Holiday Beach Hawk Watch Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada Daily Raptor Counts: Oct 17, 2019 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Species Day's Count Month Total Season Total ------------------ ----------- -------------- -------------- Turkey Vulture 5034 35325 36183 Osprey 0 10 35 Bald Eagle 17 64 156 Northern Harrier 12 122 364 Sharp-shinned Hawk 224 2030 4421 Cooper's Hawk 20 117 179 Northern Goshawk 1 3 3 Red-shouldered Hawk 5 52 52 Broad-winged Hawk 0 863 25773 Red-tailed Hawk 51 246 390 Rough-legged Hawk 0 0 0 Golden Eagle 1 2 2 American Kestrel 18 438 1659 Merlin 2 19 100 Peregrine Falcon 1 22 43 Unknown Accipiter 0 3 5 Unknown Buteo 0 7 8 Unknown Eagle 0 0 0 Unknown Falcon 0 0 0 Unknown Raptor 0 0 4 Swainson's Hawk 0 0 1 Total: 5386 39323 69378 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Observation start time: 07:00:00 Observation end time: 16:00:00 Total observation time: 9 hours Official Counter: Maryse Gagné Observers: Dave Martin, Elizabeth Kent, Hugh Kent, Jeremy Bensette, Jim McCoy, Linda Wladarski Visitors: Huge thank you to our many visitors today, you all helped so much spotting raptors! Thank you to Jim McCoy, Tina and Stan from Ohio, Noel and Juliette, Jeremy Bensette, Dave Martin and Linda Wladarski for all their help! We also welcomed a group of high school student lead by Claire from ERCA. Today we really a wonderful day of counting not only because of the raptors, but also because all the lovely company we had on the tower, thank you to all! Weather: We had a relatively nice day on the tower, the sun was shining which made the cooler temperatures more enjoyable! The wind blew quite strongly from the North-West at about 30km/h and we had a very generous cloud cover most of the day. Raptor Observations: What a lovely day we had today! The North-Western winds brought us many raptors including some Red-tailed (51) and Red-shouldered Hawks (5), finally! We also counted over 5,000 Turkey Vultures, 224 Sharp-shinned Hawks, 20 Cooper's Hawks, and 12 Northern Harriers. Falcons also made an appearance; 19 Kestrels, 2 Merlins and 1 Peregrine Falcon that terrorized the Ospreys and ducks on the marsh before migrating. Now our raptor highlights were quite wonderful as they included a Northern Goshawk spotted in early afternoon and a sub-adult Golden Eagle spotted at 1:58. After some slower days, we were very happy to see so many raptors migrating! Non-raptor Observations: Not as many non-raptor species flying over us today, but our highlight of the day was a Clay-colored Sparrow spotted at the base of the tower, and 4 Sandhill Cranes North of the tower. Few more ducks out on the lake, including 287 Gadwalls, 309 Ring-necked Ducks, 52 Wigeon, and 15 Pintails. We also counted 2,580 Blue Jays, 230 Goldfinches, 232 Red-winged Blackbirds and 4 Rusty Blackbirds. https://ebird.org/checklist/S60703995 Predictions: Tomorrow we are expecting more winds from the North-West, but they will not be as strong as today, only blowing at 10km/h. As the wind is supposed to stay steady North-West all night, it might bring us more songbirds for the morning. Since the wind will be favourable, we should be seeing a good number of raptors migrating, hopefully even more buteos. Tomorrow will be a good day for raptor migration! ======================================================================== Report submitted by Maryse Gagné (maryse.gagne35@gmail.com) Holiday Beach Hawk Watch information may be found at: http://hbmo.ca/ More site information at hawkcount.org: http://hawkcount.org/siteinfo.php?rsite=100