Holiday Beach Hawk Watch Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada Daily Raptor Counts: Oct 24, 2019 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Species Day's Count Month Total Season Total ------------------ ----------- -------------- -------------- Turkey Vulture 2250 46533 47391 Osprey 1 11 36 Bald Eagle 4 88 180 Northern Harrier 20 179 421 Sharp-shinned Hawk 93 2428 4819 Cooper's Hawk 13 161 223 Northern Goshawk 0 5 5 Red-shouldered Hawk 91 153 153 Broad-winged Hawk 0 863 25773 Red-tailed Hawk 133 525 669 Rough-legged Hawk 0 0 0 Golden Eagle 0 3 3 American Kestrel 9 481 1702 Merlin 0 23 104 Peregrine Falcon 1 26 47 Unknown Accipiter 0 3 5 Unknown Buteo 3 11 12 Unknown Eagle 0 0 0 Unknown Falcon 0 0 0 Unknown Raptor 0 0 4 Swainson's Hawk 0 0 1 Total: 2618 51493 81548 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Observation start time: 07:00:00 Observation end time: 16:00:00 Total observation time: 9 hours Official Counter: Maryse Gagné Observers: Chuck Sharbaugh, Dave Martin, Elizabeth Kent, Hugh Kent, Linda Wladarski Visitors: Thank you to Chuck Sharbaugh, Dave Martin, Linda Wladarski, and Neil for straining their necks and spotting far up raptors with us today. Also thank you to Les Willer from Belleriver as well as Roger Bastien and Noreen and their friends from Vancouver for the visit. Weather: A really nice day on the tower today, with some sun and decent, but thin cloud cover most of the day. Winds started from the South-West but shifted to the North-West around 11 o'clock, and eventually died down quite a bit. We were fortunate that the North-West winds brought us a lot of raptors. Raptor Observations: What a busy day on the tower! We were very thankful for the North-West winds as they brought us many buteos; Red-tailed Hawks came in with a daily total of 133, and Red-shouldered Hawks clocked in at 91 individuals. So far, these are our highest counts for these species! Additionally, we counted 20 Northern Harriers, 93 Sharp-shinned Hawks, 13 Cooper's Hawks and 9 AMerican Kestrels. Of course our day would not be complete without kettles of Turkey Vultures and we ended the day with 2,250 TVs. Today we difficult of our necks and eyes as the raptors were flying very high up over the tower and the last kettles of Turkey Vultures were very far North of the tower. Nevertheless, we are always so grateful to be on the tower on such successful migration days! Non-raptor Observations: Of course on a day full of raptors, every other species decides to migrate as well! Our big numbers came from flocks of American Crows coming in at 4,570 individuals! Starlings (2,960), Red-winged Blackbirds (610), Blue Jays (260), and American Goldfinches (250) also came in big numbers. We were delighted to count 24 Horned Larks, 141 Rusty Blackbirds and 115 American Robins. Our highlight came from a Northern Shrike perched high on a tree East of tower, it's head poking up from the canopy! It was only spotted because Hugh was using his scope to locate a very big and far away kettle of Turkey Vultures, what a lucky find! Still many ducks on the marsh and some songbirds hanging around the tower including Ruby and Golden-crowned Kinglets and Yellow-rumped Warblers. Check out our full ebird list here: https://ebird.org/checklist/S60901115 Predictions: Tomorrow we are expecting winds to stay Northern for most of the day! This should bring us more raptors if they haven't all come through today. Looks like the day will be mostly cloudy, so bring an extra layer to the tower. We hope to see more buteos and Northern Harriers in the coming days. At this time, we should be seeing more Golden Eagles, Red-shouldered Hawks, and hopefully some Rough-legged Hawks. ======================================================================== 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