Quaker Ridge Hawk Festival

Well, the prediction I made at the beginning of the week (see previous post) wasn’t totally wrong. Today at Greenwich, we saw a total of 3302 Broad-winged Hawks! While not the 13000 of last year’s Sept 18th (in 3 hours), birds were moving all day long.

A close-in kettle at Quaker Ridge.

Plus, early in the morning we witnessed an incredible wave of dozens of warblers. We identified 15 species including Tennessee and 6 Blackburnian Warblers. The overall highlight of the morning passerines, however, was a Philadelphia Vireo. In the picture below, notice the dark lores (between beak and eye), and the bright yellow on the breast. A Warbling Vireo would have the brightest yellow on the sides, not the breast.

My lifer Philly Vireo! (Sorry, awful picture.)

The morning walk was from 7 to about 9, but around 8:30 low Broad-wings started appearing out in the valley and started flying over. This is very unusual because normally they aren’t seen until around 10. I would guess this had to do with 1) no clouds, meaning thermals formed faster, and 2) there were birds close by so it didn’t take long for them to reach us. By 10:30, however (we had seen about 400 at that point), the birds had gotten high enough that you couldn’t spot them without binoculars.

Mike, the official counter for the day, doing his best to get every bird counted (and making sure they weren't re-counted).

The rest of the day was spent frantically trying to find the kettles and streams of Broadwings that we knew were out there. The cloudless sky made it extremely difficult to pick out distant groups, and I would say we missed at least a thousand or so. Still, as multi-thousand-Broadwing days always are at the Watch, it was very exciting!

More kettles!

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Broad-winged Hawk potential this weekend and Chat at Greenwich today

UPDATE: The forecast has changed and it doesn’t look like we’ll get the clouds and rain that was predicted for Thursday and Friday.

A kettle of Broad-winged Hawks - they circle upward to gain altitude. This is a relatively small kettle - they can number in the thousands!

I just posted something to the CT Birds list that I might as well post here too:

As I am typing this, a cold front is passing us from the north, bringing much cooler air (high ~60 F tomorrow) into the area, and along with it we will get lots of clouds and some rain. While winds should maintain a northerly (more specifically, NE) vector, these clouds and rain could slow or even shut down Broad-winged Hawk migration over eastern New England for the next three days. It is supposed to clear Friday afternoon as winds shift to the N/NNW, and should stay sunny for both Saturday and Sunday. While it’s still early in the week and the forecast could change, there is potential for a very large movement of Broad-winged Hawks this weekend since the clouds and rain may prevent them from flying during their peak migration time in the northeast (mid-September). At Quaker Ridge in Greenwich, the biggest days (over 30000!) have come after days of blocking weather, and while that is probably an overly optimistic prediction for this weekend, there will definitely be large numbers (very good chance for counts in the several thousands if the forecast sticks). If you can, I’d get out to a hawk watch this weekend. It’s quite an amazing event to witness!

After gaining altitude, they stream off, all going the same direction, heading towards the next thermal, where they will kettle again to gain altitude.

Perhaps “definitely” is a strong word, but with luck, there’ll be lots of hawks!

Audubon Greenwich is located at 613 Riversville Rd in Greenwich, CT. The hawk watch couldn’t be easier to access, it’s the lawn right to the left of the parking lot. There is a hawk festival this weekend and there is an admission cost to the festival (~$10) At the festival there will be food, falconers with live hawks, lots of tents set up with optics dealers, etc. More information and directions here – http://greenwich.audubon.org/Programs_SpecialEvents.html.

It’ll be interesting to see what the weekend brings!

On another note, there was a Yellow-breasted Chat at Audubon Greenwich today. There were also a few Lincoln’s Sparrows that I just missed.

Yellow-breasted Chat at Audubon Greenwich, sorry for the shaky picture.

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Golden Eagle and many Broad-winged Hawks at Audubon Greenwich

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.

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