Birds are in the air!

We finally have a night with favourable conditions for migration and it looks like lots of birds are taking advantage of it. Check out the wind map showing light ESE winds over southwestern Ontario:

The Radar is lighting up with birds tonight - check out this animation from the Cleveland station over southwestern Lake Erie. You can see the birds taking to the sky just after dusk:

eBird has a good primer on Radar and bird migration here.

With the favourable weather tonight (and the direct evidence above) we should have lots of new birds (finally) reaching southern Ontario for us to wake up to. The rain predicted to start early in the morning should stop this migration pretty quickly. At this time of year it's not likely to result in anything too crazy but we might get closer to being "caught up" in terms of migration. I'd expect to see a good push of dabbling ducks, robins, blackbirds, killdeer, and maybe the odd passerine species that normally shows up in late March...we'll see!

I'll be listening for my first Song Sparrows tomorrow!