Hawk Cliff Hawkwatch Port Stanley, Ontario, Canada Daily Raptor Counts: Oct 24, 2021 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Species Day's Count Month Total Season Total ------------------ ----------- -------------- -------------- Black Vulture 0 1 1 Turkey Vulture 1291 16982 19231 Osprey 1 12 63 Bald Eagle 9 201 380 Northern Harrier 12 257 623 Sharp-shinned Hawk 18 1938 3164 Cooper's Hawk 1 149 182 Northern Goshawk 0 12 12 Red-shouldered Hawk 36 460 462 Broad-winged Hawk 0 9 23656 Red-tailed Hawk 103 1355 1424 Rough-legged Hawk 0 3 3 Golden Eagle 11 38 38 American Kestrel 0 476 1198 Merlin 1 45 83 Peregrine Falcon 0 59 111 Unknown Accipiter 0 0 0 Unknown Buteo 12 12 12 Unknown Falcon 0 0 0 Unknown Eagle 0 0 0 Unknown Raptor 0 0 0 Swainson's Hawk 0 2 3 Total: 1495 22011 50646 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Observation start time: 07:00:00 Observation end time: 15:00:00 Total observation time: 8 hours Official Counter: Dave Brown Observers: Visitors: Lots of visitors today with it being the OFO outing though limited to 20 participants due to Covid procedures. There were a few other visitors to the site today as well. A big thanks to everyone who helped spot birds today especially when the sky was pure blue with clouds to help. The OFO group was fun and I think were pretty excited to see the Golden Eagles today and many also got to see their first Red-shouldered Hawks. Weather: A VERY slow start to the day thanks to fog first thing that had to burn off and basically calm winds. The fog did dissipate farily quickly within the first hour and a very light breeze came up from the NE. The wind picked up in the 3rd hour but then completely died again to nothing mid-morning. It then switched completely around to very light from the SW then S and stayed there the rest of the afternoon. The temp was quite cool to start at 3C but got to 11C by noon and stayed there for the rest of the day. There was virtually no clouds for the first several hours then suddenly it jumped to 50% and then 100% and stayed there till it started to rain as the large low approached from the SW and shut down the flight right around 3:00 pm EST. Raptor Observations: The raptor flight was VERY SLOW getting started today with just 13 birds in the first 3 hours and ZERO birds in hour 2. With it being the OFO outing today I was worried we were never going to see the raptors get going. However, we started to see TVs and some buteos moving just to our north and then I spotted a very low young Golden Eagle that crossed through north of the ravine. In the interest of ensuring the OFO folks had birds to look at I had the entire group hop in their cars and head a few hundred metres up the road to what we call the "B&B" location. As soon as we exited the cars we spotted some nice kettles of TVs and buteos right out in front of us above the field on the east side of Fairview Rd. The flight continued to improve and the birds went a bit north again so everyone hopped in their cars once more and drove north and east a little bit till we ended about 100m north of Roberts Line which put us just north of the main flight line. For the last hour we then went back around the half km back to the B&B location and finished there as the rain started. Total birds for the day was 1494 with lots of TVs(1291) along with good numbers of Redtails(103) and Red-shoulders(36). Our finaly tally of Golden Eagles was 11 (which matched the total from Saturday) with 8 of them either juvenile / immature looking birds (with white that varied from extensive to almost non-existent) and 3 of them that appeared to be either sub-adult / adult looking birds. Luckily, everyone got to see at least 2 or 3 GOEAs fairly well and for a few of the folks there today it was a species they'd never seen before. There was only one falcon for the day, a Merlin that caught some sort of songbird on the fly and was holding it then suddenly dropped it and had to dive down and recatch it! I'm not sure if I've ever seen a Merlin have to do that before. :) Non-raptor Observations: While the raptor movement early was slow there were passerines everywhere in the shrubs right behind where we were sitting at the "Sharpie Alley" spot. A couple of nice surprises for the day were a young Chestnut-sided Warbler (which I was able to photograph) and an adult female Black-throated Blue Warbler. The female BTBW seemed to be hanging around with a nice foraging flock of both Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned Kinglets and as I watched this bird pulled a large worm or bug off of a leaf right behind me and ate it. There were lots of other non-raptors as well with WT Sparrows, Am. Robin, Am. Goldfinch, Am. Crow, Carolina Wrens, Black-capped Chickadess, RB and WB Nutchatches, many huge flocks of Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds, European Starlings, Purple Finches, Eastern Bluebirds, DC Cormorant, Blue Jays, N. Flickers, Downy, Hairy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Hermit Thrushes, Eastern Phoebe, Mourning Doves, N. Cardinals, Eastern Towhee, Gray Catbird, Cedar Waxwings, Chipping Sparrow, Canada Geese and right at the end of the day a flight of 10 Sandhill Cranes that came low at us from the west then circled up and headed NW before turning east again and passing us once more but easily twice the height they were on the first pass. We had great views of this flock both times. Predictions: Monday will almost certainly be a washout with heavy rainfall warnings in place for much of southern Ontario. However, Tuesday, Wednesday and possibly Thursday at this point the forecast is for moderate to strong winds from a northerly or north-easterly direction and a mix of sun and cloud for all 3 days. If this forecast proves out the flight could be very good and the northerly winds should help push the birds down to the lake shore and concentrate the flight at the hawk watch. Fingers crossed! :) ======================================================================== Report submitted by Dave Brown (thebrowns@ezlink.ca) Hawk Cliff Hawkwatch information may be found at: http://www.ezlink.ca/~thebrowns/HawkCliff/index.htm More site information at hawkcount.org: https://hawkcount.org/siteinfo.php?rsite=392