Last week, Hurricane Helene wrought devastation across much of the southeastern United States, bringing record-breaking storm surges and rains. We were very fortunate here in Miami to be spared from the worst of the effects, but in the interest of safety amidst gusty winds, we opened only Monday (9/23) and Tuesday (9/24). Our weekly count is low as a result, and likely saw an additional drop given the birds’ sense that a storm was on its way. The shifting winds brought us our first-of-season Traill’s and great crested flycatchers, though – a welcome gift in the dark days that followed.
But more generally, what happens to migrating birds when a massive storm system is passing through?
As with most things in the natural world, the answer is: it depends. Many birds will hunker down, and that was likely the case for birds who had already arrived in the weather-impacted areas but perhaps with less fat stores to be able to attempt to outfly the storm. Thankfully, healthy habitat provides many shelter options in dense vegetation and tree cavities. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a survival strategy that has worked for thousands of years. In other cases, birds will “surf” the storm, taking advantage of a strong tailwind to make their journeys a little easier, provided they have enough resources to continue their flight. Sometimes, this leads to birds ending up in strange places they shouldn’t be (and why many chasers often look to rare bird alerts in the wake of major storms).
One visually striking phenomenon took place last week with Hurricane Helene. The Atlantic flyway emptied out as birds veered clear to avoid the storm. The Birdcast imagery the following day demonstrated how the nearly half a billion birds in the air that night shifted course to fly along the Mississippi flyway instead. For those who are unfamiliar, Birdcast is a project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Colorado State University that uses Doppler weather radar data to track migrating flocks and estimate the numbers and flight directions of these birds. And it’s a great deal of fun to see migration visualized in this way! In this animation, you can see how migrants opted to fly west in the northeast, bypassing the severe weather system.
By the next evening, many of the birds had returned to these storm-impacted regions, with some exceptions (the parts where human communities were hardest hit, like western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee). It begs the question, though, what are these birds returning to? What will they find at their traditional stopover sites in Appalachia, where entire towns are flooded and all vegetation washed away? This is likely to have long-ranging impacts on the birds, many of which are now facing an even more herculean task to reach their wintering grounds down south. But, while historic, this is not the first time birds have encountered this challenge. They have hundreds of thousands of years of experience with it, millennia of migrating south at the same time of year as dangerous hurricanes churn through the southeastern United States. In the days ahead, perhaps we can learn an important lesson in resilience from the birds as we wade through the wreckage of this latest supercharged storm.
We are also seeking information on how to support the staff and volunteers of banding stations in the impacted areas. We hope to update this blog soon with more details, and invite you to reach out if you happen to be one of them and are reading this.
| SPECIES | NEW | RETURN | RECAPTURE | 9/22 – 9/28 TOTAL | SEASON TOTAL |
| Chuck-will’s widow | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Acadian flycatcher | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Traill’s flycatcher | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Great crested flycatcher | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Red-eyed vireo | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Blue-gray gnatcatcher | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 9 |
| Northern parula | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Cape May warbler | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Black-throated blue warbler | 5 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 18 |
| Yellow-throated warbler | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Prairie warbler | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Black & white warbler | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 30 |
| American redstart | 3 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 53 |
| Worm-eating warbler | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 50 |
| Swainson’s warbler | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 21 |
| Ovenbird | 7 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 99 |
| Northern waterthrush | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 24 |
| Louisiana waterthrush | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Common yellowthroat | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 10 |
| Northern cardinal | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Common grackle | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Total | 32 | 0 | 2 | 34 | 346 |
| # BIRDS CAPTURED | # SPECIES | # NETS | NET HOURS | CAPTURE RATE (BIRDS/100NH) | |
| TOTAL FROM 9/2 – 9/7 | 162 | 16 | 21 | 417.84 | 38.77 |
| TOTAL FROM 9/8 – 9/14 | 94 | 11 | 23 | 332.49 | 28.27 |
| TOTAL FROM 9/15 – 9/21 | 56 | 15 | 23 | 193.16 | 28.99 |
| TOTAL FROM 9/22 – 9/28 | 34 | 11 | 23 | 191.66 | 17.74 |
| Season total so far | 346 | 21 | 23 | 1135.15 | 30.48 |
Post by Steffanie Munguia. Data compiled by Nicole Rita.