Migration In Full Swing
A blue jay checking out the food
I wrote not long ago about the BirdCast site that shows real time bird migration patters with weather radar. This morning on Facebook, there was a query in a birding group about a radar image someone had screenshot with a big blob over Kansas City. They were wondering if it was possibly a migration echo.
A screenshot of weather radar and a question
I went to Birdcast and looked at what was going on last night at about the time they posted their radar screenshot. Holy cow, last night was busy! The entire central flyway was lit up very bright. Close to 300 million birds moving north at once.
This is what BirdCast had to say about the bird movement at about the same time
Over the last few days I have noticed some different varieties of bird eating seeds. Over the winter there were lots of finches and pine siskens here but most of those moved on a while back. I noticed this little flock showed up a couple days ago.
Some recent arrivals in the last few days
Yesterday I was struck by how many blue jays there were. Usually there are one or two hanging around the area. Yesterday I actually had five lined up eating at the same time. This was late yesterday afternoon. A little earlier I had noticed a lot more blue jay activity and had one land and just spread its feathers. It looked like it might be in distress, but after sitting for about five minutes it ate some seeds and flew off. After downloading the picture and processing, I am kind of thinking this may be a baby just left the nest.
EDIT: After posting this I did some additional research and find that this bird is probably a year or two old, and is just sunbathing. This is a well documented behavior, and the pose description was perfect. I just got super lucky and had one do this right in front of me!
Someone found a nice big nut
While still holding one nut in its beak, it swung around and grabbed another before flying away
The more I look at this picture, the more I think this is a baby just started flying.
EDIT: After posting this I did some additional research and find that this bird is probably a year or two old, and is just sunbathing. This is a well documented behavior, and the pose description was perfect. I just got super lucky and had one do this right in front of me!
After looking at the number of birds migrating last night, it will be interesting to see if the blue jays are still as thick today or if they have moved on. The jays are year around residents of the Midwest, so not sure if they are just congregating or moving. Same with my flock of little guys.
Once again, I would like to say that BirdCast is an amazing little tool to see what our feathered friends are up to. https://birdcast.info/migration-tools/live-migration-maps/
