Greetings Birders! We are at that time of year when one can hear the interesting phenomenon of avian night migration calls. I hope to host two listening sessions this season in the vicinity of Cornell's Hartung Boothroyd Astronomical Observatory on Mount Pleasant ~ http://coursewiki.astro.cornell.edu/Astro4410/HartungBoothroydObservatory
One listening session sometime in the next two weeks targets a substantial wave of migrant Bobolinks & Veerys, and another toward mid-September centers on Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Swainson's Thrush & early Gray-cheeked Thrushes. We'll aim for Friday or Saturday nights (9PM-midnight) and I'll post a note to cayugabirds, nysbirds-L, natural-history-L, and cny-naturalhistory a day or two in advance. If you are not a regular reader of these listservs and would like to be notified directly, send me an email. We'll have microphones set up for amplified group listening and a large-screen computer showing airborne biological targets via the Binghamton weather radar (NEXRAD). In the meantime, for those who'd like to tune in to these mind-expanding natural events from their homes, Oldbird.org offers instructions for building a simple avian night flight call monitoring system and now also offers a fully-built, plug and play, avian flight call monitoring system (installed at discount for central New York residents - contact me for details). Anyone living in central New York can still hear Upland Sandpiper flying over their homes at night in migration to South America. That likely won't be possible in 10 years. The species is in steep decline in NY as commercial wind energy threatens the last remaining NY breeding stronghold (Jefferson County). Bill Evans -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --