Weather can have effects on both breeding and migratory patterns.
Credit: Garth Lenz
We all know that weather can affect the breeding and migratory patterns for a number of birds. From extremes like hurricanes and storms to more subtle weather events like a calm, clear night that might make migration a bit smoother, weather can have a large impact on bird behavior anywhere from a local level to a continental level.
While understanding these patterns would be most immediately useful to birders at a local level, understanding the big picture and what is going on in other parts of the continent can help provide a larger context for what one might experience in their own neck of the woods. For example, unusual conditions in breeding habitat up north in places like the boreal forest could affect the timing of migration for certain species as they travel south into and through the United States.
My friend and colleague Ned Brinkley is the editor of a journal that every birder should subscribe to called North American Birds (published by the American Birding Association). Every issue includes a column titled “The Changing Seasons”, which summarizes bird observations from around the America’s and paints a picture of changes in bird distribution and abundance and new surprises in our undestanding of how many of what species occur when and where.
I would highly recommend reading it if you are interested in learning more about larger weather patterns and how they can even impact the birds you see at a local level. This issue had a nice section on the boreal forest (also known as North America’s bird nursery) where he acknowledges the importance of tracking trends in our northern forests despite the difficulty of gathering sightings, mostly due to the lower populations of those northern regions.
Here is the most recent Changing Seasons article from their summer issue (PDF):
They also archive previous versions on this website:
