Hawk Cliff Hawkwatch Port Stanley, Ontario, Canada Daily Raptor Counts: Oct 23, 2022 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Species Day's Count Month Total Season Total ------------------ ----------- -------------- -------------- Black Vulture 0 0 0 Turkey Vulture 460 7608 8640 Osprey 0 0 61 Bald Eagle 3 71 200 Northern Harrier 23 193 580 Sharp-shinned Hawk 221 1430 3574 Cooper's Hawk 16 102 173 Northern Goshawk 1 2 2 Red-shouldered Hawk 20 46 51 Broad-winged Hawk 2 19 48948 Red-tailed Hawk 51 368 429 Rough-legged Hawk 0 0 1 Golden Eagle 0 1 1 American Kestrel 7 428 1500 Merlin 1 37 125 Peregrine Falcon 1 16 29 Unknown Accipiter 0 0 0 Unknown Buteo 0 0 0 Unknown Falcon 0 0 0 Unknown Eagle 0 0 0 Unknown Raptor 0 0 0 Swainson's Hawk 0 0 1 Total: 806 10321 64315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Observation start time: 07:00:00 Observation end time: 15:00:00 Total observation time: 8 hours Official Counter: Tom Bolohan Observers: Dave Brown, Ken Wootton Visitors: Lots of visitors today including the OFO group on their usual fall outing to Hawk Cliff. A big thankyou to all of them for a fun and enjoyable day and for sticking around to get some great birds. :) Thanks to Tom B and Ken for making sure the official count got done for today as well. Weather: Beautiful weather today with lots of sun and cloud but unfortunately the winds were from the SE and then SSE for the entire count period. This is the worst wind direction at the Hawk Cliff site because it pushes the migrants inland away from the lake shore. Temp was comfortable starting at 9C and got up to 22C by the afternoon. Raptor Observations: Luckily we were able to move the group from the OFO outing up to our supplementary watch site (what we call the B&B site) a couple of hundred metres north of Dexter Line. This is where we've always set up to watch when the winds have blown the raptors inland slightly. We had quality rather than quantity for today's flight with another low flying Golden Eagle right at tree top height, several beautiful Red-shouldered Hawks right overhead and our 2nd Northern Goshawk for this fall. It was a young bird that initially came along lower than the tree tops and just to our north before gaining some height and circling about 3 times almost overhead providing fantastic views and photo ops. :) We also had a very dark western Red-tailed Hawk (Calurus subspecies) which is very uncommon for this location again right overhead giving jaw-dropping looks for the group and more photo ops! Non-raptor Observations: I was able to take the group for a bit of a hike before the raptors really got moving and we did get some good passerines which I'll include in the following eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S121271261 ======================================================================== Report submitted by Dave Brown (ez.raptor1210@gmail.com) 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