Detroit River Hawk Watch Brownstown, Michigan, USA Daily Raptor Counts: Oct 05, 2021 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Species Day's Count Month Total Season Total ------------------ ----------- -------------- -------------- Black Vulture 0 0 0 Turkey Vulture 221 656 4774 Osprey 0 1 20 Bald Eagle 0 1 35 Northern Harrier 10 66 262 Sharp-shinned Hawk 127 661 3575 Cooper's Hawk 1 1 12 Northern Goshawk 0 0 0 Red-shouldered Hawk 1 1 6 Broad-winged Hawk 3 5 22227 Swainson's Hawk 0 0 0 Red-tailed Hawk 11 13 74 Rough-legged Hawk 0 0 0 Golden Eagle 0 0 1 American Kestrel 5 62 711 Merlin 1 1 24 Peregrine Falcon 2 6 32 Unknown Accipiter 0 0 0 Unknown Buteo 0 0 1 Unknown Falcon 0 0 0 Unknown Eagle 0 0 0 Unknown Raptor 0 0 0 Total: 382 1474 31754 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Observation start time: 10:00:00 Observation end time: 15:00:00 Total observation time: 5 hours Official Counter: Kevin Georg Observers: Andrew Sturgess, Don Sherwood, Erika Van Kirk, Rosemary Brady Visitors: We are still dealing with the residue of the Covid 19 situation. The workers at the site will be in an enclosed area that is designed for four people only. We still love to interact and share our love of hawk watching with visitors. Feel free to ask questions and look over our shoulders to help you follow the birds. Watch the weather for favorable forecasts as the birds are predictable to some degree based on weather situations. One other thing of note this year; the boat-launch bathroom building has been shut down for the foreseeable future due to plumbing issues. There are Porta-Johns in the parking lot should you require them. Weather: Although the NE winds and rising barometer came to pass as prophesied, the weather gods threw us another curve ball with a layer of thick, fog-like cloud mass of 100% opacity under the regular cloud deck. We spent a slow morning playing “Waiter, there’s a sharpie in my soup”. We suspected the upper layer had some breaks in it but we did not get a chance to see it before the mid-afternoon hours. A few patches of blue opened up then and the birds started to move, the situation was not stable though and we alternated between full cloud and short peeks at blue fissures the rest of the afternoon. Winds grew gradually to near ten mph but could not blow away all the crud from the sky. That barometer was higher than most days at 30.24” before tailing off a little at day’s end. This is not the look we usually associate with that kind of barometric pressure so I have to assume it is a corollary of the curse on the Detroit Lions and that we were collateral damage. Raptor Observations: We started the watch a little later today at 1100 since the weather was less than promising. It got off to a fairly slow start but picked up a little when the cloud cover showed a few cracks. In October, we look forward to a variety of birds including buteos that we normally see few of in September. We had a little hors d’oeuvre today with eleven red-tails and a single red-shouldered hawk. When the skies cleared a little, we managed to see what should be on the fold-out in the October issue, the turkey vulture. We sighted two hundred and twenty-one and this number should continue to grow, visibility permitting. Ten harriers were present and accounted for. One Cooper’s hawk was counted. We did have a falcon hat trick again with five kestrels, two peregrines, and one irascible merlin that made a pest of himself; relentlessly harassing a sharpie that made the mistake of invading its personal space. Sharpies started our day and also finished it, ending with a total of one hundred and twenty-seven. Non-raptor Observations: Today started slowly for other species, the morning skies were nearly empty of anything with wings. Later, first the swallows and then the gulls, took up their hawking positions in the prime flight paths making a nuisance of themselves by obstructing the view. Fifty mute swans were seen out by the rock jetties this morning. They seem to congregate there each season. Later we will see tundra swans, or rather, we will hear them whooping as they fly overhead. A few shorebirds were seen flying by today but with difficult viewing conditions it wasn’t possible to determine the species. Predictions: Tomorrow looks to be a better day, at least on paper. We should see more sun and similar, but milder, NE winds. The barometer will peak tomorrow around midday before starting to fall again as another rain system is on the way on Thursday night. The relative humidity will remain high again, like today. It dropped one per cent today from 88% to 87%. Hopefully, we won’t see fog like conditions forming around us again tomorrow. After seeing the birds fly today when the sun was visible, I hope that tomorrow will be much better as the cloud cover should drop from 75% to around 50%. ======================================================================== Report submitted by Andrew Sturgess (ajyes72@gmail.com) Detroit River Hawk Watch information may be found at: http://www.detroitriverhawkwatch.org More site information at hawkcount.org: https://hawkcount.org/siteinfo.php?rsite=285 Count data submitted via Dunkadoo - Project info at: https://dunkadoo.org/explore/detroit-river-international-wildlife-refuge/detroit-river-hawk-watch-fall-2021