Just to clarify a bit -- this concentrating of birds at low altitudes and/or birds landing is probably happening across a larger area, but we can only see it over west-central Long Island because that's the only place where the radar is able to sample low altitudes due to its location.
Benjamin On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 12:00 AM, Benjamin Van Doren <bmvando...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Jim, > > This is really interesting. I believe what is going on here is the > following: favorable southerly winds ahead of the front (i.e. ahead of the > rain) and light winds just after fontal passage caused birds to take off in > large numbers...but unfavorable northwesterly winds are following the > front. If you watch a loop of the radar you can see that birds take off at > high densities across Long Island and much of Connecticut, but start to > disappear from higher altitudes (i.e. from CT - further from the radar) > after the precipitation passes, and they become more concentrated on LI (at > lower altitudes), such that by midnight there are only high densities over > LI. Barring any radar beam weirdness, it would seem that, as of midnight, > there are a lot of birds concentrated at low altitudes over central Long > Island, and they don't appear to be crossing the sound (in the face of > northerly winds). Except perhaps at low altitudes, which we wouldn't be > able to see easily. Might be interesting to check out west-central LI > tomorrow... > > Benjamin > > > On Sat, May 14, 2016 at 11:35 PM, Jim Osterlund <james...@optonline.net> > wrote: > >> Are there any radar watchers out there tonight? If so, can you >> characterize the image over central Suffolk at around 2330> >> >> -- >> >> NYSbirds-L List Info: >> http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME >> http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES >> 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://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html >> >> Please submit your observations to eBird: >> http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ >> >> -- >> > > -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES 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://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
