[CT Birds] Westport morning flight - Redpoll/Northern Goshawk

[streatham2003 at aol.com]

Hi All,



?



After noticing the predicted NW winds last night I shook off a Turkey induced coma
and headed out to Burying Hill Beach in Westport early to observe some?morning
migration. There were huge
numbers of migrants yesterday morning mainly in the form of Robins, Cedar
Waxwings (as much as I would have liked to find one of there northern brethren
I couldn't) and various blackbirds. An essential tool that I have added to my ID arsenal over the
last couple of months is the Michael O'Brien & Bill Evans Flight Calls of
Migratory Birds CD-Rom. Flight calls sound kind of daunting (at least they did
initially to me at least) but actually starting out with just your diurnal late
fall winter migrants really narrows the field to just a few species to have to
start to learn and makes it fairly manageable.



?



I then headed over to Sherwood Island?at 8:00am to meet Christine Guarino, however by then the show was all but over with just a few
last flocks heading through. In my experience the first hour after sunrise and
even the few minutes beforehand seem to be the most important times to be out
trying to locate these diurnal migrants. From these straggler flocks I did
however manage to locate and?one calling Common Redpoll as it made it's
way westwards over the park.?Chrissy?and I then spent the
next couple of?hours rather fruitlessly looking for interesting birds that
might have touched down in the park, the one exception being a particularly
impressively sized Northern Goshawk that we flushed out of a tree behind west beach
that rapidly made its way out towards Compo.



?



Regards,



?



Luke
Tiller



Wilton





>From Luke Tiller and Christine Guarino


11/23 - Westport, Sherwood Island SP -- 1 Common Redpoll and 1 Northern Goshawk and a few Purple Finches (flyovers) and 1 Red-breasted Nuthatch.




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