A Quantitative Study of the Nocturnal Migration of BirdsLowery, George H., Jr.
Science
A Quantitative Study of the Nocturnal Migration of Birds
Lowery, George H., Jr.
Birds -- Migration
In April and May a high pressure area prevails over the region of the
Gulf of Mexico. As the season progresses, fewer and fewer cold-front
storms reach the Gulf area, and as a result the high pressure area
over the Gulf is more stable. Since the winds move clockwise around a
"high," this gives a general northwesterly trajectory to the air
currents in the vicinity of the Yucatán Peninsula. In the western area
of the Gulf, the movement of the air mass is in general only slightly
west of north, but in the central Gulf states and lower Mississippi
Valley the trend is on the average northeasterly. In the eastern part
of the Great Plains, however, the average circulation veers again
slightly west of north. The over-all vector resultants of bird
migration at stations in 1948, as mapped in Figure 39, correspond
closely to this general pattern.
Meteorological data are available for drawing a visual comparison
between the weather pattern and the fight pattern on individual
nights. I have plotted the directional results of four nights of
observation on the Daily Weather Maps for those dates, showing surface
conditions (Figures 40, 42, 44 and 46). Each sector vector is drawn in
proportion to its percentage of the corresponding nightly station
density; hence the vectors at each station are on an independent
scale. The vector resultants, distinguished by the large arrowheads,
are all assigned the same length, but the nightly and average hourly
station densities are tabulated in the legends under each figure. For
each map showing the directions of flight, there is on the facing page
another map showing the directions of winds aloft at 2,000 and 4,000
feet above mean sea level on the same date (see Figures 41-47). The
maps of the wind direction show also the velocities.
Unfortunately, since there is no way of analyzing the sector trends in
terms of the elevations of the birds involved, we have no certain way
of deciding whether to compare a given trend with the winds at 2,000,
1,000, or 0 feet. Nor do we know exactly what wind corresponds to the
average or median flight level, which would otherwise be a good
altitude at which to study the net trend or vector resultant.
Furthermore, the Daily Weather Map illustrates conditions that
obtained at 12:30 A. M. (CST); the winds aloft are based on
observations made at 10:00 P. M. (CST); and the data on birds covers
in most cases the better part of the whole night. Add to all this the
fact that the flight vectors, their resultants, and the wind
representations themselves are all approximations, and it becomes
apparent that only the roughest sort of correlations are to be
expected.
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