The last five birding days have gone from sub-par to awful. None of these days had large numbers of individual birds, though Sunday at least had a decent species count wherein you could observe singles of a variety of warblers, like Chestnut-sided and Black-throated Blue.

This morning was eerily bad. I had only two warblers, Northern Parula and Prairie Warbler (which I have had every day now for a week) and well under 30 total species. Last year on the same date I had 20 warblers and 70 species.

The strange thing is that temperatures have been only a bit cool, in the low 50s at dawn, and winds have been light, though usually with an easterly or northerly component.

Some say that all it takes is light easterly winds to deflect migrants to the west of New York City (and the East Coast in general), so that migration may be happening and it may be passing us by. I don’t know. eBird maps do not show many warbler observations to the west and north, but these areas tend to be less well-reported.

I will look forward to reading the next weekly BirdCast projections, which should be coming out on Friday the 3rd. According to Weather.com, the winds should have an easterly component for the next ten (!!) days, with only a small southerly component beginning on Sunday. This cannot be good.