Re: [nfc-l] big night flight tonight

2011-09-21 Thread Ethan Duke 
Is the Alfred listing station (not to be confused with "Alfred Station", a 
nearby hamlet), on Jericho Hill. This would give it significant elevation. 
Could elevation be a factor effecting 2?
Just another thought. By the way. I don't usually post much and there may be 
others on this list who are passively learning a TON from those who do. Posts 
and assistance from those on this list are greatly appreciated.

FYI... We have had a few pulses of activity here in Missouri. Generally, more 
activity has be seen on the ground (mist-netting) and through visual 
observations. My Fall 2011 NFC placement is horrible (too close to insects of 
all sorts singing in every frequency range) and I'll be moving it soon. So far 
we've had steady small numbers of migrants moving through. AHY warblers, 
tanagers, RBGRs, have been on the move here for the past week.

Ethan

Ethan C. Duke, Assistant Director
Missouri River Bird Observatory
website: www.mrbo.org
blog: http://mrbohappenings.blogspot.com/
660.886.8788



On 21 Sep 2011, at 9:19 AM, David La Puma wrote:

> Pretty fascinating stuff- since the radar reflectivity did not indicate the 
> 'largest' flight of the season for NY State, yet the call rates were clearly 
> highest. The upper-level winds were out of the WSW last night, which may have 
> caused 1) more birds to compensate for drift and 2) birds to fly at lower 
> altitude to avoid the effects of the head/side wind. Whether 1 would 
> influence call rate is unknown to me, but 2 should definitely influence the 
> detectability of calls. We could test 2 by calculating the vertical profile 
> of reflectivity for last night and several other of the 'big' nights over the 
> last month- and see whether there is a significant difference. This would at 
> least tell us whether the detected call rate had to do with the way we sample 
> the sky (and the detectability of birds at various altitudes). Knowing the 
> altitudinal distribution we could then look at the winds aloft to determine 
> the relative effect (wind aloft from radiosonde balloons vs. actual target 
> speed and direction derived from the radar) of the wind on flight direction, 
> and therefore infer whether birds were being pushed off course. I guess 
> there's a viable 3rd option which is that more immature (and naive) birds are 
> flying now than earlier in the season, which we would assume would influence 
> call rate... although I don't know the relative breakdown of adult:immature 
> in the suite of species moving now (just thinking of Am Redstart is what 
> conjured the hypothesis).
> 
> Any other thoughts?
> 
> cheers
> 
> David
> 
> 
> David A. La Puma
> Postdoctoral Associate
> New Jersey Audubon Society
> 600 Route 47 North
> Cape May Court House, NJ 08210
> Office: 609.861.1608 x33
> Fax:609.861.1651
> 
> Teaching/Research Profile:
> http://www.woodcreeper.com/teaching
> 
> Websites:
> http://www.woodcreeper.com
> http://badbirdz2.wordpress.com
> 
> Photos:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/woodcreeper
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 9:55 AM, Bill Evans  
> wrote:
> Ken appears to have tuned into one of the biggest calling night of the season 
> so far in central NY.  The acoustic station at Alfred Station, NY logged its 
> season high number (988) of warbler and sparrow flight calls last night 
> between 8:30PM-5:30AM. Based on spectrographic analysis roughly 4 out of 100 
> were Common Yellowthroat, 2 out of 100 were Black-throated Blue, and 2 out of 
> 100 were Chestnut-sided. Also notably in the mix were good numbers of 
> presumed Lincoln's Sparrow calls.
> 
> Bill E
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [nfc-l] big night flight tonight

2011-09-21 Thread Bill Evans 

Ken,
I'm not confident in separting Lincoln's and Swamp either, but last night 
was the first night this season that such calls were fairly abundant and I 
presume they were Lincoln's due to that species' earlier fall migration 
pattern in the region (based on diurnal records).


Your listening site is over 100 miles east of the Alfred Station microphone, 
so you undoubtedly had somewhat different species composition -- in the case 
of Black-throated Blue one might expect higher proportionate calling rate as 
one proceeds eastward in the state.


That said, there were also a lot of short Vermivora calls in the mix last 
night, perhaps the first substantial wave of Nashville's. All the calls from 
last night are downloadable at:

http://www.oldbird.org/Data/States/NY/Alfred/fall2011/Alfred2011f.htm

Bill



- Original Message - 
From: "Kenneth Victor Rosenberg" 

To: "Bill Evans" 
Cc: "CAYUGABIRDS-L" ; "NFC-L" 


Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 11:18 AM
Subject: Re: [nfc-l] big night flight tonight


Thanks Bill. I did hear a few typical "Lincoln's/Swamp sparrow" "dt"s 
but was not confident enough to report. If there were that few 
Black-throated Blues, I'm curious what most of the abrupt "tsip" notes might 
have been? There were certainly way fewer of what I would consider typical 
buzzy Dendroica-type "zeet" notes than what I'm used to hearing on most 
nights.


KEN


Ken Rosenberg
Conservation Science Program
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
607-254-2412
607-342-4594 (cell)
k...@cornell.edu

On Sep 21, 2011, at 9:55 AM, Bill Evans wrote:

Ken appears to have tuned into one of the biggest calling night of the 
season so far in central NY.  The acoustic station at Alfred Station, NY 
logged its season high number (988) of warbler and sparrow flight calls 
last night between 8:30PM-5:30AM. Based on spectrographic analysis roughly 
4 out of 100 were Common Yellowthroat, 2 out of 100 were Black-throated 
Blue, and 2 out of 100 were Chestnut-sided. Also notably in the mix were 
good numbers of presumed Lincoln's Sparrow calls.


Bill E





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Re: [nfc-l] big night flight tonight

2011-09-21 Thread Kenneth Victor Rosenberg 
Thanks Bill. I did hear a few typical "Lincoln's/Swamp sparrow" "dt"s but 
was not confident enough to report. If there were that few Black-throated 
Blues, I'm curious what most of the abrupt "tsip" notes might have been? There 
were certainly way fewer of what I would consider typical buzzy Dendroica-type 
"zeet" notes than what I'm used to hearing on most nights.

KEN


Ken Rosenberg
Conservation Science Program
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
607-254-2412
607-342-4594 (cell)
k...@cornell.edu

On Sep 21, 2011, at 9:55 AM, Bill Evans wrote:

> Ken appears to have tuned into one of the biggest calling night of the season 
> so far in central NY.  The acoustic station at Alfred Station, NY logged its 
> season high number (988) of warbler and sparrow flight calls last night 
> between 8:30PM-5:30AM. Based on spectrographic analysis roughly 4 out of 100 
> were Common Yellowthroat, 2 out of 100 were Black-throated Blue, and 2 out of 
> 100 were Chestnut-sided. Also notably in the mix were good numbers of 
> presumed Lincoln's Sparrow calls.
> 
> Bill E
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> NFC-L List Info:
> http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME
> http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES
> http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC-L_SubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm
> 
> ARCHIVES:
> 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html
> 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NFC-L
> 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NFCL.html
> 
> Please submit your observations to eBird:
> http://ebird.org/content/ebird/
> 
> --


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Re: [nfc-l] big night flight tonight

2011-09-21 Thread David La Puma 
Pretty fascinating stuff- since the radar reflectivity did not indicate the
'largest' flight of the season for NY State, yet the call rates were clearly
highest. The upper-level winds were out of the WSW last night, which may
have caused 1) more birds to compensate for drift and 2) birds to fly at
lower altitude to avoid the effects of the head/side wind. Whether 1 would
influence call rate is unknown to me, but 2 should definitely influence the
detectability of calls. We could test 2 by calculating the vertical profile
of reflectivity for last night and several other of the 'big' nights over
the last month- and see whether there is a significant difference. This
would at least tell us whether the detected call rate had to do with the way
we sample the sky (and the detectability of birds at various altitudes).
Knowing the altitudinal distribution we could then look at the winds aloft
to determine the relative effect (wind aloft from radiosonde balloons vs.
actual target speed and direction derived from the radar) of the wind on
flight direction, and therefore infer whether birds were being pushed off
course. I guess there's a viable 3rd option which is that more immature (and
naive) birds are flying now than earlier in the season, which we would
assume would influence call rate... although I don't know the relative
breakdown of adult:immature in the suite of species moving now (just
thinking of Am Redstart is what conjured the hypothesis).

Any other thoughts?

cheers

David


David A. La Puma
Postdoctoral Associate
New Jersey Audubon Society
600 Route 47 North
Cape May Court House, NJ 08210
Office: 609.861.1608 x33
Fax:609.861.1651

Teaching/Research Profile:
http://www.woodcreeper.com/teaching

Websites:
http://www.woodcreeper.com
http://badbirdz2.wordpress.com

Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/woodcreeper






On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 9:55 AM, Bill Evans wrote:

> Ken appears to have tuned into one of the biggest calling night of the
> season so far in central NY.  The acoustic station at Alfred Station, NY
> logged its season high number (988) of warbler and sparrow flight calls last
> night between 8:30PM-5:30AM. Based on spectrographic analysis roughly 4 out
> of 100 were Common Yellowthroat, 2 out of 100 were Black-throated Blue, and
> 2 out of 100 were Chestnut-sided. Also notably in the mix were good numbers
> of presumed Lincoln's Sparrow calls.
>
> Bill E
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> NFC-L List Info:
> http://www.NortheastBirding.**com/NFC_WELCOME
> http://www.NortheastBirding.**com/NFC_RULES
> http://www.NortheastBirding.**com/NFC-L_**SubscribeConfigurationLeave.**
> htm
>
> ARCHIVES:
> 1) 
> http://www.mail-archive.com/**nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.**html
> 2) 
> http://www.surfbirds.com/**birdingmail/Group/NFC-L
> 3) 
> http://birdingonthe.net/**mailinglists/NFCL.html
>
> Please submit your observations to eBird:
> http://ebird.org/content/**ebird/ 
>
> --
>

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Re: [nfc-l] big night flight tonight

2011-09-21 Thread Bill Evans 
Ken appears to have tuned into one of the biggest calling night of the 
season so far in central NY.  The acoustic station at Alfred Station, NY 
logged its season high number (988) of warbler and sparrow flight calls last 
night between 8:30PM-5:30AM. Based on spectrographic analysis roughly 4 out 
of 100 were Common Yellowthroat, 2 out of 100 were Black-throated Blue, and 
2 out of 100 were Chestnut-sided. Also notably in the mix were good numbers 
of presumed Lincoln's Sparrow calls.


Bill E





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