BirdCast’s Live Migration snapshot at 12 May 2026, 10:50pm EDT (from birdcast.org, Univ. of Illinois, Purdue & Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

13 May 2026

While we slept 3.88 million birds flew over Allegheny County last night! BirdCast’s Migration Dashboard as of 5:20am shows a huge jump in migration.

portion of screenshot: BirdCast Migration Dashboard for Allegheny County, PA. Data for the night of 12 May 2026, 5:20am

Here’s the rest of BirdCast’s Migration Dashboard for Allegheny County, PA showing data at 5:20am while the birds were still flying before dawn.

screenshot from BirdCast Migration Dashboard for Allegheny County, PA. Data for the night of 12 May 2026, 5:20am

Will this huge amount of bird traffic translate into a lot of birds today? I have two answers to this.

1. Not a lot of birds: It seems that high migration means birds pass over and don’t land *and* that birds we had yesterday decided to leave. Interestingly, the Flight Direction and Speed graph shows fewer birds in flight at 5am but those birds sped up as if they had a destination outside our county and they were running out of time.
2. Yes, many new arrivals? Could be.

What just happened? The only way to find out is to get outdoors.

Meanwhile check out Birdcast’s Migration Dashboard for Allegheny County for daily statistics and the ever-changing list of expected birds.