Greetings, everyone! Hope your week has been moving along well. Ours started off with a bang, with Labor Day Weekend proving to be very full. We had more than 80 visitors to the platform over the course of three days, and birds were also in abundance!
Saturday the 5th marked an excellent beginning to the weekend, with cooler temperatures than we'd seen all week. We began the day hopeful that we'd have a good flight day and were not disappointed: Karl counted a total of 898 birds, 242 of which were raptors! This was our best raptor day of the season thus far. Osprey definitely came in the lead for raptors, with 152 birds seen flying south. Additionally, this was also our best day so far for Broad-winged Hawks (23), Bald Eagles (14), and Northern Harriers (7), as well as for American Kestrels (32), Merlins (4), and Peregrine Falcons (2). A Saturday highlight for me was watching a flock of White and Glossy Ibis, totaling 41 birds, flying in a lovely arcing pattern on the western horizon.
Yesterday, we (un)officially dubbed the bit of sky just to the west of the main platform "Kestrel Corridor". For whatever reason, we've noticed a lot of the low-flying kestrels choose to move through this one very particular zone. Ah, the mysteries of wind currents and migration! We also noticed, particularly on September 8th, that there were increasing numbers of kestrels flying in groups of three or more - hopefully a taste of what's to come! We were also lucky on this day to have most birds flying exceptionally low; the dense, low-hanging clouds we experienced throughout the day were likely responsible for this, as birds - like any of us - usually prefer to avoid navigating through fog banks, where visibility is low.
We have been delighted throughout this week to have so many visitors, both those who have been coming here for decades and those who had never even heard of a hawkwatch! As the educator, I was excited to see how many people who simply wandered over to see what was going on actually ended up being fascinated by what we were doing. There were at least a dozen people of different ages and backgrounds who even said they wanted to take up birdwatching after speaking with us. It is truly exciting to see that having such a visible research and education program actually does make an impact on how people see and interact with the natural world. Encouraging folks of all different ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds to get out and bird seems to me to be one of the best tools we have in protecting these vulnerable species.
My sources (i.e., Karl :) inform me that the wind should be changing direction tomorrow (we've had steady East/Northeast winds for most of the season thus far), so hopefully this shift will bring our flying friends straight over the platform and our next update will include even more birds!
Until next time!
Bridgett
