After last year's record hawk watch season, no one has been expecting this year to be nearly as good, and those expectations have been met. The early season has been dismal. Beastly hot weather and rain/thunderstorms virtually shut down the flight this week. Today was sort of a clearing day, and the birds began to move, but they were often distant and required eye strain to find and count.
A few images ...
Bald Eagles - always stunning, always stately and magnificent. This one flew low over the site on Monday ...
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| Bald Eagle - adult |
Broad-winged Hawks are the predominant species during mid-September, and today they began their flight, although it was not until mid afternoon that numbers started flying, and often they were distant kettles. As of this post, the count had not been totaled, but it will be in the 600+ range. The bird in the next photo was seen on Wednesday - "ratty" in appearance, but apparently because it was still growing its new feathers ...
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| Broad-winged Hawk |
Early today, a
Sharp-shinned Hawk put on an "attitude show" as it made repeated attacks on the plastic owl decoy ...
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| Sharp-shinned Hawk - hatch year |
Between hawk sightings, there was the occasional butterfly, such as this American Copper ...
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| American Copper |
In general, the day required persistent searching to find distant kettles ...
... but, as always, there are those times of good conversation, plus the annual sharing of cupcakes for a birthday, and the sweet fruit of the earth's bounty ...
... and finally ... a young hawk watcher looks for hawks ...
Good Birding!!
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