Light E winds, mostly cloudy skies, and cool temperatures made for fairly good raptor watching today. A one point a group of five birds over Mt. Morrison included 2 harriers, a red-tail, a sharpy, and a Coop. Another crazy moment had a Townsend's Solitaire in a high flying evasive flight, and the culprit appeared a second later out of the trees, an imm. sharpy. A moment later a Coop with a full crop appeared west of the ridge, and seemingly a moment after that a female harrier was directly over our head. Accipiters were streaming by today with 43 total seen, and undoubtedly many others slipped by. Kestrels were also very abundant today. Overall a total of 98 migrating raptors were seen of 10 species. Flight was consistent all day, with only our last hour, 4-5p.m. having fewer than double digit detections. Mid-April is generally the best time to visit for peak numbers and variety, especially on partly cloudy days.
We also had several other migrants today including 2 large flocks of Franklin's Gulls, a flock of Double-crested Cormorants, and a lone Sandhill Crane soaring up and down Green Mountain, seemingly looking for other cranes. The Juniper Titmouse also came by the watch a couple of times. Thanks especially to Karen, Joe and Jim today for the help with spotting and ID. It was really fun! --Scott RMBO Volunteers: Roger Rouch, Scott Severs Additional Observers: Karen Clark, Joe Lupfer, and Jim Schmoker Visitors: Kevin Schutz, Lookout Mtn Nature Center naturalists, plus four others. Official site profile: http://hawkcount.org/siteinfo.php?rsite=123 Coordination, research, and support provided by Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory: http://www.rmbo.org/v2/web/ Directions to the hawkwatch are here: http://www.coloradocountybirding.com/county/bird_a_county.php?name=Jefferson Location: Dinosaur Ridge and hawkwatch site Observation date: 4/10/10 Number of species: 32 American White Pelican 10 Double-crested Cormorant 10 Turkey Vulture 10 (5 local) Osprey 3 Bald Eagle 2 (imm.) Northern Harrier 4 Sharp-shinned Hawk 21 Cooper's Hawk 7 Accipiter sp. 14 Swainson's Hawk 1 Red-tailed Hawk 21 (6 local) American Kestrel 23 Sandhill Crane 1 Franklin's Gull 95 White-throated Swift 42 Hairy Woodpecker 1 Northern Flicker 3 Western Scrub-Jay 4 Black-billed Magpie 25 American Crow 6 Common Raven 4 Mountain Chickadee 3 Juniper Titmouse 1 Bushtit 2 Western Bluebird 5 Mountain Bluebird 5 Townsend's Solitaire 2 American Robin 2 Spotted Towhee 2 Chipping Sparrow 1 Western Meadowlark 3 House Finch 1 Pine Siskin 4 This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en?hl=en To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
