11/11 IL Migration Report - Final

Hey folks,

So this is really, really cool, you guys. I know we've seen this before, but just check it out. Even on a wind map, we can see right where the cold front is, and where it has brought favorable northwesterly winds. Isn't
that awesome?

Migration in Central IL. Hardly
concentrated enough to be more
than light.

All raving aside, we are currently in a very good place for migration. With northwesterly winds dominating the state, Illinois is experiencing light migration wherever there is no precipitation. But it seems that we've gotten to the point where this is as good
as it gets. As the next few weeks go by, migration will become less and less discernible until nothing is showing on the radar.

I've debated this in my head a lot, but I think 11/11 is a good time to close up shop on the report this year. The Cornell Lab's BirdCast project closed up Friday the 8th, and at this point, even if there is migration showing on the radar, exclusively night-migrating birds like passerines are no longer showing many notable arrivals and influxes, and that's what this report is all about!

Before I sign off for the year, I'd like to remind you the same thing that I did at the beginning of the season. Fall Migration is not really a Fall Migration. For certain species, especially ducks and allies, it goes on into the green explosion we call Spring. Migration never has a set stopping point; like all natural cycles, it pushes on, displaying nature's remarkable tenacity and birds' incredible will to live. We will watch and learn as its participants brush in and out of our awareness: ducks, geese, swans, grebes, eagles, hawks, owls, gulls, cranes, the occasional hummingbird, shrikes, kinglets, nuthatches, waxwings, sparrows, longspurs, buntings, blackbirds, finches--these are all wanderers, migrants, that we have the fortune of observing this coming season, even if for a part of their life cycles. How grand it is that we get to peer out of our world and into theirs.

So even though I bid you adieu for this season, know that the birds will always be moving, always be migrating, and that we only have to get out there to experience it.

Happy birding, folks! We may just run into each other somewhere out there.