Fall has certainly set in around here. The nights are getting cooler, days shorter, and the birds are moving. I'm not sure if I will be sticking around eastern PA for the second consecutive Fall, but while I'm here I plan on doing a good bit of birding and Hawkwatching. After hearing about some of the new and exciting research being done by Lewis Grove and Mike Lanzone, I'm really going to try and focus more on night flight calls than I have in the past. Mike and Lew just returned from Cape May, where they set out several microphones (and interesing homemade combination of hi and low-tech setups) at the alpaca farm near Higbee's Beach in Cape May. One of the mics is even solar powered. With these recordings, combined with radar images from NEXRAD, and working with David LaPuma and www.woodcreeper.com, they will eventually be able to point to a dot on a radar screen and identify the bird(s) to species. For now I'll be biding my time, looking for fall fieldwork, and hopefully doing some birding.
