Hi Sean, Kevin, et al.

I never got seriously into this, as you are, but the few times I 
quickly set up a telescope on the full moon and took a peak, I was 
surprised how easy it was to separate the light flight and size of 
warblers from the larger and heavier flight style of the thrushes ...

The following has been reported in several journals, but here is a 
summary directly from Chan of his great night of "moon watching" in 
1953. Thought you and others might enjoy this ...


from ... "Comments on Proposals for Windpower Facilities on Allegheny 
Ridges," by Chandler S. Robbins, Sc.D

"Migrants are well known to follow "leading lines" such as 
shorelines, rivers, and ridges that are oriented in the direction 
they are heading.  Migrants gain lift from the updrafts along even 
minor ridges, such as along the Fall Line where my house is Laurel is 
located. In a continent-wide study of nocturnal migration in 1953 
(Lowery and Newman, pp. 238-263 in Recent Studies in Avian Biology by 
Albert Wolfson, ed., Univ. Ill. Press, 1955) involving observations 
at 325 localities, my Fall Line tally of birds silhouetted against 
the moon on the night of September 22-23, 1953, was the highest on 
the continent; when extrapolated to the standard measurement of birds 
crossing a line one mile long (and corrected for the angle of the 
moon), it was determined that 230,000 migrants passed over my house 
that one night."

Wow!

Phil


At 22:03 08/26/2010, Sean McCandless wrote:
>Hi all. I spent an hour outside watching the moon. I had 39 birds 
>and 2 unidentified flying animals and 3 jets. The unidentified maybe 
>bats, maybe birds, who knows. 37 birds headed South, one fluttered 
>down and one headed North.
>Most were simply bird sp. I had a few I could work with, I feel I 
>saw some sandpipers, another Woodcock, as small heron possibly 
>Green, a woodpecker and it had a shallow flap similar to Red headed 
>flight. A couple flycatchers, a thrush type, 2 birds that appeared 
>to have the shape of chimney swifts, but again I thought they were 
>night roosting birds, so I don't know what else that could be close 
>to swift in shape. I heard a Bobolink fly over head as well.
>I am having allot of fun with this. I can only speculate to what I 
>am seeing. Unless I hear it, but there is no way to hear the birds I 
>am seeing because they are so far away.

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Phil Davis      Davidsonville, Maryland     USA
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