Today at Quaker Ridge Hawk Watch on the Audubon Greenwich property in Greenwich, CT, we had our first decent flight of the season for Broad-winged Hawks. Over 500 broadwings flew over, mostly from 2-5pm. They like to congregate in groups called “kettles” when they migrate, in which they use thermals (rising columns of warm air) to gain lift. Here’s a picture of one of the kettles.
A kettle of Broad-winged Hawks over Greenwich.
But, by far the best bird of the day was an extremely early Golden Eagle that flew right over us! Usually only a migrant we see from late October through early November, it was the earliest fall record at Greenwich. In the picture below, notice the smaller head (that looks like it has a light colored border due to the bright gold nape), the absence of white in the wings, and the white on the tail with black terminal band at the end, all which differentiate Golden Eagle from Bald Eagle.
The earliest fall Golden Eagle seen at Audubon Greenwich.
[…] After moaning about digiscoping over the weekend I was actually quite pleased with this snap of the Red-tailed Hawk that loiters around the site generally killing and maiming most of the other Quaker Ridge residents, bunnies, milk snakes, he even gace Stefan a couple of funny looks today. Also just wanted an excuse to stick up a link to Benjamin Van Doren’ s pictures of possibly CT’s earliest recorded Golden Eagle from Sunday (link here). […]