5/11 IL Migration Report

So, we still have northerly winds. Tonight, winds are coming mostly from the northwest, and are a bit stronger than last night's winds. This means, unfortunately, that again we will be having marginal migration tonight, and again, I can't tell you that conditions will improve by the end of the weekend. The winds, already with a westerly element tonight, are forecast to weaken and become more westerly until the state is dominated by weak, west winds late Sunday (Northern IL wind forecast: http://bit.ly/14neVJd, Southern IL Wind forecast: http://bit.ly/124R3WX). From here, the winds are forecast to take on a southerly element in the west and south edges of the state. Overall, this period of weak winds (represented by blue on the wind forecast I linked to above) will be our best bet for migration in the next few days, but this isn't saying much. We may get light migration Sunday and Monday nights, but beyond that, ***our next period of favorable migratory conditions looks to be Tuesday and Wednesday night. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel! Better yet, looking at some extended forecasts, it looks like southerly winds will again be dominant throughout the state next weekend. If you're in Southerly IL, there should be southerly element to the winds all week. So good stuff is comin'...we just gotta wait a couple more days.


As far as the avifauna in the area go, we essentially had the same stuff around today that we did yesterday. All regular thrush species, for example, are represented in our state, with VEERY, GRAY-CHEEKED THRUSH, SWAINSON'S THRUSH, and WOOD THRUSH being around in decent numbers but definitely in not in the full swing of their migration. The same goes for warblers, which are represented in IL with more than 20 species, most of which aren't influxing in full strength. Flycatchers, represented by LEAST FLYCATCHER, WILLOW FLYCATCHER, GREAT CRESTED FLYCATCHER, and a few others are present in some places in IL, and like others are spring-loaded to continue the movement north. Shorebirds are still migrating at low levels, with species like LEAST SANDPIPER and SANDERLING making a presence in the state. Terns like COMMON TERN and FORSTER'S TERN are also present in fair numbers. Icterids like BOBOLINK have been noted in the past few days, and cardinalids like INDIGO BUNTING show similar concentrations. Overall, there are many species around, but most of them aren't around in very large concentrations.


That's all for tonight, folks. Be ready for this coming week, as it will bring a dramatic improvement in conditions for migration.

Migration at the time of this post