Hi All, This past weekend we held the first of our open houses at Hawk Cliff. The weather didn't exactly cooperate especially on Sunday as it kept threatening rain. Despite the weather, there were still lots of visitors and some good birds. There were some really good live bird talks with several raptors including a "After Hatch Year" female N. Harrier (usually they're young hatch year birds).
Total birds tallied for the weekend was 827....mostly Sharpies and Kestrels. There were some great looks at Osprey as they cruised past and several great Merlin flybys. We also had 3 Peregrines that zipped through the count area...with many more to come at the end of September and start of October. The local Bald Eagles continued to entertain visitors with passes right above the cliff edge. Today (Monday) the flight was quite good with another 950 birds. The bulk were Sharpies (555) with a good count of Kestrels (299) and a late in the day flight of Broadwings (37), The count for Merlin (16) was very good with 1 or 2 spotted each hour and one paused briefly to dine on a flycatcher (species unknown) that it caught on the fly.. A lone Peregrine was spotted crossing from west to east (and was therefore not tallied....yet) and did not reappear. Today's flight could be called steady with 5 hours of at least 100 birds. The weekend was fairly quiet for passerines thought there were a few warblers around...including several Common Yellowthroats. We also spotted what appeared to be a couple of Indigo Buntings in the bean field in front of the count area. The monarch migration continued over the weekend, though no in the numbers compared to Thursday and Friday. Tomorrow could prove very interesting with a mix of sun and cloud and predicted moderate NW winds...perfect conditions for a Broadwing flight. For directions and events check out the HCF website at the following link: http://www.ezlink.ca/~thebrowns/HawkCliff/hcf_directions.htm Good birding! Dave _______________________________________________ ONTBIRDS is presented by the Ontario Field Ornithologists - the provincial birding organization. Send bird reports to ONTBIRDS mailing list ONTBIRDS@hwcn.org For information about ONTBIRDS visit http://www.ofo.ca/
