Spring Bird Migration is Underway

There are many wonderful aspects of springtime -- the emergence of long-dormant plants in forests, meadows and gardens; the sounds of Spring Peepers and other frogs and toads calling one another in wetlands; the flowering of trees and shrubs that colors the landscape in shades of pink and white...  One that almost everyone counts as truly special is the re-appearance of birds that migrated south for the cold winter months.

Spring migration is well underway, and there are some great web sites that have been created to help people learn what species are travelling through any given area at a particular time.  These web sites also contain loads of intersting information about how birds use the stars and magnetic fields to navigate, how scientists (both formally trained scientists and citizen-scientists) track them, and what are learning from migration studies over time.

Here are a few of our favorite web sites about bird migration.  We encourage you to check them out!

Following Spring Migration 
This site from ENature includes maps that show the winter range of many birds, their migratory paths, and the dates when you might expect to see the first arrivals of each species in our watershed.

Clemson University Radar Ornithology Laboratory
This web site explains the work of CUROL and explores how radar is used to track birds as they migrate.

Migratory Stopovers
This site from the Chipper Woods Bird Observatory provides information about the importance of stopover sites, the places where birds rest and feed as they make their long journeys north and south each year.

Bird Migration on Nexrad
The Wisconsin Society for Ornithology hosts this site which allows you to track birds in real time or through a five day archive.

Woodcreeper
The folks at this web site are tracking bird migration over New Jersey using Doppler radar and a community of diehard birdwatchers.