After my gigs tonight, I decided to spend some time with the moon, the
migrants, a glass of red, some mosquitos and my iPhone (in video mode)
pressed up against my scope.

I don't know if one must be signed up on Facebook to view the videos...

But have if you're able, I took some movies of the moon migrants for
all to review and speculate what flew over West Annapolis tonight.
Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/Wahzoh

Dan Haas
West Annapolis




On Thursday, August 26, 2010, Phil Davis <> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
> ==================================
> Phil Davis      Davidsonville, Maryland     USA
>                 mailto:[log in to unmask]
> ==================================