Keweenaw Raptor Survey

The mountain has been showing it’s two very different spring sides this week. Monday and Tuesday were in the 80′s sunny with south winds. In those two days nearly 500 BROAD-WINGED HAWKS (mostly juveniles), several COOPER’S HAWKS, a juvenile DARK MORPH RED-TAILED HAWK, a handful of OSPREY and SHARP-SHINNED HAWKS and a decent push of [...]

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Yesterday on Brockway was the Laurie Binford Memorial. About 30 people came up to the mountain to share their stories and memories of Laurie. Laurie’s Magnum Opus “Birds of the Keweenaw Peninsula” is the definitive work regarding bird records in the Keweenaw.  A great piece about Laurie’s days in California can be found here: Who [...]

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The Broad-wings that are coming through now are starting to look pretty beat up: Here are today’s numbers as well as the season totals: Species Day’s Count Month Total Season Total —————— ———– ————– ————– Turkey Vulture 9 170 614 Osprey 2 10 31 Bald Eagle 6 90 691 Northern Harrier 3 8 140 Sharp-shinned [...]

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Yesterday Zach Gayk counted for me. In the last hour of the count he had a juvenile SWAINSON’S HAWK fly through. He also had a GOLDEN EAGLE in the 6th hour. It was another day of northerly winds for Zach. He ended the day with 38 BROAD-WINGED HAWKS, 1 BALD EAGLE, 5 SHARP-SHINNED HAWKS ans [...]

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…but it wasn’t on the mountain. Yesterday (the 16th) morning Zach Gayk found a LARK SPARROW at Bete Gris and followed that up with the second state record of MCCOWN’S LONGSPUR! The count was quickly abandoned for about two hours as Skye and I went to check out these great finds. The flight was good [...]

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Howdy folks, The count was alright today, about 200 raptors passed by today, mostly BROAD-WINGED HAWKS, but a NORTHERN GOSHAWK and 4 COOPER’S HAWKS was nice to see. Non-raptors were were plentiful and a few species of warblers were heard from the ridge including MYRTLE, PALM, OVENBIRD, NASHVILLE, BLACK-THROATED GREEN, BLACK-THROATED BLUE, and PARULA. A [...]

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It’s been pretty slow the last few days, so here are the seasonal, May and today’s totals: Species Day’s Count Month Total Season Total Black Vulture 0 0 0 Turkey Vulture 0 97 541 Osprey 0 6 27 Bald Eagle 3 53 654 Northern Harrier 0 3 135 Sharp-shinned Hawk 47 643 1319 Cooper’s Hawk [...]

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Winds were S to SSW all day, around 10 MPH, temps were around 10C and skies were mostly clear. Sounds like a combination for a great flight right? Well, it didn’t work out that way. There was a good push in the first two hours, which seemed like it was going to build throughout the [...]

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KRS will be featured this week on Discovering! Buck LaVasseur will be doing a segment about the Keweenaw Raptor Survey this Monday, May 10th. Tune in to watch Discovering with Buck LeVasseur Watch Discovering Mondays at 7:30/6:30 p.m. CT on TV6 http://www.uppermichiganssource.com/on_wluc/content.aspx?id=52733

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