There are some people who do not believe that summer will end.
But the birds know that autumn is here.
Last night, weather radar showed a radar explosion returning to land around sunset. Many birds like to fly after sunset — it’s safer that way.
This is a compilation of several radar positions at 7:30pm last night (Tuesday) before sunset. There’s not much to see.
And here’s the picture at 10pm. Well… a lot of birds. You note that they don’t like to fly far from shore!
Modern Doppler radars provide wind velocity (actually the velocity of targets such as rain) towards or away from the radar. But last night there was no rain but lots of birds. And the radar actually picks up the birds… they appear like giant raindrops.
This is the velocity towards or from the Langley Hill radar near Hoquiam. Green indicates birds that are approaching and yellow/orange birds that are moving away. These birds are moving south!
There is a very good website that shows bird migrations based on radar images: birdcast.info.
Their chart for 11 o’clock last night shows the southward migration in our area. But there are even more birds that fly south over the eastern United States
Luckily, I have some good news for migratory birds: at 4pm on Friday, the area will be quite smoky following the NOAA HRRR smoke pattern (see below). So both humans and birds will be able to take a deep breath….
