Friday, November 7, 2014

Early November Hawkwatching



Orange Crowned Warbler - Going back a little to the Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend in October





Its been a while since my last posting! I'm taking an Accounting course in my night school efforts thats just sucking all my spare time.  I did get a chance to get out a little though. I stopped by Holiday Beach for two hours on Saturday Nov 1st and was blown away... Literally, there were perfect 40km NW winds... Perfect for Hawkwatching. Highlights included the expected early November Raptors... And lots of them! Golden Eagle, Rough legged Hawk, Red shouldered hawks were easily seen all morning.


Golden Eagle - A little underexposed








Amazingly, in the afternoon, (after I had left) the HBMO hawk banding station caught a Northern Goshawk...In my opinion, the holy grail of north american hawkwatching. Kory Renaud took some great photos of the bird and has some on his excellent blog

I'm yet to see this bird in its mature plumage, but I was told by a great local birder that any time in the first half of November is a great time to see them at Holiday Beach. He mentioned seeing 20 on Nov 11 a few years back.

Should have stayed ...Could have seen this... Photo from Wikipedia Commons
A great chart showing the raptors that migrate through Lake Erie Metropark between Sept - Nov.

On Nov 2nd, I went back to Holiday Beach. It was a lot quieter but I did rustle up this little lepidopteric jem. Not a bad sighting for Nov 2nd No?



2 comments:

  1. Some of your hawk shots are fabulous, Dwayne....congrats!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi, Dwayne, apparently the yahoo email address I had for you was wrong. The email bounced. Anyway, I've had Pine Siskins in the morning Monday and today, but no evenings. The finch, nyger and black oil sunflower seed feeders are all full, so I probably get a lot of traffic all day long while I'm at work.

    ReplyDelete

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