Raptors
The strong cold front on September 20-21st brought what was
probably the last major push of Broad-wings over Hawk Ridge this season,
including 1148 on September 20th and 2975 on the 21st,
which gives us only a little over 10,000 for the season, which is much lower
than average. The vast majority of this species flies through in a very narrow
window from about September 8-22, and if we don’t get the right weather
conditions to push them to Lake Superior during this period, they simply fly
elsewhere.. This season a series of low pressure systems, with south and east
winds, including rain days on the 18th and 19th, appeared
to disperse the flight.
Good numbers of Peregrines have been flying through this
week, but almost all of them have been adults, at a time when I would expect
the flight to be mostly juveniles. This is true also for Red-tails, which have
just started to increase in numbers, but most have been adults, and it appears
we may not have any significant flight of juveniles, which generally would come
through in late August and September. These species may have had poor
production of young this season. The first adult dark (“rufous”) morph Red-tail
of the season flew through on September 19th, which seemed earlier than normal.
Non-raptors
This was another great week for songbird migration, with
another mass movement on September 20-21st as a strong cold front came through
the region, and what was probably the last major push of neotropical migrants
departed.
This has the been the week of the Blue Jay, with over 18,000
seen in the last seven days, including single day counts of 5627 on September 16th and 5434 on September 21st, bringing the season total to about 25,000.
This has also been a great week for large numbers of warblers, including a
great flight of 4270 warblers on September 20th. Although this flight started out
with a good diversity of warbler species in the morning, including good numbers
of Nashvilles, Palms, and American Redstarts, by the afternoon when the
warblers were still flying, the flight appeared to have shifted to mostly
Yellow-rumps, which was also true on the 21st.
With the departure of many neotropical migrants, the
diversity of species moving through is dropping. Interestingly, the overall
number of migrant songbirds will increase the next few weeks, as very large
numbers of primarily more diurnal, shorter distance migrants become more
common, such as American Robins, Rusty Blackbirds, and finches. As the number
of Blue Jays decrease, these other species will become the most abundant
migrants of the fall. On the 21st, thousands of Blue Jays were joined by
hundreds of robins and Rustys, which made for an excellent flight.
Sandhill Cranes, American White Pelicans, American
Golden-Plovers, American Goldfinches, American Pipits, and Common Grackles have
all been increasing in numbers as well. Luckily American Crows don't start moving in numbers until October, because that would be just too many Americans.
The funniest sighting of the week was a single Ross’s Goose
that tried to join a flock of 35 American White Pelicans on 21 September,
falling into the V and even staying in formation as the flock of pelicans began
circling, but then as the flock continued circling it realized it didn’t know
what to do with these giant, soaring birds, so it finally gave up and broke off.
Karl Bardon
Count Director
 |
| juvenile Red-tailed Hawk attacking the owl decoy at Hawk Ridge |
No comments:
Post a Comment