Hawk Cliff Hawkwatch Port Stanley, Ontario, Canada Daily Raptor Counts: Oct 15, 2024 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Species Day's Count Month Total Season Total ------------------ ----------- -------------- -------------- Black Vulture 0 1 1 Turkey Vulture 2092 18055 18063 Osprey 0 9 62 Bald Eagle 2 162 214 Northern Harrier 10 191 522 Sharp-shinned Hawk 422 1436 3432 Cooper's Hawk 15 101 146 American Goshawk 0 0 0 Red-shouldered Hawk 14 104 108 Broad-winged Hawk 1 8 1301 Red-tailed Hawk 134 429 485 Rough-legged Hawk 1 1 1 Golden Eagle 3 10 11 American Kestrel 3 222 1386 Merlin 0 26 74 Peregrine Falcon 0 40 59 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 1 1 Total: 2697 20796 25866 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Observation start time: 07:00:00 Observation end time: 14:00:00 Total observation time: 7 hours Official Counter: Dave Brown Observers: Michelle Carnerie, Ronnie Goodhand, Su Ross-Redmond Visitors: A few visitors today and I'd like to thank Steve, Ellen and Jerry H, Wayne and Fernando, Ron B, Ronnie G, Mike and Catherine S, Michele C, Su R and Dave J for helping with today's spotting and counting. Weather: The clouds started out a bit heavier in the morning with light N to NNE winds before clearing out almost completely. This allowed some good thermals to start to build in and around the hawk watch area and soon the cloud cover was up to 80%, Winds increased in the afternoon to moderate from the NW. Temps were much cooler to start at 3C and getting to a high of just 10C. An all around nice hawk watching day weatherwise! Raptor Observations: A pretty good flight today with 2697 birds. Once again the bulk of today's flight were the TVs (2092) and my thanks to Ellen and Jerry H for their help with counting TVs. Next in numbers were Sharpies (422) with a strong push today and a noticeable increase in adults. Thanks to Wayne and Dave J for helping with the Sharpie clicker today. Highlights today included our first of the season Rough-legged Hawk right up in front of us with great light on it and first ID'd by Ellen H. We also had 3 juvenile / immature looking Golden Eagles with the first 2 crossing together just above tree top height to our north and then another one crossing through not long after. Unfortunately, these were the only Goldens tallied today. There were decent numbers of both Redtails (134) and Red-shoulders (14) and a late Broad-winged Hawk (juv). Non-raptor Observations: For those of us that got there just after sun up today there were a ton of passerines both migrating past along with lots of birds feeding right in the bushes and trees around where we were setup for the day to watch. We had a couple of Blue-headed Vireos, a couple of Blackpoll Warblers (photographed) and a late Black-and-White Warbler (also photographed). For a full list please have a look at my eBird checklist at the following link: https://ebird.org/checklist/S199081963 Predictions: Wednesday looks like an almost instant replay of today with light to moderate NW winds and a mix of sun and cloud. BUT I'm a bit concerned that the cloud could get fairly heavy into the midday timeframe which will either help keep the birds low (a good thing) or possibly slow the flight because of the lack of thermals in the area (a bad thing). I suspect there will be birds on the move but perhaps not quite as large a flight as the past couple of days. ======================================================================== 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