(Phys.org) -- At sunset on a spring night, tree-dwelling
songbirds take off in a flurry of wings from the lower Delmarva
Peninsula near Oyster, Va. The peninsula is a temporary home to
hundreds of species of migratory birds. In spring they fly north
to boreal forests of New England and Canada, returning from
places as far south as Central and South America. Scientists are
hoping to learn where the prime stopover spots are on this route
with the help of ground radar set up by NASA to improve
satellite measurements of rainfall. Weather radar detects
raindrops in the air, says Jeff Buler, radar ornithologist at
University of Delaware, "and it essentially sees birds as sort
of big bags of water." The Nature Conservancy signed a Space Act
Agreement that will provide a location in the Virginia Coast
Reserve to support NASAs Precipitation Science programs, in
particular the international Global Precipitation Measurement
(GPM) mission, led by NASA and the Japan Space Exploration
Agency, that will provide the next gen