Migration pattern of birds at night

This animation created by Cornell University researchers illustrates the use of a network of surveillance weather radar to record nocturnal migrating birds, bats, and insects in the continental U.S. from sunset to sunrise Oct. 1, 2008. The blocky green, yellow, and red patterns, especially visible on the east coast, represent precipitation; but within an hour after sunset, radar picks up biological activity, as seen in the widening blue and green circles spreading from the east across the country. The birds, bats, and insects take off, fly past, and get sampled by the radar beam. Note, the black areas on the map do not represent places without birds, necessarily, but rather places where radar does not sample. READ MORE: http://www.futurity.org.

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Science & Technology

Tags:

• Cornell University
• migrating birds
• futurity.org

[creativeprojects720]

so the birds are active early in the night, and stop being active later in the night? or what are we seeing here?

[nestorian9]

This is really cool. I knew they were working on some way to track migration. Hard to believe people were trying to follow one banded bird in a van just a few years ago. This is phenomenal.

I'm guessing that there is really no way to tell exactly which birds are being picked up on the radar.