Hawksaloft.com | Peregrine Projects | N.E.Mac | nra
Strange but true. Welcome to the premiere of K+April [pronounced KAY prill]... that BroadwingSEPT wannabe project taking a look at the Spring movement of American Kestrels during mostly the month of April. All I've done so far is plug in the numbers from your emails. And, I've taken the liberty of highlighting the waves. I've viewed my flights in terms of waves or pulses. The strength and duration [or even existence] of each depending on the timing and nature of the frontal systems. For example, I saw the April 4-10 numbers as coming together -- age class, nesting location, a combo of those -- with a secondary disturbance in the weather on the 6th breaking up what characteristically is a big push followed by a second day with about half the number of the previous day. Yadda, yadda, yadda, kestrels. The sites are viewed from south/west to north/east so you can underlay, in you mind at least, a map of eastern North America. That would make a nice background GIF at some point, huh? I added Merlins and Sharpies taking us into May... although my prediction is many experienced Merlins stayed home on the "Winter that Wasn't." Early numbers for this season appear almost non-exisitent along the coast. Before I open this up to BIRDHAWK at the end of April 2000, I'm interested in your comments on the mode of presentation [if any]. In addition, I'd like to describe each of our sites in terms of location, site characteristics and flavor, the best weather, your bread and butter spp. As I said in the original email, I plan to do the same sort of table for 1996-99. And I've added links to archived detailed surface weather maps at UNISYS. In 2001, we'll go live with this thing. And K+April 1999 is online, sort of. I used "n" to indicate a date for which I have no data. The data is either missing from the emails or there was no coverage. The bracketed "100" represents a flight I heard about, so its anecdotal. The first Kbird push is around a hundred birds... I was off at Derby Hill catching a big flight there... should have stayed home! Go to main Plum Island Hawk Watch page.
Surface Weather Map-> 3/26 3/27 3/28 3/29 3/30 3/31 4/1 4/2 4/3 4/4 4/5 4/6 4/7 4/8 4/9 4/10 4/11 4/12 4/13 4/14 4/15 4/16 4/17 4/18 4/19 4/20 4/21 4/22 4/23 4/24 4/25 4/26 4/27 4/28 4/29 4/30 5/1 5/2 5/3 5/4 5/5 5/6 5/7 5/8 5/9 5/10 5/11 5/12 Plum Island MA                                           - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SS n n n 1 0 n 2 0 0 0 1 0 4 0 n 2 1 2 1 n 11 0 n n n n n n n 2 1 n 0 90 38 10 97 2 0 10 23 n 2 2 n n 0 1 AK [100] n n 32 21 n 7 28 5 4 197 3 93 29 n 70 0 0 0 n 35 0 n n n n n n n 3 5 n 0 57 8 85 105 51 3 57 38 n 19 16 n n 0 6 ML n n n 1 0 n 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 1 n 0 0 0 0 n 0 0 n n n n n n n 13 9 n 0 2 2 25 2 9 0 4 0 n 0 0 n n 1 1 Sandy Hook NJ                                           - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - SS 21 1 6 17 4 3 6 0 9 2 5 6 16 7 0 5 0 0   3  5  0 14 0 n 0 34 0 0 4 649 16 0 7 22 42 38 46 44 22 15 69 41 12 20 2 0 0 7 AK 26 2 123 55 11 6 5 44 28 26 124 83 10 23 0 25 0 16   9  0  0 5 0 n 1 9 0 3 4 116 6 4 4 12 15 100 26 17 4 5 10 8 6 5 2 0 1 1 ML 3 0 4 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 3 3 2 1 0 0 0 1   3  1  3 6 1 n 4 5 1 2 2 23 4 4 0 13 14 16 23 11 3 2 5 13 4 8 11 0 11 11 Fort Smallwood MD                                           - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SS 85 0 5 13 7 14 15 7 1 n 35 79 n 72 1 n 2 106 0 n n 29 n n 14 54 69 60 154 147 n 22 0 49 45 213 80 199 19 4 74 73 31 n 22 1 n n AK 123 3 2 104 2 0 5 1 0 n 24 17 n 39 2 n 0 248 1 n n 0 n n 6 19 18 6 6 5 n 0 0 0 0 36 3 3 0 0 0 0 0 n 0 0 n n ML 2 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 n 2 0 n 5 0 n 0 6 0 n n 0 n n 1 1 1 2 3 5 n 3 0 1 2 5 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 n 0 0 n n