NJ Nocturnal Migration--12 October 2012

With the switch to north winds yesterday, a big migration was expected across the Northeast last night.

Wind map from www.intellicast.com

 As shown in the radar, there was a big movement of birds.

Unfortunately for ground based observers, most of these birds were very high.  At the distance I live from the NEXRAD station, the radar is picking up birds over 5,000 feet up.

So there were lots of birds, but flying so high the microphone may not have picked up many of their calls.

Gray-cheeked Thrush (1D top below) at 8:55pm

The autodetectors were able to pick up 181 calls on my recording from last night, including:

Thrush-X--11 detections (including 2 Gray-cheeked Thrush with the more numerous Swainson's Thrush)
Tseep-X--159 detections, almost all sparrows
Several others, including a couple series of Canada Goose calls (1A, 1I, 2A-2D top)

Here are spectrograms of the calls from last night (click to enlarge the images).

A preliminary look shows mostly White-throated Sparrows (eg. 1C-1F bottom), Chipping Sparrows (eg. 2A, 2C middle), and a few Savannah Sparrows (eg. 2E middle).  Indigo Buntings have mostly passed through by now, but see for example a call at 7I (middle).

There were only a few warblers, including Common Yellowthroat (7A bottom), Black-throated Blue Warbler (7F top), Palm Warbler (7D middle), and Northern Parula (4D middle).

Also note the first Hermit Thrush of the season at 3D (top).