Hi everyone, For the spring migration season I am going to try to post weekly "migration forecasts", with predictions for the following 6 days. These are mainly focused on southern Ontario, as that is the region I am most familiar with, but I will include comments on other areas of Ontario occasionally. *Please note that these are just my personal predictions & are by no means a sure thing. So if you consult only this to plan your trips, don't blame me if there aren't many birds that day : ) Ontario Migration Forecast - April 4 to April 10 Overview Finally, some warm weather on the horizon! A low pressure system will be moving east across the continent towards Ontario during the week, which means southerly winds and warmer temperatures (after Monday the daily highs will be in the double digits). This should be the first extended period of good migration conditions for the province this spring, and birds will be moving in large numbers (at least for early April). Some birds that were slightly behind schedule will be arriving en masse, and a good number of new arrivals will be showing up as well. - Likely New Arrivals This Week; * (Note. By “new arrivals” I mean low numbers of these birds, or the first one or two, showing up in the province. Usually Southwest Ontario gets birds about a week or more before other areas in the province too) - Black-crowned Night-Heron - Osprey - Pectoral Sandpiper - American Golden Plover - Caspian Tern - Forester’s Tern - Virginia Rail - Purple Martin - Barn Swallow - Northern Rough-winged Swallow - Ruby-crowned Kinglet - Brown Thrasher - Hermit Thrush - Field Sparrow - Swamp Sparrow - Vesper Sparrow - Savannah Sparrow - Eastern Towhee - Pine Warbler - Yellow-rumped Warbler - Louisiana Waterthrush - Migrants arriving in large numbers: - Wood Duck - Blue-winged Teal - Lesser Yellowlegs - Greater Yellowlegs - Wilson’s Snipe - Great Blue Heron - Great Egret - Yellow-bellied Sapsucker - Golden-crowned Kinglet - Sharp-shinned Hawk - Tree Swallow - Bonaparte’s Gull - Fox Sparrow - Dark-eyed Junco - Eastern Phoebe - Eastern Bluebird - Northern Flicker - Purple Finch - Rarities to look for this week: - Eurasian Wigeon (especially around Lake Erie) - Western Grebe on western Lake Ontario - Rare geese mixed in with Canada and Snow Goose flocks in Eastern Ontario Daily Forecasts - Monday, April 4th Starting off fairly cold, but warming up as the day goes on. Light east winds, with stronger southwest winds just reaching into southern Ontario later in the day. Maybe some Precipitation later in the day. Birds should still be moving, though likely in fairly small numbers. - Tuesday, April 5th By Tuesday things will be starting to warm up, and as the day goes on temperatures should crack double digits in southern Ontario. The wind will be fairly light out of the southwest and there shouldn’t be much perception at all. I expect there will be a noticeable uptick in migrants across the province, and it should be an enjoyable day to be out birding. - Wednesday, April 6th Even warmer than the previous day, with strong wind out of the south. As the low pressure system approaches from the west, a band of rain will be passing through the province… however as of writing this (on Sunday), it looks like the majority of the morning should be mainly rain free. Wednesday should be a great day for new arrivals in southern Ontario, depending a bit on how the rain plays out. - Thursday, April 7th For the past 4 weeks, Thursday has been the best migration day of the week, and this week the pattern continues! As of right now it looks even better than Wednesday… strong south winds, temperatures in the double digits, but this time hardly any precipitation in the way for southern Ontario. It could very well be the best migration day we have had in Ontario so far this year, and a large number of birds should be arriving. - Friday, April 8th As the low pressure passes east of Ontario, things will cool down a bit (though still well above freezing) and the wind will become less favourable for migration. There may also be some rain around the province. I expect it won’t be as good as Wednesday or Thursday for new migrants, but there should still be birds around to find. - Saturday April 9th/Sunday April 10th It’s pretty far in the future to know how things will play out for sure, but as of right now Saturday is looking fairly cold in the province with north winds… with Sunday being warmer with southwest winds. So in that case Sunday would be the better birding day. Looking further into the future, next week is looking very promising with very warm temperatures and long distance southwest winds. If that actually happens, there should be a massive influx in birds and likely some rarities showing up. *Summary* Wednesday and Thursday are looking to be the best birding days this week, with Thursday being slightly better depending when the rain hits. Birding anywhere in southern (or even eastern) Ontario should be really enjoyable for finding new spring migrants. The counties around Lake Erie, western Lake Ontario and southern Lake Huron will offer the best birding (in terms of overall numbers of new birds). Exploring Pelee/Rondeau later in the week could yield the first Louisiana Waterthrush of the year, as well as other newly arrived songbirds. Goose migration should be peaking in Ottawa region this week as well. Websites that I use frequently Windy (wind, temperature, precipitation and more) - windy.com Birdcast (good for large scale trends) - https://birdcast.info Accueweather (an easier to read weather site that is normally accurate) - https://www.accuweather.com If anyone is on Twitter, I post almost daily about weather birding related things. My handle is @ONweatherbirder