Last night's flight and some Kent County landbirding

[Dave Slager]

Hey birders,

It's good to be back in Michigan.  Last night in Grand Rapids (Kent
County) there was a pretty substantial nocturnal movement of landbirds
which I documented using weather radar, moonwatching, and listening to
nocturnal flight calls.  Based on the national radar, this movement
was probably pretty widespread in the eastern US.

This morning, I got a chance to see some of these migrants locally in
the Lowell SGA and at Huff Park.  Highlights included Yellow-bellied
Flycatcher, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Philly Vireo, and 15 species of
warblers.

I also have some comments/interpretation of a radar image from last
night's flight that may depict landbirds departing preferentially from
forested state game areas in the southern LP.    I'm pretty new at
this radar thing, so if anybody has ideas or comments or can prove
that my idea is crap, I'd love to hear from you.  Since my discussion
uses some images, I have posted it on a new blog I'm trying out at

http://empidonax.blogspot.com

Good birding!

Dave Slager
Grand Rapids, MI