Even before the first snow of the fall fell up north, the big migration began.
I attended two parties in October to welcome the first flocks of friends and neighbors arriving from Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, New York and other locations already recording below-freezing temps.
And, also in late October, I trekked through Perico Island’s Neal Preserve and Bradenton Beach’s Leffis Key to welcome another group of travelers — winged migrants, possibly from the same states as my biped pals.
So, welcome back Dunns and Ristows, Johnsons and Lovejoys.
And also, welcome orioles, grosbeaks and wood warblers.
Add to the list blue-gray gnatcatchers, wrens, vireos, thrushes, hawks, eagles and buntings.
One of the best resources for tracking the fall migration — of birds, not people — is BirdCast, maintained by the University of Oxford and Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Birdcast.info contains live migration maps, showing the intensity of activity across the United States.
Visitors to the website will find forecasts for nocturnal migration three hours after sunset and updating through the night, about every six hours.
The information for the BirdCast maps comes from radar, which also provides migration information shared by the National Weather Service. In early October, an NWS station in upstate New York reported the mass movement of songbirds headed our way.
Some of the birds traveling south will fly over Florida — or stop over in Florida — en route to Central or South America.
For others, Florida is their winter destination.
And a top local spot to look for them is Leffis Key, located at Coquina Bayside and on the Great Florida Birding Trail, a 2,000-mile long trail consisting of more than 500 locations where the bird habitats are protected. In Manatee, the trail also includes Duette and Emerson Point preserves and Greer Island Beach, but it should be expanded to include Neal and Perico preserves on Perico and Robinson Preserve in west Bradenton.
At Leffis, the arrival of rose-breasted grosbeaks had local birdwatchers chirping the week of Oct. 28.
What sighting will have us warbling in early November?
Maybe a black-and-white warbler.
Or perhaps the white pelicans will check in.
This column was published in The Islander newspaper.
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