Waterfowl on Weather Radar:

Migrating ducks appear on radar as intense clouds of color erupting from stopovers

If a stopover site is close enough to a radar unit and sufficiently isolated from other source wetlands,

we can use weather radar to observe the magnitude and timing of migrant departures throughout a season

These data can be applied to address a multitude of research questions:

1. Stopover Duration

2. Migration Corridors

3. Weather-based migration models

This project is being conducted by Ph.D. candidate, Ben O’Neal, of the University of Illinois, Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences and the Illinois Natural History Survey (bjoneal@illinois.edu), Dr. Joshua Stafford of the Illinois Natural History Survey, Forbes Biological Station, and Dr. Ronald Larkin of the Illinois Natural History Survey.  The project (W-148-R) is supported by the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act (Pittman-Robertson), with funds administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Dick Warner and Pat Weatherhead of the University of Illinois and Ray Marshalla, John Buhnerkempe, and Dan Holm of the IDNR advised the project.  

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