Signage is up, stadium seating has been installed and free State College
Bird Club stickers are available while supplies last.
Official Counter
Adam Bradley
Total observation time
7.53 hours (91)
Observers
Nick Bolgiano
Weather
Light WSW winds at 5kph to start the count increasing to 19kph by 13:00.
They then slowly dissipated for the remainder of the count eventually
becoming calm by 16:00. Visibility was good at 13km. Very little cloud
cover with most clouds out on the horizon. This made for difficult spotting
while scanning the blue skies. Low temperature of -4C at 09:00 and a high
of 4C by 14:00.
Raptor Notes
TV 3 (74) BE 2 (4) RS 1 (11) RT 3 (20) GE 3 (20) PG 1 (2) UA 1 (1) Total 14
(189)
GE A 10:07, A 10:12, A 12:33
The flight got underway in the 10:00 hour with a total of 5 raptors coming
through. My personal favorite was our second adult PEFA of the season. The
large falcon was first detected to the south of the powerline tower heading
NE along the NW side of the ridge. It didn’t linger long as it was gliding
fast across the OP. The flight then lulled in the noon hour before picking
up again at 13:00 with another 5 raptors coming through. One was our last
GE of the day moving NE over Stone Valley. After the close of this hour the
flight came to an abrupt halt.
A resident COHA was heard calling from the forest just N of the powerline
cut. Shortly after one was detected zipping through the cut over the
powerlines to the NW. Despite the flight lulling at the end of the 13:00
hour our resident raptors were plenty active in the light and variable
winds. The resident RTHA was spotted for most of the remainder of the
afternoon over Leading Ridge and Stone Valley kiting and occasionally
stooping on prey.
Non-raptor Notes
Black Vulture 4
Turkey Vulture 5
Cooper's Hawk 1
Downy Woodpecker 1
Blue Jay 1
American Crow 4
Common Raven 2
Black-capped Chickadee 14
Tufted Titmouse 1
White-breasted Nuthatch 2
Eastern Bluebird 1
American Goldfinch 1
Dark-eyed Junco (Slate-colored) 1
Visitors
Jon Kauffman hiked out and installed our signage. We are now looking more
like and official hawk watch. I wanted to thank him kindly for the nice
Shavers Creek Environmental Center vest and an ample supply of awesome
State College Bird Club stickers. I especially appreciated these gifts as I
was celebrating my birthday today. I am more than happy to stoke out any
dedicated hawk watcher or spotter if they are willing to locate a few
distant specks for me to investigate. Get them while supplies last.
Next Day Forecast
Tomorrow could be our first chance to see a good movement of migrating
raptors this month. With S winds in the forecast and cloud cover migrants
should be easy to spot. The trail is still treacherous in the vicinity of
the parking lot up to where the double track becomes single track.
Hopefully the warmer weather in the next few days melts it out. I am
finding it to be slow going on the way in in the morning when it is rock
solid and ditto on the way out in the evening.
Partly sunny, with a high near 55. Calm wind becoming south 5 to 7 mph in
the afternoon.
