News: Resources

As a reminder to what the team is working on here at BirdCast, we return to a previous post we wrote. With spring soon arriving and preparations for migration underway, here is a primer on what we do. We turn weather radar data into information on the numbers and flight directions of birds aloft in order to expand the understanding of migratory bird movement. After several years (and hundreds of posts) describing migration, species on the move, and unique migration events, we want you to have a better understanding of what happens at BirdCast. Here is a brief overview and a behind-the-scenes look at the ways we apply radar data to study bird migration.  Read more...

Spring migration is in full swing, and knowing when peak migration will occur in your area is valuable information! Here we provide a sortable table of peak periods of spring bird migration for the largest cities by human population size in the contiguous US.  Read more...

The BirdCast team is reposting two accounts originally written about the August 2017 eclipse. This is the second of these posts, detailing results from our 2018 publication using radar to study biological activity in the air during the eclipse ... with radar!  Read more...

Large numbers of birds died in collisions with glass and structures while major migration was occurring in the Chicago area on the night of 4-5 October 2023. Turn off your lights, make your windows bird friendly!  Read more...

The BirdCast team has a growing number of friends and family members, and for today's post, we introduce Diya Balagopal, a high school sophomore from Frisco, Texas. During the month of October, we will highlight Lights Out alert forecasts to support bird conservation by reducing nighttime lighting during migration season. The small act of turning off lights can make a big difference for protecting nocturnally migrating birds!  Read more...

BirdCast is ready to kickoff its fall 2023 migration season! It’s time to check out our migration tools to see what’s on the move in your area.  Read more...

Aeroecological research is more than simply studies of bird migration. Victoria Simons is studying how Tree Swallow foraging behavior relates to their usage of airspace as habitat.   Read more...

The new BirdCast Migration Dashboard is here, providing nocturnal bird migration data for counties and states in the contiguous US! This tool offers new capabilities to investigate birds' movements in detail and at scales that complement our existing national forecast and live migration maps. Try it out today to explore patterns of nocturnal bird migration in your area!  Read more...

The BirdCast team led a study published today that uses two decades of data to show that migration magnitude, light output, and wind conditions are important predictors of collisions at a high-profile building in Chicago. This research has global implications for conservation action campaigns aimed at eliminating an important cause of bird mortality: light pollution and resulting collisions with structures.  Read more...

The spring of 2021 offered many migration highlights, and here we showcase the top 5 mega-flights of this soon-to-be-in-the-books season.  Read more...

During the past week, enormous numbers of birds have been migrating through the US. But birders seeking massive concentrations of birds in their favorite habitats may not have experienced the fallouts of their dreams. A new visualization depicting the altitude of migration, when viewed in conjunction with the distribution of migration traffic, highlights an explanation.  Read more...

Southern California affords some excellent opportunities to see continuing diurnal migration of typically nocturnal migrants. Kicking off in Spring 2021, the Bear Divide Migration Count by the Moore Lab of Zoology at Occidental College is one of these opportunities!  Read more...

For more than 50 years US radar aeroecology has largely been restricted to the lower 48 states — until now. Just out in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the BirdCast team publishes the first weather surveillance radar studies of Alaskan bird migration.  Read more...

The spring window for peak bird migration in Texas has arrived, so it's time to get outside and experience the coming spectacle! Just doing one simple thing will help protect these migrating birds: turn off all non-essential lights between 11pm and 6am every night to go Lights Out and reduce collision risk!  Read more...

The GloBAM research consortium published a letter in Science with a call for European national meteorological agencies to provide biological and meteorological data from its radars.  Read more...

Welcome to 2021! Team BirdCast has a number of projects underway for this year. And although we are still a good 4-6 weeks from the first significant movements of mid to late winter migrants moving in the US, keen observers should be aware of several patterns to watch now.  Read more...

BirdCast is thrilled to announce a public service announcement from former First Lady Laura Bush and a proclamation from Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson about the Lights Out Texas initiative to protect nocturnally migrating birds from the hazards of light pollution!  Read more...

As of 20 April 2020 the BirdCast live migration maps switched color palettes to match migration forecast maps. The new color palette is more suitable for viewers with green-, red-, or blue-color blindness, and is perceptually uniform in color and black-and-white (see this interesting talk by the designers of this so-called "viridis" color scale).  Read more...

We updated the color scheme of migration forecast maps on 13 April 2020 to add more contrast to the palette that makes visually impaired viewing easier.  Read more...

Team BirdCast has been analyzing radar data with our group of talented collaborators, and today we published a new study on shifting patterns of nocturnal bird migration and how dynamic these patterns can be spatially.  Read more...