Saturday, October 12, 2019

Birds overhead tonight


Birders:

I just came in from a 5 minute moon watch at around 10:45 pm- four small birds crossed the lunar orb, which is conveniently near full tonight.  Of course they were actually migrating a couple thousand feet overhead, and were made visible by passing between me and the lit orb.  I watched with binoculars.

There is also a good density of flight calls- average spacing between them probably 3-5 seconds in my hood, which is rather noisy.  It seems like mainly thrushes, which make medium-low short notes that sound like "heep" or "urp" or something similar.

The bird silhouettes seem way too far up in altitude to be the source of the call notes- interesting.

The movement tonight is in response to the tail winds following the cold front passage- migrant birds normally wait for such circumstances, and then migrate in droves.

Peter