Observation start time: 07:00:00 Observation end time: 17:00:00 Total observation time: 10 hours
Official Counter: Michael Burton-Smith
Observers: Aldo Bertucci, Cameron Chevalier, Chad Cornish, Chip Ogglesby, Chuck Sharbaugh, Hugh Kent, Ian Woodfield, Jaron Wilkinson, Juliette Herdman, Karen Padbury, Kitty Bradshaw, Larry Ludwicki, Liz Kent, Noel Herdman, Olga Klekner, Patrick Tomlinson, Robin Smallwood
Visitors: It was a busy busy day up on the tower, with the ideal conditions for hawk migration making it an unofficial launch for this weekend's HawkFest!
Thanks to our qualified observers Chuck, Jaron, Hugh, Liz, Kitty, Chad, Chip, Noel, Juliette, Patrick, Ian, Karen, Cameron, Olga, Aldo, Larry, and Robin. In particular, an immense thank you to Jaron and Hugh who bravely stepped up as scribes for most of the day, Olga who spotted an unbelievable number of birds, and Chad, who most likely needs an ice pack for his clicker finger!
We had so many visitors through the day and so many hawks it was impossible to catch everyone's name, but it was so wonderful to see Stephanie, Richard, Elizabeth, Julie, Bob, Heather, Cecile, Donald, Scott, Tim, Sue, Jalen, April and all our other guests who made it such an incredible day up on the tower!
Commiserations must be extended to all our great volunteers who couldn't make it today due to work and other commitments - we have put in a special request for the hawks to time their migration to the weekends in future.
Weather: Northerly wind, beginning strong, weakening through midday, then returning in the mid-afternoon. Mainly clear skies, with cloud cover increasing in the late afternoon. Temperatures in the mid-twenties.
Raptor Observations: Wow. Going to bed last night, I was prepared for a big day, maybe 20,000 Broad-winged Hawks? The conditions looked good, and yesterday afternoon's movement had been promising. But nothing could have prepared any of us for what happened!!
We had our highest counts of the season to date for seven of our raptor species, totalling over 60,000 individuals. We equalled the highest ever single day count for Merlin at Holiday Beach with 16 individuals, the sixth equal best single day count for Bald Eagles with 33, and had our third highest single day count for Broad-winged Hawks, with a sensational 59,957 individuals. Other significant movers were Sharp-shinned Hawks (495), American Kestrel (180), Turkey Vulture (102) and Red-tailed Hawk (68). We also had two pale/leucistic and one western morph Red-tailed Hawks.
The immense passage is caused by a perfect suite of weather conditions, with clear skies and strong northerly winds in northern Ontario drawing raptors south, before two days of prevailing bad weather coming from the south-west across Michigan and along the northern shore of Lake Erie prevented them from continuing on. This meant that when the barometric pressure finally lifted overnight and consequently the skies cleared around southern Ontario and the Detroit River, there were tens of thousands of hawks queued up ready to take their chance to make the crossing.
The day started fairly slowly with just five birds in the first hour, but by 0900 EST the Broad-wings were already passing in moderate kettles. Numbers slowed in the late morning, before picking up into the multiple thousands through the afternoon. There were seven kettles in excess of 2000 individuals, with the largest single movement of Broad-winged Hawks involving 3730 individual birds. Between 1400 and 1500 EST, 19,190 Broad-winged Hawks passed through in a single hour.
On a personal note, it was particularly emotional when our local Osprey chick, who has spent the last few weeks entertaining us by fishing in the trout pond near the tower and desperately trying to defend his catch from pesky Bald Eagles, took off from his perch and kept flying higher and higher - I wish him all the best for his voyage ahead!
It wasn't just a good hawk day! In the early morning, we were entertained by a mixed flock of fifteen species of warblers, including a notable nine Bay-breasted. On the marsh, we had eight American White Pelicans, two Sandhill Crane and year-highs of Green-winged Teal (120) and American Wigeon (61). There was a notable southward movement of passerines and Chimney Swift.
The most astonishing bird of the day was certainly a White-winged Dove seen flying west in the early morning. This is a new bird for Holiday Beach. Full credit belongs to Cameron who managed to capture a photo of the bird as it streamed by!
As a bonus mention, it was a great rodent day with two Musk Rat and one American Beaver - our first for the season! Monarchs were also making the most of the good conditions, with seventy seen.
Predictions: Tomorrow will be a really exciting day at Holiday Beach as the official opening of the annual HawkFest, with food and merchandise for sale and plenty of amazing activities and talks through the day. Bird wise, it is possible that the continued northerly winds through the evening will bring a small fall of warblers and the overcast conditions should be perfect for keeping them active around the tower through the morning. Hawk-wise the easterly winds will continue to push birds along the Ontario Peninsula, and we will expect small flurries of activity in-between the wet fronts. ======================================================================== Report submitted by Michael Burton-Smith () Holiday Beach Hawk Watch information may be found at: http://hbmo.ca/
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