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Archive for April, 2011

BLACK VULTURE!

Posted in Brockway Mountain, Keweenaw Raptor Survey, raptor migration, spring migration, Uncategorized, UP Rare Bird Reports on April 26, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Very exciting yesterday (25 April) was the passage of a Black Vulture past Brockway. A rare visitor to the Upper Peninsula there have been only 8 documented records  A Black Vulture was reported at Brockway in 1991, but no documentation has been submitted to the Michigan Bird Records Committee for review. A crew of merry birders arriving to Manitou observed a Black Vulture in July 2002, and the bird (presumed same individual) was seen two weeks later in Copper Harbor. Surprisingly, 3 other records of Black Vulture have occurred in the Keweenaw Peninsula, a September bird in 1999 in Agate Harbor (in view of West Bluff!) and two winter records from Houghton County.

Here is Arthur’s post to the UP listserv about yesterday’s sighting.

Today from atop Brockway, under partial cloud cover with NW winds
“gusting” to ~8 mph, I observed a Black Vulture working its way north
over Rocky Ridge and then proceed east towards Copper Harbor at
exactly 13:15 EST today.  My hope is that I’ll catch it on the
westbound flight tomorrow!

Other birds seen yesterday included

30 Turkey Vultures, 1 Osprey, 10 Bald Eagles, 6 Northern Harriers, 45 Sharp-shinned Hawks, 3 Northern Goshawks, 16 Red-tailed Hawks, a non-eastbound Golden Eagle; as well as 25 Common Loons, 4,746 Canada Geese, 44 Sandhill Cranes, and 5 Bohemian Waxwings.

Hope to see you on the Mountain!

~Skye Haas

Common Ravens

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A Starry Expanse

Posted in Brockway Mountain, HMANA, Keweenaw Raptor Survey, spring migration on April 26, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

A friend once told me that the stars in the night sky were among “one of the most lamentable losses of our time,” and I can’t help but agree.  Light pollution is a very serious problem for stargazers in cities and their suburban environs.  Growing up in lower New York, I always fancied the thought of gazing up into a skyful of innumerable stars, but my enthusiasm would make a not-so-soft landing when I gazed up into the heavens and then down to my star atlas only to discover how much I wasn’t seeing because of my proximity to several densely populated towns and one of the largest cities in the world.  To this day I have still not seen the Milky Way as more than a dirty film running across those autumn night skies, and I’m a little saddened by the thought that I was born only a century too late to exercise my right to a seemingly unlimited celestial sphere abounding with infinitesimal points of light.

According to a  recent survey by the Hawk Migration Association of North America, most “successful” hawkwatch sites are located within 40 miles of a major city.  And these very same hawkwatch sites, for this very reason, generally aren’t very good stargazing sites because of the light pollution that accompanies the development of most (greater) metropolitan areas.  But Brockway Mountain, by virtue of its relative isolation, doesn’t have this problem.  So on a clear night when the winds are weak (and not likely to shake & stir your view of the heavens through your binocular/telescope), consider taking a trip up the mountain.  You may discover, as I did last night, some of the best views of the night sky you’ve ever had accompanied by the invigorating cleanliness of UP evening air.  And if you visit during the peak periods of migration in spring, you might also hear songbirds passing over your head in that starry expanse.  Even with the light winds generating an ever-present “rush” in my ears on that fine evening, I was able to pick out the call notes of near-passing Fox Sparrow, Song Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, and at least one Emberizidae (Sparrow) species that I wasn’t able to identify.

This business with birds moving at night may come as a surprise to some of you.  The count KRS is conducting at Brockway necessarily focuses on diurnal (daytime) bird migration, particularly those of the raptors.  While there are cases in the literature confirming nocturnal migration by Osprey and Peregrine Falcon (to use just two examples), even for these species this appears to be very much the exception rather than the rule: most birds of prey employ migration strategies that utilize daytime phenomenon (e.g., thermal and ridge updrafts) to minimize the energy they need to expend to travel from their wintering grounds to their summer breeding territories (and vice-versa).  But many non-raptors, especially songbirds, actually migrate at night while most of us are asleep (or vegetating in front of the television watching reruns of The Price is Right).  This is why many birds seem to just show up one spring morning without warning.  And then suddenly vanish one autumn day.  Apparently, even in the avian world, if you snooze, you lose!

So, please: Enjoy this night sky!  Views like the one we have from Brockway are rapidly becoming a privilege rather than a right in this age of artificial light, artificial this, artificial that.  If our society continues to view the night with trepidation, as something to conquer rather than embrace, it will be only a matter of time before unadulterated views of the night sky will become little more than an ancestral memory of our race.

Diurnally & Nocturnally Yours at Brockway,
Arthur

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The Ordinary is Extraordinary!

Posted in Brockway Mountain on April 21, 2011 | 4 Comments »

Back at my old hawkwatch in New York, it’s often happened that I’ll point out a distant raptor to a visitor who’ll respond with rapt attention by fixing his field glass on a floating pepperspeck somewhere just off the horizon.  This sense of communion is always a joy for me, as I like nothing more than to share my passion for raptors and the mechanisms for their migration with people who rarely have the opportunity to witness this annual spectacle for themselves.  But sometimes this connection is abruptly severed when I put a very familiar name to a bird otherwise unidentifiable by plumage, and the other party will utter a dismissive ”Oh!” and promptly drop their binocular from that distant place where our bird was soaring effortlessly against a beautiful blue sky.  ”Just a Red-tail,” they mutter.  What?  ”Just a Red-tailed Hawk?!!” I want to desperately fire back, but I choose to bite my sun-chapped lips instead.

I think what annoys me about this comment is not that it comes from someone who probably observes (vultures aside) fewer than 25 raptors in the wild each year (i.e., far too few to be taking any raptor for granted!), but that cocooned within his attitude toward this “roadside” hawk is the view that the sheer conspicuousness of this beautiful and astonishingly adaptable bird somehow diminishes its uniqueness.  I’m sorry, but I cannot understand this!  No matter how much of a fixture they’ve become, even before taking the amazing life history of Buteo jamaicensis into consideration, this is a bird that appears to be running counter to the trend in many parts of this country in that it is actually thriving in lockstep with the march of human civilization rather than falling to its tarsi in the latter’s wake.  And it’s a damned graceful bird in the air, too!  And with each passing season I spend in the field watching hundreds of them, I realize more profoundly how little I really know about them.  ”Just” a Red-tailed Hawk?  Hah!  If that bird isn’t special just by virtue of being enmeshed in an ecological give-and-take so vast that it defies comprehension, then absolutely nothing anywhere is special.  Not those hawks, not us people.  Maybe I’m being simplistic and a tad harsh, but my sentiment is borne of my utter respect for these amazing creatures.  Surely I can’t be the only person who feels this way!

I got a little off-track, methinks, but as a hawk counter, I’ve been served a generous dollop of Red-tailed Hawk.  But it wasn’t until I came to Brockway Mountain that I stood a chance of seeing up to four subspecies/races of Red-tailed Hawk (i.e., B. j. borealis, B. j. calurus, B. j. kriderii, B. j. harlani) not including intergrades (birds that exhibit plumage traits of more than one subspecies), because in New York we’re apt to only ever see one race (B. j. borealis).  And today, April 21 at 9:51 EST, I saw my first dark morph adult “Western” Red-tailed Hawk (B. j. calurus) passing westbound directly overhead, which breaks the exclusive run of light morph “Eastern” birds (B. j. borealis) that I’ve seen so far this season at Brockway.  It was a beautiful bird, and one I almost didn’t scrutinize closely enough to determine what it was; only minutes before, there had been a dark morph adult male Rough-legged Hawk (incidentally, also soaring in tandem with a light morph adult “Eastern” Red-tailed Hawk), so seeing a dark buteo pass overhead didn’t initially raise any flags given the proximity of that roughie to the watchsite.  Lesson learned: give every bird you’ve already ID’d a second look if you’ve taken your eyes off of it!

A partially albinistic adult Red-tailed Hawk (Image by Joseph Youngman)

Barely any time elapsed since my observation of the dark “Western” bird when, at 10:24 EST, I was treated to an almost freakishly white bird cutting a path south in front of West Bluff: a partially albinistic adult Red-tailed Hawk.  Nearly all of the feathers covering this bird’s head, body, and wings were white as snow, contrasted only by the classic red tail, dark “belly band,” and a few scattered grey-black remiges.  Wow!  I’d seen otherwise normal-looking birds with a few white remiges (flight feathers) or retrices (tail feathers), but never anything like this! If it wasn’t already apparent, Red-tailed Hawk are hardly the “plain folk” that one notable hawk guide claims they are.

I’ll close my entry today with a simple request: if you don’t do this already, please make a daily ritual of trying to find the uniqueness in all the common things around you, because I suspect that’s where genuinely amazing things are hidden.

Gazing at birds and humans alike from atop Brockway,
Arthur

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More on Goosies . . .

Posted in Brockway Mountain, spring migration, Uncategorized on April 17, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

I received several replies from birders in both Marquette and Alger Counties on a  regional listserv that suggested significant goose movements had been occurring in the days leading up to Friday’s observation of 4620 Canada Goose at Brockway.   I find this interesting, because nearly all of the goose flocks I observed were following a southeasterly to south-southeasterly flight-line.

Flight-lines of Fridays goose drawn as vectors. (Original map from U.S. Census Bureau.)

For fun, I decided to trace flight vectors on a map of Michigan Counties.  This is a complex topic (for which I claim no viable expertise!), but even this broadbrush treatment suggests the possibility that I observed some of the very same goose spotted by my neighbors to the south, especially if one were to assume that the flocks proceeded directly across Superior in more or less a straight direction of travel.  As to why I had not seen significant movements prior to Friday (even on days of “good” winds) is also interesting to me, and I’m left short of an explanation.

Tucked away from today’s snow on Brockway,
Arthur

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Goosies Take The County By (before?) Storm!

Posted in Brockway Mountain, Events, Uncategorized on April 17, 2011 | 1 Comment »

This female American Kestrel routinely poses for animal crackers. (Or, at least when they're in season, a crunchy dragonfly.)

First off, I’d like to apologize to you, my dear reader, for not posting as of late.  A spate of computer issues came to a head and left me backlogged with preparing data and posting observations.  In any case, I’ll be writing more frequently in coming weeks, as we’re approaching a most lively time of the year for both birds and people alike.

This past week has been eventful!  The roads atop Brockway have been clearing as temperatures remain often above freezing during normal observation hours, with the sun doing a fine job of finishing off the remaining patches of snow.  A pair of nesting American Kestrel have taken residency nearby, with both male and female making routine passes by the watchsite throughout the day.  March 13 brought a pair of Broad-winged Hawk high over Brockway, marking the entrance of this long-distance migrant as it makes its way through Michigan’s upper Upper  (Upper-Squared?) Peninisula from Central and South America.  An Osprey, also a distance flyer among the raptors, was observed hugging the Superior lakeline before finally making a water crossing and disappearing from view on March 14.  And Buteo flights have been energetic, with good showing of Red-tailed Hawk and Rough-legged Hawk; I’ve enjoyed observing both species kiting into the wind as they scan the forest understory in search of an early afternoon bite.

This week has also seen the appearance of several non-raptorial species for the season, including Common Loon, Hermit Thrush, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Winter Wren, and a remarkable movement of both American Robin and Northern Flicker that suggests that these birds are finally working their way inland after spending some time jammed up against the Superior lakeline (where they can still be seen in abundance along Route M-26 only a few miles west of Copper harbor).  And in sure anticipation of a wintry storm that’s still underway as I muse behind the glow of my computer, a brisk flight of 4620 Canada Goose (59 flocks!) came in waves throughout the morning of March 15, a day with the kind of fickle winds that could only spell trouble for raptor enthusiasts.  It stands to reason that this may not be the last significant goose flight we see this season, so stay tuned!

It occurred to me that this marks the completion of my first month serving as a most unusual seasonal fixture atop Brockway.  It’s a little hard for me to fathom that the season has, in a very real sense, only begun!  The weeks ahead promise some of the most exciting flights of the season, so now is the time to consider making regular trips up the mountain.

Sharing in Fine Feather atop Brockway,
Arthur

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The West End is Open!

Posted in Uncategorized on April 13, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Brockway Mountain Drive’s west end is now passable for even garden variety automobiles.  (The Copper Harbor side is still a couple days away from being similarly navigable.)  Please watch for southerly winds in the days ahead and be sure to bring your binocular.  We hope to see you soon atop Brockway!

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The Two Faces of My Day

Posted in Brockway Mountain, Uncategorized on April 10, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

The Skytop Inn, 11:00 AM

Attired as if I were about to step onto a Maine lobster boat, I hauled up Brockway Mountain Drive’s east end on the ATV while shielding my face from the sting of another icy rain that had moved over the mountain only minutes after I left the house.  Conditions on the top were hardly ideal:  Bands of rain were still passing over the mountain, the southerly winds would periodically walk their way around the compass rose, and the fog was straight out of a badly made horror film.  But within minutes after I had unpacked and was standing at the ready outside the count shelter, something dropped out of the fog and landed on the exposed gravel of West Bluff within fifteen feet of me: a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, which seemed as surprised to see me as I was her.  Birds were still moving in this miserable weather!

But after two hours on the mountain, the fog still showed no sign of abating, and I’d heard and seen nothing else.  I opted to cut my losses.  Back at my cabin in Copper Harbor twenty minutes later, I cut the engine on the ATV and could now hear birds all around me!  I looked up at Brockway Mountain and realized the “fog” enveloping the mountain was actually a low Stratus cloud (i.e., it’s technically not fog at all, since the base of this cloud doesn’t touch ground level), leaving a relatively clear, open space below the cloud ceiling for birds to move in.  This may explain why my sapsucker was on the move; had I stayed up on the mountain, I would have had no real context for this sighting!  I decided to bird Clyde Wescoat’s property near the Copper Harbor Visitor Center (with his permission, of course!), and soon ran up a list: Song Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Hooded Merganser, Mallard, Canada Goose, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Dark-eyed Junco, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Pileated Woodpecker, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Rusty Blackbird, American Crow, Blue Jay, Herring Gull, Common Redpoll, Pine Siskin, White-winged Crossbill, Northern Saw-whet Owl.  Not shabby!

The Skytop Inn, same day, 3:00 PM

After roughly an hour and a half of stepping through fields and splashing in wetland, I felt the warmth of sunshine on my face, and looked up to the mountain to see that the veil of Stratus had dissipated.  There was still time to see if hawks were moving, so I headed back to the cabin, packed up my things, and made a second trip to the top of the mountain where I was greeted by sunshine, good visibility, stabler (albeit, gusty) SSE breezes, and almost  immediate gratification as an adult Sharp-shinned Hawk blew by on the windward side of Brockway.  The remaining two and half hours of observation yielded 53 eastbound raptors, including 13 Turkey Vulture, 8 Bald Eagle, 2 Northern Harrier, 7 Sharp-shinned Hawk, 19 Red-tailed Hawk, 2 Rough-legged Hawk, 1 American Kestrel, and 1 Merlin before Stratus again enveloped the mountain in the closing minutes of the count.

Atop Brockway, the weather demonstrated a Janus-like disposition today, and I feel that I made the best of it.  I now close my day delighted by the satisfying illusion that, somehow, I fit two days experience into a single twenty-four hour period.

Burning gas up and down Brockway,
Arthur

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A Break in Northerlies (At Last!)

Posted in Uncategorized on April 8, 2011 | 1 Comment »

If you’ve been following HawkCount this past week, it would be easy to think our dry spell would never end!  I’ll admit I was starting to have doubts myself, but for it to be this still at Brockway meant something was up.  The flight lines that migrating birds use each year are subject to annual variation, but a good hawkwatch is still a good hawkwatch, even if the numbers aren’t as high some years as others.  (Which is precisely why migration studies are generally conducted over a period of several years; migration data from any one year is almost never a “typical” representation of what’s seen at that location each year.)  There’s just no way we could see nothing for a whole season short of a dramatic climatic shift!  (Right?  Right?  *gulp*)  Of course, even if things are going to change, you begin to wonder how much longer you need to wait when storms earlier in the week put you back on the snowmobile cruising up the mountain in better snow conditions than you had when you started the count March 15.  Hmm.  If I was a hawk, I’d stay on holiday, too!

But it seems that Spring does cometh: The god(dess?) of hawk migrations smiled upon me April 7, when the proverbial river lock finally opened and I was blessed with an eastbound flight of 191 raptors, including 50 Bald Eagle (1 for each state of the Union, I suppose!), 3 Golden Eagle, 1 Sharp-shinned Hawk, 1 Cooper’s Hawk, 1 Northern Goshawk, 77 Red-tailed Hawk, 1 Red-shouldered Hawk, 11 Rough-legged Hawk (including 2 dark morph), 4 American Kestrel, 1 Merlin, and 2 Peregrine Falcon.  Notable non-raptor observations included 5 Sandhill Crane, 51 Snow Bunting, and 1 American Pipit, beating the Spring Earliest Arrival Date (SEAD) cited for that species in Binford 2006 by over three weeks!  All in all, a very good day, that (almost) makes up for monotony of the past several weeks.  Let us pray we don’t hit another such impasse this season!

Before long, smarter folk who stayed indoors in this unseasonal weather will be able to venture up the mountain with an ordinary automobile (i.e., vehicles without skis, 4WD, or British Secret Service-style aftermarket modification) and see spectacular hawk flights over a humble beer and sandwich.  When my Honda coupe ably scales the mountain, you’ll be the first to know!  That is as sure a sign, as any,  that the time has come for you to join us on the mountain!

Counting (at last!) from Brockway,
Arthur

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Keweenaw Redpoll(?!) Survey

Posted in Uncategorized on April 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Howdy all!

Well at least we don’t have to change the acronym. This morning was marked by a strong Common Redpoll flight with 148 birds recorded flying by in small flocks. I noted several flocks on my way up the coastline on my way to count as well. Early for Keweenaw County was a singing Song Sparrow in Copper Harbor and my most interesting sighting of the day was a flock of 7 Red-necked and 3 Horned Grebes off Hebard Park. Pretty early for these birds to be on the North Shore of the Keweenaw.

 

World's worst redpoll photo

 

 

It was wonderful getting a chance to count again as I gave Arthur a well deserved respite for the day. I was able to get my 4-wheel drive Jeep Cherokee up the west end of the Mountain (smaller cars beware of the late afternoon slush-fest I came off in!), so soon all will be able to get up and visit Arthur (he accepts bribes of cookies for Golden Eagles btw….).

And this what greeted me when I got up to the top.

So the raptors- it was a fun day, not too crazy, but good diversity. The first Turkey Vultures of the season were recorded, and yet another Red-shouldered Hawk along with 2 Northern Goshawks were a treat.  A couple of  Red-tails punctuated by a juvie Rough-legged Hawk wraps up the buteo report and 18 east-bound Bald Eagles and 2 Golden Eagles were also record, with of course the local ravens chasing one of the Goldens out of the valley.

Can’t wait to get back….

~Skye

 

We couldn't go too long without a photo of a raptor eh?

 

 

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