There is nothing like a gray day to set one's mind on a contemplative path and the first week of the hawk count certainly provided me with a string of them. Luckily for me, a watcher of the skies, my only limits were the clouds. Even so, my imagination takes me far beyond and if [...]
Welcome to the Spring 2020 hawk watch. My name is Rich Couse and this season I will be your hawk counter, birdy blogger, and all-around Voice from the Hawk Deck at Michigan Audubon's Whitefish Point Bird Observatory, but first, a little about myself. A year and a half ago I moved from New England to [...]
As we begin winding down for the season, there are a few tales from the hawk shack that have so far gone untold. The season peak for most of the raptor species that make their way through was around the end of April and the beginning of May. As it usually does, Michigan Audubon's annual [...]
Once the raptor migration really gets going, it isn't often that we will get a new species for the season. By this time, all the species that are expected have already shown up at least once. However, I've learned to always expect surprises! Last week when scanning a blue sky filled with puffy white clouds, [...]
There was an amazing Red-tailed Hawk show this past week complete with a leucistic and two dark morphs! Watching them made me realize how long individual Red-tailed Hawk can stick around throughout the day. It was interesting to see so many kettle far out, then break up and fly past the hawk deck, then come [...]
The last week of March and the first week of April were pretty slow for migrating raptors. A few birds each day, but nothing truly spectacular in terms of numbers. However, April 5 and 6 brought a few different birds to the Hawk Deck. With the majority of raptors seen so far being eagles or [...]
It continues to amaze me how versatile the vocal range of the American Crow and the Common Raven can be. Every day I am met with several of each species, whether they are resident, stopping over for a few days, or just passing through on their migration flight. Those individuals who alight on the tops [...]
The new WPBO hawk counting season began March 15, and I was excited to get started right away. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas, greeting us with high winds and few birds those first couple days. Despite a slow start, a few good flights have come through already. I’ve had an awesome flight of Bald [...]
Young, dark Red-tailed Hawk. photo by Ted Keyel Hello Everyone! Things have been going pretty well from the hawkdeck. On May 19th, we witnessed our largest Broad-winged Hawk kettle so far this season, with 440 birds. We have still been seeing a lot of Red-tailed Hawks and the majority are young birds. There [...]
Sharp-shinned Hawk, photo by Ted Keyel Hello everyone, We have been having some great days at the hawkwatch, despite still not having a single day with southwest winds. While the winds may not be perfect, we have still been seeing some great overall diversity, with 16 species of raptors passing by in the [...]
