Detroit River Hawk Watch Brownstown, Michigan, USA Daily Raptor Counts: Nov 16, 2019 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Species Day's Count Month Total Season Total ------------------ ----------- -------------- -------------- Black Vulture 0 0 0 Turkey Vulture 348 3844 52052 Osprey 0 0 35 Bald Eagle 0 14 92 Northern Harrier 8 65 330 Sharp-shinned Hawk 21 225 4082 Cooper's Hawk 3 27 110 Northern Goshawk 0 0 1 Red-shouldered Hawk 144 392 587 Broad-winged Hawk 0 0 64336 Swainson's Hawk 0 0 0 Red-tailed Hawk 1858 2990 3848 Rough-legged Hawk 1 10 11 Golden Eagle 10 27 31 American Kestrel 0 4 702 Merlin 0 1 32 Peregrine Falcon 0 6 52 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: 2393 7605 126302 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Observation start time: 09:00:00 Observation end time: 17:00:00 Total observation time: 7.5 hours Official Counter: Kevin Georg Observers: Andrew Sturgess, Don Sherwood, Rosemary Brady Visitors: We had some hardy souls come out today. Will made the trip from A Squared. Michelle and Bill came out to play. Deana also visited. Luckily there were plenty of birds to see. Weather: Well, that's more like it! Rare NE winds with the barometer at a high for the season of 30.5", what's not to like? We had sunshine for part of the day which lifted our vitamin D levels if nothing else. Clouds did roll in but dispersed late in the afternoon. Let's just say the wind in our face was invigorating instead of chilling since the birds kept us warm. Raptor Observations: The red-tails were King for a day with 1858 birds coming early and often in small kettles all day long. We were a little short on these birds so it was nice to finally have a big day. Turkey vultures were a distant second with 348. Red-shoulders did their part to make it a special day with 144 birds interspersed with the red-tails. Sharp-shins are still showing up with 21, along with 3 Cooper's hawks. Only 1 rough-legged was spotted, can't help but feel we left some on the table there. 8 harriers slid through. Helping with our shortage of goldens this year, but not enough, were 10 golden eagles, including one as the first bird of the day. Non-raptor Observations: Lots of waterfowl were up and about today. Many migrating strings of birds and the hunters were out putting up the birds out on the lake. 5 sandhill cranes were seen flying by. Plenty of crows in the morning hours, probably in the thousands today, but we were too busy counting raptors to keep track. Predictions: The barometer will be falling tomorrow but from a very high starting point. Winds will be light and possibly variable staying from mostly a SE direction. Cloud cover will be increasing, so back to the gloom. Hopefully the winds are strong enough to fly on but not too strong to push the birds to the north. It doesn't look as good as today on paper but one never bets the mortgage on bird migration so we may get lucky. ======================================================================== 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: http://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-2019