration Forecast - May 18th to May 23rd Overview Apologies for the delay in posting, I’ve been living at Point Pelee and have been pretty busy! The week started off fairly quiet, with north winds and not particularly exciting migration conditions. Things should start getting better on Friday though, when the first really good vagrant/mass migration event will occur (low pressure moving north, bringing strong south winds all the way off the gulf coast). - Likely New Arrivals This Week; * (Note. By “new arrivals” I mean low numbers of these birds, or the first one or two, showing up in the province. Usually Southwest Ontario gets birds about a week or more before other areas in the province too) - Whimbrel - Red Knot - White-rumped Sandpiper - Alder Flycatcher - Willow Flycatcher - Olive-sided Flycatcher - Yellow-bellied Flycatcher - Connecticut Warbler - Dickcissel Getting pretty late in the season ~ not many new birds left… - Migrants arriving in large numbers: - Dunlin - Black-bellied Plover - Semipalmated Plover - Least Sandpiper - Semipalmated Sandpiper - Ruddy Turnstone - Sanderling - Green Heron - Common Tern - Blue-headed Vireo - Red-eyes Vireo - Yellow-throated Vireo - Warbling Vireo - Philadelphia Vireo - Yellow-billed Cuckoo - Black-billed Cuckoo - Chimney Swift - American Pipit - Red-headed Woodpecker - Gray Catbird - Swainson’s Thrush - Gray-cheeked Thrush - Veery - Wood Thrush - Eastern Kingbird - Least Flycatcher - Great Crested Flycatcher - Orchard Oriole - Baltimore Oriole - Indigo Bunting - Scarlet Tanager - Rose-breasted Grosbeak - Most warbler species - Grasshopper Sparrow - Rarities to look for this week: - Black-necked Stilt, Willet and American Avocet (especially in southwestern Ontario) - Mississippi Kite in southwestern Ontario - Laughing Gull and Franklin’s Gull (southern Ontario) - Neotropic Cormorant (Lake Erie & Lake Ontario in particular) - Chuck-wills Widow (southwestern Ontario) - Snowy Egret, Little Blue Heron, Glossy and White-faced Ibis - Blue Grosbeak - Summer Tanager - Worm-eating, Kirtland’s and Kentucky Warblers Daily Forecasts - Thursday, May 19th West winds overnight and throughout the day on Thursday. There will likely be some rain overnight, but things should clear up a bit as the day goes on. Overall I expect limited migration, with low numbers of birds arriving across the province. - Friday, May 20th Right now it looks like Friday will be “the day” this week… with warm temperatures, clear skies overnight and strong south/southwest winds all the way off the gulf coast. Most of Ontario should be pretty good, however as is the norm this time of year, the counties bordering southern Lake Huron, Lake Erie and western Lake Ontario being the most productive. This could very well be the last big push of neotropical migrants of spring 2022! - Saturday, May 21st Strong southwest winds overnight, with very warm temperatures and a chance of a thunderstorm. It should be another good day for migration… and it seems like it should be a day with good rarity potential. - Sunday, May 22nd Winds shifting to the west/northwest as the low pressure system that brought the south winds the previous days moves past us. I expect it will be a quieter day, with low number aid new arrivals… but still some birds around to be found that arrived during the “big push” on Friday and Saturday. - Monday, May 23rd onwards As of right now the beginning of the week looks rather neutral ~ not particularly exciting from a weather standpoint but not bad either. It’s still a long way off. As of right now Tuesday/Wednesday could be pretty interesting ~ low pressure system moving rapidly northward… Summary Overall I think it should be another decent week of migration in Ontario… maybe the last really good week before summer ~ at least from a numbers perspective. Conditions for vagrants are setting up quite nicely on Friday and Saturday, so then onwards there could be an influx of rarities found across the province. Websites that I use frequently Windy (wind, temperature, precipitation and more) - windy.com Birdcast (good for large scale trends) - https://birdcast.info Accueweather (an easier to read weather site that is normally accurate) - https://www.accuweather.com If anyone is on Twitter, I post almost daily about weather birding related things. My handle is @ONweatherbirder -- Ontbirds and Birdnews are moderated email Listservs provided by the Ontario Field Ornithologists (OFO) as a service to all birders in Ontario. Birdnews is reserved for announcements, location summaries, first of year reports, etc. To post a message on Birdnews, send an email to: [email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns, contact the Birdnews Moderators by email at [email protected]. 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