Enjoy the Beauty of Fall Bird Migration from the Comfort of Your Home

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Fall bird migration is officially peaking, and while you might be tempted to embark on a journey to find them, there are plenty of ways to enjoy the season from the comfort of your home.

Depending on where you reside, there are different birds to keep your eyes peeled for: In New York, you're likely to see songbirds like warblers, swallows, and sparrows. At the end of the summer, Southern California waves goodbye to migrating cliff swallows, hooded orioles, and black-headed grosbeaks. In Montana, you can spot great blue herons and osprey. But no matter where you are, you don’t have to trek into the mountains or climb up into a tree to catch a glimpse of some of the estimated 3.5 billion birds that travel across North America each year.

“Twice a year, hordes of birds fly thousands of miles through the night to grace your home turf for a few days or weeks,” Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Hugh Powell told USA Today. “But they don’t come in a steady convoy—it’s more like a stuttering stream of flurries and pauses.”

One minimal-effort way to spot your favorite birds is using a migration forecast map, like BirdCast. The maps show where the birds should be, as predicted by scientists at Colorado State University and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and they're updated every six hours. The tool also gives you current locations of migrating birds, including how many are flying through your area at the moment.

BirdCast also posts on TikTok, where you can learn how many birds made their trek that day. However, these maps mostly resemble a heat map—meaning you see the density of bird groups, not the actual birds themselves.

While you’re watching the crowds of birds make their way across the country, you can