The Mississippi Flyway is lighting up!

A River of Birds

Bird Migration Forecast Map for the night of May 4 - source BirdCast

Spring migration is now in full force. The Mississippi flyway is a lifeblood for millions of migrating birds traveling to northern latitudes to breed. To think that almost a half a billion birds will be traveling in the skies each night for the next two weeks is incredible. And we can be oblivious to this because all these millions of birds are migrating during the night. Birds fly at night to use the stars and the moon to navigate which is why having dark skies is important this time of year. Also at night the atmosphere is more stable and cooler which is less taxing on these long distance flyers.

The BirdCast Website has many neat tools to track this phenomenon. The forecast maps, such as the one above, gives a three-day estimate of what can be expected for upcoming migration in the US. Then there are live migration maps that show actual nocturnal migration as detected by the Doppler weather radar network. If you are a weather geek, check out this link. Another neat tool is the migration dashboard which will show you in real-time what migration is happening in your county.

Here is what the dashboard is telling me tonight about migration in Minnesota.

Most of these bird species are considered “neotropical” meaning they breed north in the United States and Canada during the summer and then fly south to winter in Mexico, Central and South America. The Mississippi Flyway has over 325 species making this long distance round trip each year. Below are some of the species that the migration dashboard is forecasting to arrive with this large movement tonight.