Night Migrants at Schoelkopf!
Each fall, hundreds if not thousands of migrating birds can be seen from inside Schoelkopf Stadium on Cornell University Campus.
When the weather cooporates, north winds bring night migrating birds south over Ithaca. If strong south winds and/or bad weather
keep migrants grounded for a few days, evenings such as this can produce impressive flights that can often be heard as loose flocks
travel overhead sending a bewildering array of "seep"s, "zeet"s, "buzz"s, and "squak"s out into the darkness.
Thanks to the excessively bright lights of Schoelkopf stadium (assisted by a low cloud cieling), many of these birds are drawn to the
bright light like a moth to a porch light -- resulting in the occasional "fall out" of sparrows, warblers, shore birds, etc. at the stadium.
While I have yet to get any good audio recordings of this event, here are a few pictures from a pretty good night we had on 10 Sept, 2007.
Tom Johnson reported 23 species from the 4th, and this night we collectively had over 40 species including about 19 Warbler species.
Here are a few shots of the birders. We ended up seeing most of the warblers reported (all but 1 or 2 if I recall) from the trees
below the left light in the first photo (see the 3rd photo). Farther down this page are photos of one of the dozens of Savannah Sparrows
seen that night (they tended to come land on the field and were the most visible of all species), as well as a Palm Warbler (note the
tail movements) -- both of which were seen on some of the bleachers up in the stands.
Note: I've named the image files including the time the photos were taken. However, I believe my camera was off by an hour - so
1 hour should be added to all the mentioned times. [e.g. the Eumorpha moth was seen around 12:50am not 11:50pm.)