Ontario birder's guide to radar

There seems to be more and more interest in checking out bird migration live on weather radar maps. So I thought I'd put together a short post to compile some resources.

Seeing birds on radar is not at all new, but there are lots of great websites now for viewing live radar images (or radar loops). I'd recommend everyone who is interested in birds and radar check out eBird's primer.

The short explanation is that radar shoots out a signal, and what you see on radar maps is the reflection. It's mainly used by most people to view precipitation, but when migration is heavy, birds show up too. Here's a recent image from 1 May 2019 from the (US) National Weather Service website (my favourite site for viewing radar images for the entire US):

The above image is an instructive one - precipitation is showing up as blocky, irregular shapes, with very high reflectivity readings (yellows and some reds), and migrating birds are showing up virtually throughout the eastern US. Birds show up as donuts around the radar stations. This is because the radar is "shot" out at an angle, and most birds are all roughly the same height, so very close to the station no birds are getting "hit" (birds are higher), but further out, as the beam gets higher, birds are encountered. Eventually, as one travels farther away, the beam is too high and no longer reflects on any birds.

Here's a marked up version:

Here's a closer view of the Cleveland radar station, back from March 2014. This one comes from Weather Underground, another popular website for bird-radar enthusiasts. Note that I combined several images into a looping GIF to show the station before sunset, and then watching the birds appear in the sky:

The above image shows another characteristic of birds; the reflection increases, but doesn't appear to move. Watch the area above Detroit and you'll see a band of rain moving west to east. The birds just kind of fill the sky (some concentrations along the lake shore).

All of these images shows the reflectivity (higher reflection = brighter image = more birds), but at some weather outlets (including Weather Underground) you can also switch to view velocity, so you can see the direction and speed the birds are moving.

Now you might be wondering why I have only mentioned American radar products so far. The answer is that Canadian stations don't show bird migration very well. If you go to the Environment Canada Ontario Weather Radar page there's almost never any bird-like signals showing up, even when the American sites show heavy migration - what gives? I asked some Environment Canada staff and they told me that they do more processing of the data to eliminate weak signals (e.g. birds), and the Canadian Radar stations operate slightly different. Both give a better image if you really want to use the Radar for its intended purpose, but are bad news for birders.

the good news is that Weather Underground uses mostly unprocessed Radar data on their website, so, if for instance you want to watch for bird migration around Toronto, you can go to their website and select the King City station. If I were a betting man, I'd be betting the next two nights should show some pretty intense migration :)

How our past experiences influence our assumptions (geese)

I grew up in southwestern Ontario and not surprisingly, that biased my view on birds and their movements and populations in the province. I don't think there is a better example of this than my view of goose migration.

For most of my life, I thought seeing several hundred or even a thousand Canada Geese was a good flock. And sure enough, scrutiny of any "good-sized" flock (read: a few hundred) in my neck of the woods has a pretty good shot at turning up "something good", usually Cackling or Snow Geese or maybe if you're really lucky a Greater White-fronted or Ross's.

Big or small flock? Depends on where you're from! Spot the Cacklers?

My eyes were opened when I started hanging around this girl, Erica and her family's farm southeast of Ottawa. Turns out what I thought was a lot of geese was pretty sad. Not a day goes by in far southeastern Ontario during migration season when you can't easily find tens of thousands of geese in the air or in the farm fields.

My view of Ontario goose migration, like so many other southern Ontario-centric birders, was extremely flawed. Southeastern Ontario is on a huge goose flyway along the Atlantic coast. In recent years, as the Greater Snow Goose migration has increased in southeastern Ontario, awareness of this seems to be increasing, but still most Ontario birders really don't appreciate how different goose migration is in the southeast.

Greater Snow Geese near Cornwall

This really revealed itself to me while on the OBRC and the committee was discussing a record of Barnacle Geese outside of Ottawa. In short, I am of the belief that Barnacle Goose occurs as a natural vagrant in this part of the province but some people, largely because of their southwestern Ontario view of goose migration, disagree. So, I decided to compile some information...that spiraled a bit out of control and before I knew it I had a decent article for Ontario Birds.

Anyways, this is all to say that I am happy with an article I recently wrote for Ontario Birds. Here are a couple of figures to get you thinking:

Canada Geese banded in Greenland and recovered or re-sighted in Canada and the United States. Prepared using data obtained from the Canadian Wildlife Service Bird Banding Office.

You might notice a similarity with this:

Barnacle Goose reports in eBird for northeast US and Canada.

If you're an OFO member check out the article in the December issue of Ontario Birds. If you're not...why not? (email me and I can send a pdf)

Looking forward to hearing your feedback on this one!

What do Long-tailed Jaegers eat in Ontario? A week full of surprises

It was a very exciting week for me with all sorts of pleasant surprises wherever I went.

To start things off, on Sunday, Ken, my Dad and I were headed down to Holiday Beach IBA for the annual Hawk Festival. We left Waterloo in the dark but hadn't even made it to the 401 when we had our first surprise of the day. Just as we were getting off Hwy 8 I noticed a raptor sitting on a light post. Without thinking much I said "hey there's a red-tail". But as I looked at the bird a bit longer I realized that's not what it was. I pulled onto the shoulder of the ramp and put my bins on it and was surprised to see this:

Yep, a Snowy Owl - on September 13! I think it is more likely that this is a lingering bird from the big irruption last winter rather than an early fall migrant. We don't expect them until November at the earliest. Last year there were a couple of lingering Snowy Owls in Hamilton and on Amherst Island through the summer, so it does happen but it sure is a surprise to see!

With our spirits high from our surprising find we continued towards Holiday Beach. Before arriving we knew we were in for a good hawk flight as the conditions were perfect (clear with a brisk NW wind) and we were already seeing Sharp-shinned Hawks flying over the fields we were passing. We weren't the only ones thinking the same thing as the turnout was excellent:

And here's what everyone was watching:

A kettle of Broad-winged Hawks

That's right, nice big kettles of Broad-winged Hawks. They really got going at about 11 am and were still going strong when we left at 2. In any given year 2-6% of the world population of Broad-winged Hawks funnels through Holiday Beach, and usually a big chunk of those birds pass through in a few key days. The day's tally was over 7000, or about .5% of the world population! Needless to say we weren't disappointed, or even that surprised since the conditions were perfect. What was a surprise though was a dark morph Broad-winged Hawk that we saw go over with a group of "normal" (light morph) broad-wings in the afternoon. That was my first ever and Ken's second.

Our highlight, however happened just before noon. I was waiting by the classroom to get organized for a presentation I was to give when Jeremy Bensette and Emma Buck came walking over. As we were chatting I looked up to see a line of broad-wings passing overhead through a gap in the trees. I lucked out because as I put my binoculars up I noticed a heavily marked, slightly larger, and longer wings buteo overhead - "I've got a Swainson's Hawk!". Jeremy got it right away and even snapped a couple photos. It was an Ontario bird for both of us. I phoned Ken since he was on the tower and I wanted to make sure they got the bird too - he answered the phone with "juvenile light or intermediate morph!" then hung up. Pretty sweet!

And we had one more surprise fly over that day from the tower:

American White Pelican

That was Sunday. Through the week I was busy with some great staff meetings at Bird Studies Canada's headquarters in Port Rowan. A Say's Phoebe was found near Rondeau but a chase was not in the cards for me.

But my biggest surprise came yesterday, when I was at Erica's childhood home for some birthday parties. I checked my email in the morning and saw that Parasitic Jaeger had been found feeding in a field just 10 minutes to the north. I filed the information away thinking I'd go have a look later in the day. My phone promptly died so I didn't think too much more about it. Then, Erica's brother texted her to say he had spotted a crowd of birders checking something out at the spot so Erica and I went for a drive. When we got there we found out that it was actually a Long-tailed Jaeger - much rarer, and probably a first county record. At first it was a bit distant but eventually it started flying around feeding around the field, sometimes flying within 5 metres of us. At one point it landed, caught and ate a worm about 10 metres away from us. Absolutely amazing views of a bird that I have only ever seen way out on Lake Ontario off of Hamilton.

Now that's a sweet yard bird!

Can't be too many shots of this species with a silo in the back

Yes, that's a worm!

Needless to say, before the week started if you had told me I'd see a Snowy Owl, Swainson's Hawk, dark morph Broad-winged Hawk, and a worm-eating Long-tailed Jaeger I would have asked you if you'd hit your head!

Greater White-fronted Goose and waterfowl at Long Point

Big Creek is finally open and the warm melt water flowing through it is starting to open up a lead in Long Point's inner bay, so this morning when I stopped to check out the bridge on the causeway there I was happy to find about 1500 Tundra Swans, hundreds of ducks and geese and a single Greater White-fronted Goose.

Here's a link to my full checklist from the causeway. With south winds predicted on Friday and Saturday there should be more birds filling into the small bit of open water this weekend!

Even though it is still cold, it does look and sound like March in the area. Check out this video from the IBA Canada YouTube channel that I took a couple days ago:



Thanks for looking and don't forget to support my birdathon for bird conservation!

The last week of March

This past week has really started to feel like spring! I had my firsts of several species including Snow Goose, Ruddy Duck, Wood Duck, Sandhill Crane, Killdeer, Green-winged Teal, Bonaparte's Gull, American Woodcock, and Great Blue Heron. Part of that list was because I've been down at Long Point but I think many of those species have spread north into much of southern Ontario now.

What do you think of this "white" goose?

"I came all the way for this?"

I think basically this past week served to "catch up" for alot of species, check out the eBird figures for our old friends RWBL and COGR:

We're pretty much bang on with last year at this time

That being said, it doesn't look like winter is ready to release us quite yet and we're getting a reminder of that for the first half of the week. For the birds that are "scheduled" to arrive this week, looking at the list I'm not too optimistic that we'll end March on schedule. Most of the birds that normally arrive this week are passerines and I'm not going to hold my breath that we'll see the first "mass arrival" of Eastern Phoebes. Anyways, here's the list of species that normally arrive this week (for methodology and full spring list click here):

22 March -	American Kestrel
25 March -	Northern Flicker
	Eastern Phoebe
	Brown Creeper
	Winter Wren
	Fox Sparrow
27 March -	Blue-winged Teal
28 March -	Pectoral Sandpiper
	Belted Kingfisher
30 March -	Dark-eyed Junco
31 March -	Wilson's Snipe

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!

Updated guide to spring arrival dates

Over the past couple of weeks I have updated a project I started a couple of years ago - a guide to spring arrival dates for Ontario birds. Check it out for a complete listing of when to expect each species coming back to Ontario over the next couple of months.

Whether or not it feels like it it's March now and that means that birds are coming! Today's warm weather and warm weather (it's all relative!!) again later this week could very well spur some migrants into southern Ontario. And don't forget things having been moving for a couple weeks now, especially crows and Horned Larks.

Using the guide, the following species usually start arriving en masse in the first week of March:

Snow Goose

Canada Goose

Ring-billed Gull

Mallard

Lesser Scaup

Red-breasted Merganser

American Coot

Cackling Goose

Hooded Merganser

Red-winged Blackbird

Red-necked Grebe

Common Grackle

Coming soon

Anyways, check out the full list and see what you can find!

What a difference a year makes!

Last year at this time birders in southern Ontario were enjoying one of the biggest broad-scale irruptions of boreal birds we had seen for quite some time. The boreal forest had almost no food in the way of tree seed crops last year and so all of the birds that depend on those as food had to come south. That also included owls that had to move south in search of small mammal prey as their normal prey were in short supply (likely related to the poor tree seed crops).

Each fall, Ron Pittaway collects all sorts of information on  tree seed crops from a whole bunch of volunteers and puts together his now famous Winter Finch Forecast. And as usual, Ron has been pretty bang-on with his predictions this year (basically no real flight). That didn't surprise me, but what has surprised me has been just how few finches have come south. Much of this blog post is credited towards the information that is always contained in Ron's forecasts - if you haven't read the latest report I highly recommend it.

In this post I wanted to compare just how big of a difference a year can make with these birds, drawing on the instantly accessible (and free!) outputs of eBird.

Red-breasted Nuthatch
Red-breasted Nuthatches rely heavily on White Spruce cone crops. In a nutshell (pun intended!) when there aren't many spruce cones to feed on, they come south.

Here's an eBird frequency chart comparing the last two falls (August-November):

You can see that Red-breasted Nuthatches have been recorded on almost 50% fewer checklists in Ontario this fall compared to last year!

Bohemian Waxwing
Bohemian Waxwings feed mostly on Mountain Ash and other berries during the winter. According to the Winter Finch Forecast "mountain‐ash berry crops are very good to bumper from Alaska to Newfoundland and Labrador" so that means these birds have no reason to wander south.

Here's an eBird frequency chart comparing the last two falls (October-November).

The difference here is even more striking than with Red-breasted Nuthatch - last year at this time you were 16 times more likely to see a Bohemian Waxwing in Ontario!

And here's a map showing November sightings from this year and last year:

Orange = 2013, Blue = 2012

Pine Grosbeak
Like Bohemian Waxwings, Pine Grosbeaks are tied to Mountain Ash berries, so it isn't too surprising to see the similarity in the eBird results.

 Here's an eBird frequency chart comparing the last two falls (October-November).

That's not quite as extreme as Bohemian Waxwing, but at their peak during the third week of November last year Pine Grosbeaks were being reported on almost 14 times the frequency of checklist compared to the same period this year.

The eBird map for November Pine Grosbeaks is also similar to Bohemian Waxwing:

Orange = 2013, Blue = 2012

Purple Finch
According to Ron Tozer, Purple Finches are the wimpiest of the winter finches, only staying north when there is so much food that nothing could possibly go wrong.

The eBird frequency chart comparing the last two falls is interesting:

In 2012 we saw the normal spike in September and October as birds left but not so much this year. By the end of November in 2013 we are now more likely to find a Purple Finch in Ontario then the same time last year, suggesting there are more Purple Finches staying put in Ontario for the winter - this will be an interesting one to watch through the course of the winter.

Purple Finch near Bancroft

Red Crossbill
Ok, I'm starting to get lazy...here's the November eBird map:

Orange = 2013, Blue = 2012

White-winged Crossbill
And again, the November eBird map:

Orange = 2013, Blue = 2012

Common Redpoll
Redpolls are virtually non-existant (like most of the other finches!) this year in southern Ontario.

Here's the eBird frequency graph for the fall (October-November)"

Looking at that peak during the third week of November, last year you were almost 19 times more likely to encounter a Common Redpoll during that week compared to this year!

And here's the November eBird map:

Orange = 2013, Blue = 2012

Pine Siskin
I'm probably beginning to sound like a broken record, but the trend continues...

Here's the fall eBird graph (September to November:

At peak migration during the last week of October you were 45 times more likely to see a Pine Siskin in 2012 compared to the same time in 2013!!!

And here's the November eBird map:

Orange = 2013, Blue = 2012

Evening Grosbeak in Algonquin Park

Evening Grosbeak
Last year was a huge year for this species while this year is back to the recent average.

Here's the eBird frequency graph for the fall (October-November):

 

That peak during the first week of November was 19 times higher in 2012 than in 2013!

And here's the November eBird map:

Orange = 2013, Blue = 2012

And of course it's not just finches that are irruptive from year to year. Check out this map comparing this November to last November for Snowy Owls - last year the west had a big flight and it looks like it is the east's turn this year:

Orange = 2013, Blue = 2012

Snowy Owl on Wolfe Island

I think there are some neat messages here. First it is amazing how we can tie in things like tree seed crops, small mammal populations and bird irruptions. It's equally impressive the amount of information that comes in every day to eBird by thousands of volunteers to help us better understand bird distribution and abundance patterns - even a couple years ago you wouldn't have been able to get such a clear, continent-wide picture of what was happening as it happens.

Swallow-tailed Kite chase

Erica and I headed to tropical Ontario yesterday and camped at Rondeau; we picked up lots of new arrivals for us and then spent a couple hours birding the park this morning after camping over last night.  It was a really nice day already and we headed out at 10 towards Pelee.  That's when the excitement really happened!

Just after passing through Port Alma a bird appeared in the air beside someone's house.....and I yelled to Erica "Swallow-tailed Kite!!!" Wow, what a sweet bird as it lazily kited around the trees in the yard and then started moving NW into the field.  After some frantic phone calls the bird started heading west down the road....so we followed it!  Erica got the word out on Ontbirds as we watched as it gracefully flew back and forth over our heads, checking out each grove of trees it came to.  After doing this for a few minutes the bird started picking up speed and just basically b-lining west along the lake shore.  And I mean RIGHT along the lake shore - presumably getting some lift from the bluffs and with a nice tail wind.  At times I had the car doing 60 km/h just keeping up with it! After about 30 minutes Ken met up with us frantically heading east and we got him to turn around and follow us and the bird.  The bird had gotten ahead of us so we dumped his car (windows open and keys in the ignition!!!) and found a good spot to look for the bird.  Sure enough we picked it up over Wheatley Provincial Park.

Since the bird was now well to our west we decided to leave the bird and to backtrack to get Ken's car. After getting through Wheatley and passing Hillman Marsh amazingly we picked it up again as it miraculously appeared directly overhead on Mersea Road E, where we lost it as it disappeared over the marsh before we could get up over the dyke that borders the Pelee marsh.  A few minutes later the crowd that had gathered at the visitor centre parking lot had the bird obligingly come right overhead as it headed south (apparently David Bell's calculated time was within seconds!).....as far as I know that was the last it was seen so it either snuck back north or made the crossing over Lake Erie...

Anyways, pretty sweet bird! Here are some pics:

I'm sure Brandon and David (and lots of others who waited patiently at the VC for the bird!) will some some pictures on their blogs...

And of course some eBird checklists with location info:

Port Alma: http://ebird.org/ebird/canada/view/checklist?subID=S13988137
Coatsworth Road: http://ebird.org/ebird/canada/view/checklist?subID=S13988231
Wheatley: http://ebird.org/ebird/canada/view/checklist?subID=S13988201
Pelee: http://ebird.org/ebird/canada/view/checklist?subID=S13988271