Tussey Mountain Hawk Watch State College, Pennsylvania, USA Daily Raptor Counts: Mar 03, 2025 -------------------------------------------------------------------
Observation start time: 09:00:00 Observation end time: 17:00:00 Total observation time: 7.53 hours
Official Counter: Adam Bradley, Nick Bolgiano
Observers: Nick Bolgiano
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.
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 Observations: 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 Observations: 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
Predictions: 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.
======================================================================== Report submitted by Adam Richardson (<poecile.gambeli...>) Tussey Mountain Hawk Watch information may be found at: tusseymountainspringhawkwatch.org/
