Allegheny Front Migration Observatory

Last Wednesday I got an unexpected opportunity to visit Allegheny Front Migration Observatory in West Virginia. Never one to turn up an opportunity I volunteered to spend a day trying to record flight calls of migrating birds.

Set on a long ridge with great views east to the Appalachians the observatory catches birds as they try to cross the lowest point of the ridge. When the wind blows from the correct direction (west), the birds which come from the east are forced to fly very low when the encounter the west winds at the top of the ridge. Its at this point that they are caught in the observatory's mist nets.

I wasn't involved in the actual catching effort. instead my job was to assist with the recording of flight calls made by migrating warblers. This involved placing birds in sound proof containers with a microphones and playing similar calls to them in the hope of eliciting a response. When this happened the call was picked up by the microphone and displayed in real-time on a computer. It was really interesting to see and hear the magnitude of the different between species. The aim of making these records is to build a library of calls which hopefully will allow automated monitoring stations to record species, age, sex and maybe more about birds migrating past these stations, so it turned out to be a really great day, as a season best 472 were caught during the morning with a great array of species available to record.

Cape May Warbler

Blackburnian Warbler

Tennessee Warbler