[nfc-l] 5 minute moonwatch

[Chase Schiefer]

A five minute session of moonwatching yielded an average of a bird a
minute. The surrounding clouds were bright enough as to be able to
follow birds till they reached darkness. Quite beautiful!

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”Adventure is for the adventurous.
My face is set.
I go to make my destiny.
May many another youth be by me inspired to leave the snug safety of his rut,
and follow fortune to other lands.” Everett Ruess

Chase Schiefer
Bachmans' Ivory
Hazlet, New Jersey

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Re: [nfc-l] any info on Canadian radar images

[David La Puma]

and now for the bad news:

First, we do not have a "NEXRAD".  "NEXRAD" is a nickname for the WSR-88D
weather radars operated by NWS.   Environment Canada (EC) runs a completely
different weather radar system, with different processing.  There are no
direct equivalents to Level I, II, III, etc  which originated in the early
1980's design of computers and telecommunications.

As I think I indictated this means we see fewer birds, even without any
attempt to explicitly suppress them.   They are simply detected less at the
hardware level (roughly equivalent to Level I).We do see birds, but with
much weaker returns than from NEXRAD (which is good from the weather
perspective!).   While we see them on some scans, on the publicly
available images from EC  weak echoes are suppressed to better match
rain/no-rain as perceived by the public.  Bird migrations are seen
internally on displays showing all data to forecasters, and bird researchers
with the Canadian Wildlife Service (part of EC) have used them in some
studies.   The CWS people have remarked on how much less we see birds
relative to NWS radars, but are planning to expand their study.

I believe the images used internally can also be purchased by external
clients, but I am not involved with that.   I don't think that imagery is
archived, so a historical study would involve significant preprocessing
costs.  There has been some push to place these images on the public web
site.  There is also internal opposition to showing these images, because
the interpretation of this data is much trickier and that results in public
queries and complaints.   In defence of the opponents, when our
forecasters first got images that showed birds and insects they started
harrassing the radar technical staff with complaints that the "radar was
misfunctioning".  We needed a significant training exercise

Norman


David A. La Puma, Ph.D.
Dept. of Ecology, Evolution, & Natural Resources

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On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 10:30 AM, David La Puma wrote:

> For those of you interested in the availability of Canadian radar, here are
> the transcripts from my communication with Environment Canada:
> *
> My original inquiry:*
> Hello,
> I'm a researcher in New Jersey, USA, and I'm working with NEXRAD radar in
> an attempt to quantify bird migration. Is Type II NEXRAD data available from
> Canadian radar stations? Also, is there a website that serves up
> non-filtered NEXRAD imagery, such that birds can be detected?
>
> *Their response:*
> Thank you for sending your message to Environment Canada.  I contacted our
> radar expert and here's his reply regarding the tracking of bird migration
> with our weather radars:
>
> "1) Much of the literature is based on American weather radar which use a
> different technology from Canada.  Our radars see birds less than the
> American weather radars, which is good from the perspective of weather
> application, but less good from a biologists point of view.
> 2) The data is semi-quantitative, in the sense that we can say "a lot of
> birds today", or "few birds today".  We can try to say there are XXX birds
> per hour migrating but there are large uncertainty in the estimates.
>  Nonetheless some biologist have seen interesting things in our weather
> radar data, such as days when migrating birds completely over flew the
> Toronto area (from NY to Muskoka) with few surface observations in GTA.  The
> biologists need to understand the advantages and limitations before
> investing too much time.
>
> We could provide samples of bird migration images, but interpreting them is
> not obvious to someone who does not have substantial training in radar.  As
> part of Environment Canada we are encouraged to promote extra uses for our
> data, but we need to balance that against time taken away from our specific
> jobs in meteorology."
>
> He also mentioned that you can contact him directly if you want more
> information.  His name is Norman Donaldson and his email is
> norman.donald...@ec.gc.ca
>
> Best regards,
>
> Bernard Duguay
> Meteorological Inquiry Specialist
> MSC National Inquiry Response Team ISO 9001:2008
> Environment Canada
>
>
>
> *And my follow up question (still awaiting reply):*
>
> Norman
>
> Thank you so much for getting back to me regarding the radar. So as I
> understand it, you are filtering non-weather data from your NEXRAD imagery,
> in an attempt to only display weather-based returns on the reflectivity
> imagery. I can absolutely understand the rationale behind that. Here in the
> US the same process is done to varying degrees (depending on the outlet for
> the imagery). It is my understanding, though, that the Level II NEXRAD
> imagery is not 

Re: [nfc-l] any info on Canadian radar images

[David La Puma]

For those of you interested in the availability of Canadian radar, here are
the transcripts from my communication with Environment Canada:
*
My original inquiry:*
Hello,
I'm a researcher in New Jersey, USA, and I'm working with NEXRAD radar in an
attempt to quantify bird migration. Is Type II NEXRAD data available from
Canadian radar stations? Also, is there a website that serves up
non-filtered NEXRAD imagery, such that birds can be detected?

*Their response:*
Thank you for sending your message to Environment Canada.  I contacted our
radar expert and here's his reply regarding the tracking of bird migration
with our weather radars:

"1) Much of the literature is based on American weather radar which use a
different technology from Canada.  Our radars see birds less than the
American weather radars, which is good from the perspective of weather
application, but less good from a biologists point of view.
2) The data is semi-quantitative, in the sense that we can say "a lot of
birds today", or "few birds today".  We can try to say there are XXX birds
per hour migrating but there are large uncertainty in the estimates.
 Nonetheless some biologist have seen interesting things in our weather
radar data, such as days when migrating birds completely over flew the
Toronto area (from NY to Muskoka) with few surface observations in GTA.  The
biologists need to understand the advantages and limitations before
investing too much time.

We could provide samples of bird migration images, but interpreting them is
not obvious to someone who does not have substantial training in radar.  As
part of Environment Canada we are encouraged to promote extra uses for our
data, but we need to balance that against time taken away from our specific
jobs in meteorology."

He also mentioned that you can contact him directly if you want more
information.  His name is Norman Donaldson and his email is
norman.donald...@ec.gc.ca

Best regards,

Bernard Duguay
Meteorological Inquiry Specialist
MSC National Inquiry Response Team ISO 9001:2008
Environment Canada



*And my follow up question (still awaiting reply):*

Norman

Thank you so much for getting back to me regarding the radar. So as I
understand it, you are filtering non-weather data from your NEXRAD imagery,
in an attempt to only display weather-based returns on the reflectivity
imagery. I can absolutely understand the rationale behind that. Here in the
US the same process is done to varying degrees (depending on the outlet for
the imagery). It is my understanding, though, that the Level II NEXRAD
imagery is not filtered, and therefore represents the "raw" imagery which
can then be filtered and classified according to the needs of the
researcher. I have been using the commercially available radar imagery to
get an "idea" of bird migration over the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic US to
use on my website (www.woodcreeper.com) where I make predictions about the
birding conditions following the migration flight each night during spring
and fall. In the future I am planning to use the Level II data to actually
extract density and velocity data in order to quantify bird migration for
specific locations. This work has been done before, and I plan to expand on
it for the region I am interested in. There have been several people working
on such projects locally, and a couple of them have expressed interest in
having more complete coverage to include the boreal forests extending into
Canada.
So, is it possible to get something equivalent to the Level II NEXRAD for
Canada? And also, could you provide some insight on what you filter out of
the data that is currently displayed at commercial outlets?

Thanks so much for your help.

Kind Regards,

David

David A. La Puma, Ph.D.
Dept. of Ecology, Evolution, & Natural Resources

Online Teaching Portfolio:
http://www.woodcreeper.com/teaching

Lockwood lab:
http://rci.rutgers.edu/~jlockwoo 

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

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






On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Bryan Guarente  wrote:

> Jeff and others,
> Unless others know a source, I am unaware of anywhere that one can get
> unfiltered Canadian radar data.  Unlike the US, Environment Canada/
> Meteorological Service of Canada data is private.
>
> However, I am working with some Environment Canada people right now to see
> if there is a source available for this that I might be able to make
> available, or that is already available.
>
> I'll keep you posted.
>
> Bryan Guarente
> Instructional Designer
> The COMET Program
> University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
> Boulder, CO
>
>

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RE: [nfc-l] Moonwatch question

[Marcel Gahbauer]

Hi everyone,

I've been lurking and enjoying reading the posts so far ... much as I'm
intrigued by all the possibilities for nocturnal observations, for the fall
I'm primarily preoccupied with being up at dawn to do migration monitoring
via mist-netting (at McGill Bird Observatory in Montreal, Quebec).  As an
aside, we happen to have an Environment Canada radar station within 1 km of
our site, but as was noted the other day, the images released to the public
aren't useful for tracking migration - if anybody does find a way around
that, we'd be most interested.

Regarding the direction of flight paths, I have a couple of comments.  A
couple of years ago I had an opportunity to take a portable radar unit into
the foothills of northeastern British Columbia (approx 1800 - 2000 m / 5500
- 6000 ft elevation).  I operated it for a few hours after dusk in three
different locations to get an idea of how migrants were moving (both
direction and height).  While topography would certainly be expected to have
an effect in a landscape with stark ridges and valleys, I was still
surprised at just how varied the movements were ... even in early September,
there were nearly as many heading straight north as south (let alone most
other directions).

The other note is that analysis of banding data suggests that for a lot of
species, the notion of "traditional" north-south migration may not be all
that accurate.  In fact, the Canadian Atlas of Bird Banding
(http://www.cws-scf.ec.gc.ca/publications/BBA-AOB/v1ed2/index_e.cfm) shows
quite a strong northwest-southeast axis of movement for many species across
much of the continent (and skewing toward northeast-southwest in the far
east).  This is shown particularly well by Common Redpoll
(http://www.cws-scf.ec.gc.ca/publications/BBA-AOB/v1ed2/ShowBird.cfm?lang=e;
aou=5280), though admittedly it isn't a typical migrant.  Still, the pattern
isn't all that different for others I randomly picked to look at, such as
Yellow-rumped Warbler
(http://www.cws-scf.ec.gc.ca/publications/BBA-AOB/v1ed2/ShowBird.cfm?lang=e;
aou=6550) and Swainson's Thrush
(http://www.cws-scf.ec.gc.ca/publications/BBA-AOB/v1ed2/ShowBird.cfm?lang=e;
aou=7580).  For many other species there aren't enough recoveries mapped to
describe any clear pattern, but it still looks like truly north-south
movements are far from typical. How this translates on a local level I'm not
sure - I expect we have much yet to learn (a common sentiment it seems).
But I wouldn't be surprised if in some cases different species (or even
different populations of the same species) moving through the same area
might be heading in somewhat different directions.

Happy observing,

Marcel Gahbauer
Executive Director
The Migration Research Foundation
Montreal QC
www.migrationresearch.org 
mar...@migrationresearch.org 

 



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Re: [nfc-l] Moonwatch question

[Harry Lehto]

Mike et al, 
to your point..
>It makes sense, but I saw more birds at 60x than at 20x. Also again, 
> more birds with a polarizing filter on the end, this was also easier  
> on the eyes. So where does that leave us? Well definetly we need much   
> more thought of optics used and how to assign some type of detection  
> probability. 

I have only limited experience with moonwatching, but can make some comments as 
an astronomer.

Consider a full moon. It shows a contrast to the adjacent background. For all 
purposes of Moonwatch the surrounding sky is informationless and "black", so an 
optimum field of view would be such that the moon fills the whole field of 
view. The moon itself is not really that bright. It is actually quite close to 
the brightness of green grass in daylight. To alleviate the "large contrast 
problem", you could be better off if your vision was **not** dark adapted. I 
would actually observe the moon in conditions were the back yard lights and 
city light ;-) are on and not switched off. Quite different from standard astro 
observing in that sense. 

Because the moon is a celestial body it moves its diameter in 2 minutes with 
the rest of the sky.  This creates a problem as one should really be tracking 
the moon with a proper setup mount.
If a tracking mount is not available then one could obtain a 1 minute nonstop 
stare if the magnification were such that it covered 2/3 of the diameter of the 
moon. Then a few seconds for repositioning etc. I would guess that having the 
telescope still for 1 minute would be better than manually trying to follow it 
all the time. 

Regards
Harry J Lehto


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Re: [nfc-l] Moonwatch question

[Michael Lanzone]

Good point Erik, usually all the migrating birds I am seeing in PA are  
going in generally the same direction, but often high birds will be  
going one direction and low birds another ( like upper se, lower sw),  
but some of the watching I have done along the gulf coast and atlanic  
birds were flying in every direction, likely resulting from a lot of  
confused birds circling or heading back inland when they hit the coast.
Birds hitting these barriers will often fly back a few miles inland if  
they are not ready to cross, or head againt the wind if they are  
course correcting.


Good discussion!

Best,
Mike Lanzone

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 4, 2009, at 7:31 AM, Erik Johnson  wrote:


David et al.,
All the birds are flying the same direction while other critters  
have random flight paths.


Is this really a safe assumption?  Last night I did some moon watching
and the majority (just barely) of birds were headed westish.  But
others were flying south, some northeast, etc.  I was fairly confident
these were birds and not bats, but Mike made a good point about optics
(I was using 10x binocs) and wasn't videoing so I have no way to prove
to myself (or you guys) what I was seeing.  In any case, I checked out
the radar and there was decent volume, but the radial velocity had a
trend of movement to the SW, but with a lot of scatter.  Again, were
these birds?  I think so.  Perhaps variation in the direction of
movements is more apparent where I am along the gulf coast where
topography and bird ecology (water-crossing avoidance vs not;
trans-gulf vs circum-gulf; etc) significantly alter the behavior of
individual birds.  I can imagine that farther north birds are pretty
much bombing south (although no doubt topography and ecology are
important there, too).  I have had similar experience listening to
call notes - where you can pick out birds going in all directions.  So
I think this phenomenon is real, at least here.

Happy listening,
Erik Johnson
S Lafayette, LA (~40mi N of the Gulf of Mexico)
ejoh...@lsu.edu





On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 5:30 AM, David
Mozurkewich wrote:

On Fri, 2009-09-04 at 02:53 -0600, Ted Floyd wrote:

I should think that, given distant and fleeting views of such  
animals,
there's the potential to over-count birds by accidentally  
counting bats

and moths. Any pearls of wisdom on this one?


Ted,

All the birds are flying the same direction while other critters  
have

random flight paths.  This eliminates most false alarms and is good
enough except when the birds are a minority of your detections.
--
David Mozurkewich
Seabrook, MD  USA


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Re: [nfc-l] Moonwatch question

[David La Puma]

there are already too many Davids on this list... ;)

if you check out that moonwatching vid I posted, you'll see that indeed the
bad was moving in the right "general" direction, and the only way I told it
from a bird was based on the cadence of the flight, plus when I viewed it on
the big screen you could make out the forward appearance of the wing, etc.

What David is talking about, though, can be seen in this really cool paper
by Sid Gauthreaux and John Livingston (http://tinyurl.com/m7q2t5), where
bats especially show more erratic flight on thermal imagery. But, when
moonwatching, given prevailing winds, bats which are not actively feeding
could (and probably do) move in the same direction as birds, and insects
definitely will move with the prevailing winds. Most of the separation,
then, falls on the observer, and as Mike pointed out, magnification may be
the key.

good moon watching

David

David A. La Puma, Ph.D.
Dept. of Ecology, Evolution, & Natural Resources

Online Teaching Portfolio:
http://www.woodcreeper.com/teaching

Lockwood lab:
http://rci.rutgers.edu/~jlockwoo

Websites:
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http://badbirdz2.wordpress.com

Photos:
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On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 7:31 AM, Erik Johnson  wrote:

> David et al.,
> > All the birds are flying the same direction while other critters have
> random flight paths.
>
> Is this really a safe assumption?  Last night I did some moon watching
> and the majority (just barely) of birds were headed westish.  But
> others were flying south, some northeast, etc.  I was fairly confident
> these were birds and not bats, but Mike made a good point about optics
> (I was using 10x binocs) and wasn't videoing so I have no way to prove
> to myself (or you guys) what I was seeing.  In any case, I checked out
> the radar and there was decent volume, but the radial velocity had a
> trend of movement to the SW, but with a lot of scatter.  Again, were
> these birds?  I think so.  Perhaps variation in the direction of
> movements is more apparent where I am along the gulf coast where
> topography and bird ecology (water-crossing avoidance vs not;
> trans-gulf vs circum-gulf; etc) significantly alter the behavior of
> individual birds.  I can imagine that farther north birds are pretty
> much bombing south (although no doubt topography and ecology are
> important there, too).  I have had similar experience listening to
> call notes - where you can pick out birds going in all directions.  So
> I think this phenomenon is real, at least here.
>
> Happy listening,
> Erik Johnson
> S Lafayette, LA (~40mi N of the Gulf of Mexico)
> ejoh...@lsu.edu
>
>
>
>
> > On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 5:30 AM, David
> > Mozurkewich wrote:
> >> On Fri, 2009-09-04 at 02:53 -0600, Ted Floyd wrote:
> >>
> >>> I should think that, given distant and fleeting views of such animals,
> >>> there's the potential to over-count birds by accidentally counting bats
> >>> and moths. Any pearls of wisdom on this one?
> >>
> >> Ted,
> >>
> >> All the birds are flying the same direction while other critters have
> >> random flight paths.  This eliminates most false alarms and is good
> >> enough except when the birds are a minority of your detections.
> >> --
> >> David Mozurkewich
> >> Seabrook, MD  USA
> >>
> >>
> >> --
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> >>
> >
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Re: [nfc-l] Moonwatch question

[David La Puma]

Here are some digiscoped clips I took in Sept 07

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOVXdVooAeQ=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQOGPtAfmr0=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uASqg7OHBSw=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz6qyvsBnrI=1

I'm pretty sure in the first clip, the first two objects are birds (the
close one even looks like a duck/loon-type) and the third, beginning at the
upper left quadrat of the moon and moving down and right, appears to be a
bat based on flight style. I've viewed these on a projected screen which
makes it easier to interpret (maybe). In the other three clips I'm pretty
confident the objects are birds.

These were taken through a Leica Televid APO 77mm scope, with a Nikon
Coolpix 4500 camera.

Good Moon Watching!

David

David A. La Puma, Ph.D.
Dept. of Ecology, Evolution, & Natural Resources

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On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 6:30 AM, David Mozurkewich
wrote:

> On Fri, 2009-09-04 at 02:53 -0600, Ted Floyd wrote:
>
> > I should think that, given distant and fleeting views of such animals,
> > there's the potential to over-count birds by accidentally counting bats
> > and moths. Any pearls of wisdom on this one?
>
> Ted,
>
> All the birds are flying the same direction while other critters have
> random flight paths.  This eliminates most false alarms and is good
> enough except when the birds are a minority of your detections.
> --
> David Mozurkewich
> Seabrook, MD  USA
>
>
> --
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Re: [nfc-l] Moonwatch question

[David Mozurkewich]

On Fri, 2009-09-04 at 02:53 -0600, Ted Floyd wrote:

> I should think that, given distant and fleeting views of such animals,
> there's the potential to over-count birds by accidentally counting bats
> and moths. Any pearls of wisdom on this one?

Ted,

All the birds are flying the same direction while other critters have
random flight paths.  This eliminates most false alarms and is good
enough except when the birds are a minority of your detections.
-- 
David Mozurkewich
Seabrook, MD  USA


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[nfc-l] Moonwatch question

[Ted Floyd]

Hi, Mike et al.

Well, I gave it a whirl last night, Thursday, Sept. 3rd, around 9pm
Mountain Daylight Time. (Location: Lafayette, eastern Boulder County,
Colorado.)

In less than 2 seconds, a passerine flew across the disk of the moon;
sweet. But then I had an unexpected complication. The next object to
transit the moon was a bat. Then another bat (or the same one). Then a
large moth.

I should think that, given distant and fleeting views of such animals,
there's the potential to over-count birds by accidentally counting bats
and moths. Any pearls of wisdom on this one?

Thanks,
Ted

---

Ted Floyd
Editor, Birding

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