April 25th, 2015

Well today was exciting! Birders around the state were out there finding cool things today. Headliner species today were as diverse as Little Gull, Rusty Blackbird, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Bonaparte's Gull, Lark Sparrow, Piping Plover, Franklin's Gull, Smith's Longspur, Surf Scoter, Snowy Egret, and Cape May Warbler. Along with these sightings, more common species like Palm Warbler, Common Loon, and kinglets were out and about as well. It seems that for most birders that braved the rain today, there were some exciting avian rewards. Today was a nice prequel to what we'll have within the next couple weeks. Want an even clearer preview? Check out the MASSIVE concentrations of birds moving over the Texas Coast. Over Texans heads journey almost 2000 individual birds per cubic kilometer of sky. Many of them our headed our way.

Note the green spheroids over the Texas coast. Green represents nearly 2,000 birds in motion per cubic kilometer
of sky. Nature's really going for the wow factor down there. Not to worry; we'll get our wow factor soon enough.

The cold front that dis-
posed of favorable con-
ditions in IL.

When they will get here is still difficult to predict. Today, a cold front ushered northerly winds over the whole of Illinois, and as such nothing is migrating. This trend is set to continue for a couple more days, but starting Tuesday night, southerly-based winds are forecast for small portions of the Prairie State. Local-scale migration will probably start then and continue sporadically until Thursday or Friday night's, when BOOM: Southerly winds return throughout Illinois. I certainly hope the forecast holds true; next weekend should be epic if it does.

Tonight's radar. A litt-
le different than in TX,
eh?

I'll keep you posted. And as always, checking the eBird data can never hurt.

Good stuff, everyone. Looking forward to seeing where the spring takes us.