(This is the final installment in a series on birding by radar. Read the first and second post first so this one makes sense!) On May 20, 2017, Bay-breasted Warblers seemed to drip from every tree at Mass Audubon’s Marblehead Neck Wildlife Sanctuary. Birders tallied dozens of this normally scarce migrant practically on arrival, alongside […]
Last week, we posted an article on predicting bird movements with radar. Here’s what we went over: —How birds show up on Doppler radar as solid, expanding circles of radar interference around radar stations, and why this happens —How to tell these signals apart from precipitation or normal weather patterns —How larger circles don’t necessarily […]
If you ask birders what their favorite holiday is, a few will always smile and reply, “spring migration.” Protracted over several weeks, spring migration can indeed feel like a holiday, or at least an annual ritual: time off from work (to go birding), reconnecting with community (other birders), and seasonal gifts that nature drops off […]
Spring Migration: The Early Birders’ View William Brewster, the famous 19th-century ornithologist and Cambridge resident, imagined that spring migrants preferred the rural countryside west of Boston to the woodlands near the city. But when he moved to Concord in 1892, he was surprised to find fewer migrants than he had become used to seeing in […]