Silent Migration

I spent some time outside tonight listening for nocturnal migrants. One yippee dog from the east, lots of peepers from a neighbor's pond to the west, situated almost a quarter mile away -- man, those little guys are loud - but no birds to be heard from overhead. I'm sure they're aloft tonight, but apparently inaudible from our yard.

As of 11:00 PM EDT the continental map is flush with activity. That midwestern corridor (Texas - Dakotas) is the place to be, like last night. Birds are in flight across the Gulf coast, Florida, and South Carolina. There appears to be a line of birds coming into the Florida Keys from Cuba. Not too much in the midAtlantic due to the stormy weather across Delaware, Maryland, and eastern Virginia. Closer to (my) home, there appears to be some movement over central/eastern New York, which could bode well for us out here in the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes.

Base reflectivity at 11:00 PM EDT from Binghamton, NY
(70 miles east of our place).

Winds have been coming from east-northeast most of today, this evening they shifted to come from straight north. Perhaps that slowed migration, perhaps the birds are moving around our hill, perhaps they're at a higher altitude than I can hear. But based on the radar, they're up there.

The Binghamton, NY radar image shows a widespread flight of birds, I interpret this to mean there should be birds above us here in "Elm" (we're covered in the grayish wash west of the blue). If the birds are moving north (base velocity shows the birds are actually moving northeast), maybe I should be more concerned with what's coming south of us.

Base reflectivity at 11:00 PM EDT from State College, PA
(105 miles southwest of our place).

State College, PA radar also shows birds in the air, base velocity shows the birds heading due north. I'm not comfortable predicting what to expect in the morning, other than you can expect me to be out searching our hill for newly arrived birds. I hope you'll be greeting some, too!

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The Big Debut

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is on the eve of the release of the new All About Birds site, but also of something special (more on that in a moment).

Yesterday, after watching a preview of the new All About Birds site, Rick Bonney (Director of Program Development and Evaluation) reminisced about a meeting that took place some five-plus years ago. Like Rick, I remembered John Fitzpatrick sketching his vision of the Lab's web site, which included a series of "doors and windows" that allowed visitors to delve deep into information about each species and to easily move to additional pages for continual discovery. Within those rooms was a treasure trove of information, regularly updated and improved as our knowledge of each species expanded. It looked great on paper, but the functionality and architecture of the site had to be carefully designed, painstakingly developed.

"What you guys have done is commendable," Rick concluded. "You've actually done it."

All About Birds is just what the title implies: information on everything from how to approach bird identification, how to attract them to your yard, what gear to choose to enhances your experience, and my one-click bookmarked favorite: accounts of 500+ species that occur in North America. The pages attract 500,00 unique visitors a month, and still growing.

For a few weeks now the Communications team has worked furiously to create pages that are more robust, more user-friendly, exploding with useful content . . . and tomorrow, it goes live. I will be anxious to hear your impressions - we've been collecting input from users for months now via the Lab's Round Robin blog. I'm not officially involved in developing these new pages, but as a wannabe educator I'm curious to know your thoughts - privately, or in the comments here.

And now something special: I'm probably letting a cat out of the bag, but one thing you won't see on the new pages is the Lab's familiar logo, affectionately called the "Everybird." Tomorrow we're rolling out a new logo, a new "brand."

The "Everybird" will be retired over the next few months, replaced by a new identity - something I find fascinating. Though I've been passionate about science writing since my college days, recently I've developed an appreciation of the art of communicating through symbols, emblems, fonts; by what's conveyed behind the words. I was not part of the team that worked with the outside company on the logo, but I've been keenly interested in the couple of staff meetings where we discussed the ideas.

That's all I'll say right now, but I am very interested in your thoughts on the Lab's new logo.

So, a request: please drop me some feedback about the new pages and about the new logo, either here in the comments or by email (noflickster AT gmail DOT com). Comment section preferred, I'd love to see some discourse among readers, but if you don't want to go public, private email works, too. Call the neighbors, wake the kids, I'm interested in a wide variety of opinions. Blog about it, or point your visitors here to drop comments. Seriously, and thanks in advance.

And in the meantime, if you're sentimental, especially if the "Everybird" conveys "Cornell Lab of Ornithology" without needing any words, read this 2005 interview with Peter Parnall, the designer of the "Everybird."



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Migration Map: Midwest is Hoppin'!

With the exception of a single Spring Peeper and a light rain there's not much to hear in our backyard this evening (as of 11:15 PM). I was hoping to hear some evidence of migration in the form of a few flight calls; nothing doing.


But looking at the continental radar map one thing stands out: the corridor connecting southern Texas and North Dakota is lit up like a Christmas tree. "Fly-over country" takes on a new meaning in this situation: those birds are flying now, but will descend at dawn, visible to early-morning birders. I envy the "fly-over people"!

A weather system is hindering migration in our region, northeastern Ohio, western New York, and northern Pennsylvania. Another system on the Atlantic coast seems to be suppressing movement there, as is a line of storms in southwestern Florida, there doesn't seem to be much coming into the Florida Keys from Cuba.

But the midwestern states . . . wow!

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A Great Evening

On a whim I stopped at Stewart Park, in Ithaca, on my way home this evening. While the portion that abuts the southern end of Cayuga Lake is mostly open grass with picnic tables and other park-like facilities, there is a patch of bottomland forest that hosts woodland birds. Among those woodland birds are a pair of Great Horned Owls who nest in a tall Cottonwood tree. If you know where to look you can often see the female snoozing while incubating the eggs.

A photo from early March, the female sits inside the crevice - a cozy nesting site.

April in NY is late in their breeding cycle. Recently I was thinking the eggs must have hatched by now, and voila! a post to the local listserve mentioned three chicks could be seen in the cavity. I wasn't in a huge rush to get home so I stopped, hoping to photograph three cute baby owls peering out of the only home they've known.

I found the tree easy enough, but didn't see anything resembling an owl. While photographing some debris at the bottom of the crevice, trying to make it into the back of an owl head, a birder approached and asked if I saw the chick.

"I'm not sure, but I think I'm looking at the back of a head, I think . . . "

"You're going to get a great picture," she cut me off. "Look there."

There was an unmistakable baby Great Horned Owl about 50 meters away from where we stood.

A branchling Great Horned Owl, likely the first day out of the nest.

We didn't stay long, it didn't move much. A slight swivel of its head, a slow blink of the eyes. After a few minutes we backed out of the woods, leaving the owl its privacy. Plus, I had one more stop to make.

Fellow Horseheads residents, bloggers, and nature enthusiasts Jan (of Scattered Seed) and George (of I Love Trucks) happened to drop by Sapsucker Woods this afternoon. We got to meet face-to-face and talk birds, birding, and about a Great Egret they found over the weekend, a good sighting for our area. They let me know it was still around, assuming it's the same bird, but not in the same expansive marsh near Watkins Glen where they originally found it. Now it was near "the Domes," the sports complex owned by Elmira College, which happens to be less than two miles from Horseheads Marsh and less than one mile from our house. Easy enough to stop for a look.

Thanks to their great directions I found the bird almost immediately. My only delay was explaining to the trooper what I was doing and why - the NY State Trooper station is less than a mile from the Domes, too.

Great Egret foraging along Catharine Creek, obscured by branches.

Great Egrets are uncommon in Chemung County, NY, something I base on eBird submissions and my own experience. In the past six years I've only recorded one, a fly-over at Horseheads Marsh in August. (Incidentally, through eBird I discovered there was another sighting, farther south, on that same date - perhaps the same bird winging it's way to an evening roost in Queen Catharine's Marsh near Watkins Glen?)

Regardless, all other observations from our area are late summer or fall sightings: post-breeding dispersers and migrating birds heading south. A spring sighting is certainly interesting, and I suppose the bird will continue on its journey as soon as the weather is conducive to migration.

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Oops, I Did It Again

Yes, I cheated again. We published a second post on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's "Round Robin" blog. This one, titled "How to See a Sound That’s a Half-Second Long," gets into flight-calls a bit more and talks about using spectrograms to "see" sound.

Find out more about this image, including what it sounds like, at Round Robin.

If you missed it, the first post, "Let's Go Biding! . . . At Night . . . Blindfolded," serves as an introduction.

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The More You Know . . . .

From one of my absolute favorite blogs, The Futility Closet (self billed as An idler's miscellany of compendious amusements), comes this nugget:

GREAT CRESTED GREBE is typed entirely with the left hand.

I bet you not only didn't know that, you never even considered the concept. And now that your brain has processed that miscellany (or is it a compendious amusement?), you're stuck with it. You're welcome!

As long as I brought it up, it's worth subscribing to The Futility Closet for quirky, interesting, and varied short breaks from the daily grind. You're welcome for that, too!

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Radar is showing birds are on the move Sunday night, primarily in front of a storm front stretching from western Georgia to eastern Iowa. The blocky, dark blue line is the front connecting those two regions, the brownish wash and circular blues are birds in the air around 11:30 PM (EDT). If I'm reading this right, coastal Texas appears to have a pretty thick migration right now, as is South Carolina and Michigan. Sadly for me, not much benefiting the Southern Tier of NY tonight.

One of many Red-tailed Hawks taking to the skies this Sunday afternoon.

We spent the weekend at my folks place in Rochester, NY, and it was a typical April day for Rochester: deceptive. From inside it looked beautiful, sunny, bright, warm. Standing outside, however, was only sunny and bright. Temperatures stayed in the 30's (*F), wind was constant and strong. That's nothing for us locals, after an outdoor easter egg hunt we hit a local park. The "usual suspects" were all there, including an impressive amount of woodpeckers, ranging from Downy up to Pileated. A few "First of Year" species made appearances: Winter Wren, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, and Louisiana Waterthrush.

An American Tree Sparrow takes flight, soon to
be headed to its northern breeding grounds.

Back at the house the feeders were filled with "undesirables." Dozens of House Sparrows, Brown-headed Cowbirds, Red-winged Blackbirds, and Common Grackles covered the ground, the hopper, the suet. On the desirable side, Pine Siskins continue on the nyjer feeder, White-crowned, and Song Sparrows mix among the ground-feeding species, a single Field Sparrow sang nearby. Siskins are actually breeding in the area, as are crossbills, trees are flowering, skunk cabbage is exploding. Renewal, growth, circle of life . . . it may not feel like spring, but it is.

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