A season-high nine Golden Eagles, including the one pictured here, were counted on Saturday April 8th. Photo by Gary Palmer.

Toward the end of last week, after a taste of warm, springy, sun-filled days, Whitefish Point got hit with a few of north winds so strong they shook my shack as I huddled in it for hours. Unsurprisingly, very few birds tried to migrate into such a strong headwind. Any bird smaller than an Eagle was bounced around violently anytime they attempted rising above the treetops (though the few Bald Eagles I did see almost seemed to enjoy playing in these winds!).

That all changed on Saturday though, and my patience was rewarded with an incredible weekend! This chart below which I grabbed from our data page at Dunkadoo nicely illustrates just how much of a jump we saw in the rate of migration up here at WPBO, as well as the lull which preceded it. Adding to the weekend fun, a surprising number of visitors for such an early date stopped by the hawk deck! It was fantastic getting to share the gorgeous weather and the migration spectacle with so many birders, from people just getting their lifer Red-tails to some of the state’s top listers.

Total birds counted by day for the Spring 2017 hawk watch through April 9th. Graph from https://dunkadoo.org/project/wpbo-hawk-count

With only a few exceptions, we set new high counts throughout the course of the weekend for most of the 12 raptor species tallied this season. The first bump in Sharpie numbers started, with an even 90 counted between Saturday and Sunday. While we’re still without a Cooper’s Hawk, our third Accipiter, Northern Goshawk, continues to put up impressive numbers, with a season-high nine on the 8th followed by eight the next day.

Adult Female light morph Rough-legged Hawk. Photo by Skye Haas.

Rough-legged Hawks remain under 100 total, but a new single day high of 17 was hit on Saturday then shattered on Sunday, when 26 were tallied. After a season-high count of 91 on Saturday, Red-tails remain my most numerous raptor by more than a 2:1 margin over the second place Bald Eagles. Red-shouldered Hawks, however, have dried up after a strong start, with only one individual spotted in the past week, on the 9th.

Rounding out the weekend raptor-wise, Northern Harriers and American Kestrels put on an incredible show on Sunday afternoon. As the day progressed and after the Buteo kettle shut down for the day, Harrier and Kestrels continued to build, hitting totals of 37 and 52, respectively!

It was the Sandhill Cranes though which delivered one of the largest migration events I’ve ever witnessed last weekend. On Sunday I counted an incredible total of 1,994 make their way up the Whitefish Peninsula and cross over Lake Superior! Again and again throughout the day a huge clouds of Cranes filled the sky in the distance, a few minutes later I’d start hearing their raucous rattles, and before long an immense lazy ‘V’ would roll over my head.

Finally, a few other new classic early-spring arrivals appeared over the weekend, with The Point seeing first of season Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Northern Flicker, Eastern Phoebe, Winter Wren, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Eastern Bluebird, and Brown-headed Cowbird. Explore the dataset for yourself at Dunkadoo, eBird, or HawkCount!