Thursday, February 18, 2010

Weather or not to go birdwatching

Driving to work today was like barrelling through an enormous cotton wool tunnel - from beginning to end, visibility never got more than 50 yards or so, and at times the fog was even thicker than that.

But although it might, on the face of it, seem like the worst birdwatching weather possible, there are times when a bit of fog is the birder's friend. Six weeks from now, for example, when spring migration is well and truly in full swing and everything's on the move, a bit of early morning fog can be the signal to get down to your local reserve and start scanning, because it can ground all sorts of birds that might otherwise overfly your patch in the night without stopping.

In future issues of Bird Watching, we're going to be paying closer attention to the weather than we have in the past. We won't be making any rash forecasts, but we will be looking at how certain conditions can bring in certain birds.

We'd also like to know your weather-related birding tips. And we don't mean "always carry an umbrella"!

1 comment:

CE Webster said...

An interesting post--I really never took all the weather conditions into account when birdwatching. But, I will be keeping track of that now.