As you plan your birding outings, you may be interested in following these postings.
Hi everyone,
For the spring migration season, I am going to try to post weekly “migration forecasts”, with predictions for the following 6 days. These are mainly focused on southern Ontario, as that is the region I am most familiar with, but I will include comments on other areas of Ontario occasionally.
*Please note that these are just my personal predictions & are by no means a sure thing. So if you consult only this to plan your trips, don’t blame me if there aren’t many birds that day : )
Migration Forecast – March 22nd to March 29th 2022
Overview
Overall, it looks like it will be a fairly typical week as far March weather goes, cooler temperatures and rain! As the season goes on and more birds begin arriving in the province, migrants will arrive daily even if the weather isn’t favourable. Of course there will be much larger movement on days with ideal conditions (clear skies and wind with a southerly component), but small numbers of birds will still trickle in even on cooler, rainy days. There will continue to be new birds arriving over the next few days, but there should be an uptick in new migrants on Wednesday and Thursday as a low pressure system sweeps over the province. There will likely be rain on both of those days though, so that will limit migration somewhat.
I want to emphasize that some good migration days are not particularly fun birding days. Even though there should be new arrivals Wednesday and Thursday, the strong wind and rain will likely make it rather unpleasant to be out.
Likely New Arrivals This Week;
Great Blue Heron
Rusty Blackbird
American Kestrel
Northern Flicker
Greater Yellowlegs
Lesser Yellowlegs
Wilson’s Snipe
Winter Wren
Blue-winged Teal
Osprey
Field Sparrow
Belted Kingfisher
Migrants with peaking numbers:
Wood Duck
Song Sparrow
Northern Harrier
Eastern Bluebird
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Brown-headed Cowbird
Great Blue Heron
Turkey Vulture
Northern Pintail
American Wigeon
Rarities to look for this week:
Eurasian Wigeon (especially around Lake Erie)
Rare geese mixed in with Canada and Snow Goose flocks
Daily Forecasts
Tuesday, March 22nd
The day will start off around the freezing mark for a lot of southern Ontario and will only warm up to around 8 degrees during the day. The skies should be clear for the majority of the day though, so birds will still be moving. It should be a decent day of birding, especially around Lake Erie/western Lake Ontario.
Wednesday, March 23rd
Similar to the previous day, it will start off quite cool and warm up as the day goes on. A low pressure system will be moving towards Ontario, so we will be seeing fairly strong east/southeast winds and rain for most of the day. Some waterfowl will be moving, but otherwise it will likely be a fairly quiet day
Thursday, March 24th
The low pressure will be moving over Ontario at this point, bringing strong southwest winds and warmer temperatures to the southern part of the province. As of right now it looks like there shouldn’t be that much rain around southwestern Ontario during the day, which would mean it would be productive for migration. The way the rain pans out will effect how good it will be, but expect an decent influx of new migrants.
Friday, March 25th,
It will be another cool start to the day, with temperatures rising slightly as the day goes on. There may be some precipitation in southern Ontario, but there likely won’t be too bad. Birds should be moving in small numbers, but it likely will be a rather quiet day for movement.
Saturday, March 26th/Sunday, March 27th
Like I said in my email last week, I don’t really like going this far ahead for these “forecasts” as things can change a lot in 5 days. As of right now it looks like Saturday will be the beginning of a bit of a cool down, with north winds and temperatures just around freezing. Lake effect snow may be in play too. There will still be birds around that arrived in the previous few days, but I doubt there will be many new arrivals
In summary it will be a fairly quiet week, but there should still be a decent number of new arrivals… especially from Tuesday – Thursday. Birding around southwestern Ontario will be the best if you are interested in finding numbers of newly arrived migrants. The Ottawa area should see an increase in geese too as the week goes on.
Websites that I use frequently
Windy (wind, temperature, precipitation and more) – windy.com
Birdcast (good for large scale trends) – https://birdcast.info
Accuweather (an easier to read weather site that is normally accurate) – https://www.accuweather.com
If anyone is on Twitter, I post almost daily about weather birding related things. My handle is @ONweatherbirder
Good birding,
Kiah Jasper
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