[nfc-l] 5 minute moonwatch

2009-09-04 Thread 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! -- Sent from my mobile device ”Adventure is for the adventurous. My face is set. I go to make my

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

2009-09-04 Thread 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

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

2009-09-04 Thread 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

RE: [nfc-l] Moonwatch question

2009-09-04 Thread 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,

Re: [nfc-l] Moonwatch question

2009-09-04 Thread 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

Re: [nfc-l] Moonwatch question

2009-09-04 Thread 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

Re: [nfc-l] Moonwatch question

2009-09-04 Thread 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

Re: [nfc-l] Moonwatch question

2009-09-04 Thread 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

Re: [nfc-l] Moonwatch question

2009-09-04 Thread 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

[nfc-l] Moonwatch question

2009-09-04 Thread 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