Holiday Beach Hawk Watch Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada Daily Raptor Counts: Sep 25, 2024 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Species Day's Count Month Total Season Total ------------------ ----------- -------------- -------------- Turkey Vulture 16 471 493 Osprey 0 20 20 Bald Eagle 1 113 116 Northern Harrier 8 257 276 Sharp-shinned Hawk 15 3344 3346 Cooper's Hawk 1 64 65 American Goshawk 0 0 0 Red-shouldered Hawk 0 0 0 Broad-winged Hawk 0 2909 2921 Red-tailed Hawk 0 276 316 Rough-legged Hawk 0 0 0 Golden Eagle 0 0 0 American Kestrel 2 751 759 Merlin 3 47 47 Peregrine Falcon 6 29 29 Unknown Accipiter 0 0 0 Unknown Buteo 0 0 0 Unknown Eagle 0 0 0 Unknown Falcon 0 0 0 Unknown Raptor 0 0 0 Mississippi Kite 0 1 1 Total: 52 8282 8389 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Observation start time: 07:00:00 Observation end time: 15:00:00 Total observation time: 8 hours Official Counter: Kiah Jasper Observers: Hugh Kent, Juliette Herdman, Liz Kent, Mike Austin, Mike Jaber, Noel Herdman Visitors: Thanks to Mike J and Mike A for helping me spot and count birds in the morning, and Noel, Juliette, Liz and Hugh for keeping me company later in the day. James visited us from Stratford for a bit as well. Weather: Today started off with strong winds (10-20kph) out of the Southwest and a conformable temperature of 18 Degrees C. The cloud cover changed between 30% and 90% over the next few hours, but was mostly cloudy. In the afternoon the temperature rose to 26 Degrees, the wind died down and the sun remained mostly visible... We were cooking! The barometer went from 29.68 to a high of 29.72 during the day. Raptor Observations: Southwest winds are hardly ever too productive for large numbers here, with today being no exception. We recorded a total of 52 raptors, the most abundant being Turkey Vulture and Sharp-shinned Hawk. The highlight today was a nice flight of falcons past the tower, with all 3 species recorded. Weirdly enough the one we had the least of was American Kestrel, with only 2 recorded. We also had 3 Merlins, and 6 Peregrine Falcons, including our first adults of the season (2). Falcons don't seem to be deterred by flying into a headwind, in fact they seem to quite enjoy it! Several of the Peregrines took a run at the migrating Blue Jays on their way by, which is always a lot of fun to watch. Non-raptor Observations: Today we had our second highest count of Blue Jays this season, with 19,750 recorded from the tower. These birds give us something to count even on the quiet days. 8 species of warbler were observed, highlighted by our first Orange-crowned Warbler of the season. We also had our first Rusty Blackbird of the fall fly over, a bird that will be much more common in the coming weeks. There was a large increase in dabbling duck numbers, with over 1,600 individuals of 9 species seen. 25 Ring-necked Ducks were another new arrival today. Other highlights included 2 lingering Warbling Vireos, 2 Black-crowned Night Herons, 1 Black-bellied Plover and 8 Pectoral Sandpipers. 77 species were seen from the tower today, for the full list see this eBird link https://ebird.org/checklist/S196475933 Predictions: Tomorrow's weather looks promising... most promising indeed. The wind should be out of the North/Northeast for the whole day, and the sky mainly clear. These are ideal conditions for our site. If we are to get any large numbers of Broad-winged Hawks this season, it will likely be over the next few days (Friday looks like the wind will be more East than North at the moment). ======================================================================== Report submitted by Kiah Jasper (kiahbirder@gmail.com) Holiday Beach Hawk Watch information may be found at: http://hbmo.ca/ More site information at hawkcount.org: https://hawkcount.org/siteinfo.php?rsite=100