Hawk Cliff Hawkwatch Port Stanley, Ontario, Canada Daily Raptor Counts: Sep 27, 2021 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Species Day's Count Month Total Season Total ------------------ ----------- -------------- -------------- Black Vulture 0 0 0 Turkey Vulture 0 0 0 Osprey 2 46 49 Bald Eagle 16 106 108 Northern Harrier 16 187 192 Sharp-shinned Hawk 41 453 454 Cooper's Hawk 0 17 17 Northern Goshawk 0 0 0 Red-shouldered Hawk 0 0 0 Broad-winged Hawk 0 21588 21588 Red-tailed Hawk 0 4 4 Rough-legged Hawk 0 0 0 Golden Eagle 0 0 0 American Kestrel 66 553 580 Merlin 6 32 32 Peregrine Falcon 27 46 46 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 Total: 174 23032 23070 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Observation start time: 06:30:00 Observation end time: 15:00:00 Total observation time: 8.5 hours Official Counter: Dave Brown Observers: Chris Burris, Matt Oswald Visitors: Hans and Anita from London. Thanks to Chris and Matt for helping with today’s count. Weather: Very strong SW winds and a beautiful sky with different layers of cloud. Temp started at 17C and got to a high of 24C. Cloud cover ranged from 90% to 30 %. Pressure was falling slightly and humidity was in the low 70s and 60s for the day. Raptor Observations: Awesome day for Peregrines and some of the best views I've had of these incredible fliers in some time. We had a total of 174 birds and 27 of them were Peregrines! The last 2 Peregrines of the day were a couple of youngsters that were interacting with each other right at the cliff edge no more than 15m up before they flew inland slightly and headed on westward. The majority of these birds were adults with about 8 of them being juvenile looking birds. One other interesting Peregrine decided to actually flap continuously upward higher and higher till pretty much out of range of binoculars so I was only able to track it with my scope and finally it went into a soar and headed westward. We originally thought it might get that altitude to fly direct across the lake but with such a strong headwind perhaps it decided against it. There was also a really good showing by Bald Eagles today and at one point we had 8 in the sky in front of us all of them cruising above the cliff on the major updraft push from the SW winds. We ended up counting 16 of the ones that were all of immature ages (excluded the adults and HY birds that were constantly flying back and forth). Also of note were some great Merlins passing through and in fact one of the Merlins actually went after one of the young Peregrines that came through near the end of the day... gotta love seeing 2 Peregrines and a Merlin in the same binocular view! So... heads up to Holiday Beach and Detroit hawk watches as it'll be interesting to see if they get that far or if they peel off at Point Pelee and go south. :) Non-raptor Observations: Common Loons, RT Hummingbird, Canada Geese, Am Goldfinch, DC Cormorant, Mourning Dove, Horned Larks, E Starling, Am Crow, Blue Jays, Rock Pigeon, Eastern Phoebe and RC Kinglet. There was very little passerine activity today with the very strong winds, Only a small number of Monarchs (25) were observed today but incredibly they were still moving to the west somehow into the winds! Predictions: The forecast is for moderate to light NE winds which should bring birds down to the shoreline but at this time we're past the main Broadwing flights and so I wouldn't expect a large flight.... though a few more Peregrines might slide through. ======================================================================== Report submitted by Dave Brown (thebrowns@ezlink.ca) 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