Front coming?

Here is the Southeastern radar mosaic around 0515 on the morning of Sept 22. The band of irregular yellow and green is rain along a frontal boundary draped from the Carolinas back to Louisiana. To the north and west are green blobs outlined in blue; these are masses of migrating birds that are being picked up by the radar. The weather north of the front is clear and there are probably northerly winds so birds were traveling all night down the Central flyway. Meanwhile, in Florida, not so many birds are on the move as the winds have shifted to the south/southwest, and the rain forms a block that stops migrants before they get to Florida. We are hoping that boundary will make it all the way to the Keys by the end of the week so birds will come down the peninsula and have to stop here before continuing on to the south. We will see what happens!

David la Puma explains bird signals on radar in much better detail here at woodcreeper.com.

Today we only banded 14 birds, but one of them was this Chuck-will’s widow, one of the more bizarre birds that we catch. The eyes are huge to help the bird see at night as it chases flying prey. The bill looks tiny but the mouth actually extends to under the eye and it opens to form a massive gape.

The photo is a little blurry but this is a Chuck-will’s widow captured in 2012 that had a Northern waterthrush in it’s mouth! The feet were sticking out still as the bird was having trouble swallowing  prey that large.

This Great crested flycatcher thinks he has a big mouth, too. Normally I might agree…

Thrushes are starting to arrive in south Florida this week. Here new volunteer David Lotker holds a Veery he extracted today on his own. Learning how to quickly and safely take birds out of the nets takes time and a lot of practice, but we also have a great crew of experienced volunteers to train the newbees.

We did have a few net runs with no birds captured, especially as the morning wore on and the day got hotter. Mario Porcelli and Miriam Avello were entertained by this dragonfly that was in no hurry to fly anywhere.