Keweenaw Raptor Survey

Any day now, we’re set to break the highwater mark of 16,000 raptors for the season, the largest count of any season undertaken at Brockway thus far (including Jon Peacock’s pioneering 1992 survey).  As I write the morning of May 25, we’ve already seen twice as many Bald Eagle (1080), Osprey (54), and Northern Harrier (167) [...]

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Well, not exactly a call for help, nor a British Holiday.  But after a few strong days, I assumed this year we’d pass on that big annual flight of Broad-winged Hawk and stretch it out instead.  I was pretty convinced at one point that we’d missed that “big day” entirely after being socked in by [...]

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Yesterday’s flight seemed to help validate my suggestion in my previous entry about getting out on the mountain when the weather clears this week.  You really have nothing to lose.  Sometimes wind directions are less than stellar.  It’s true that south or southeasterly winds are indeed the “magic” winds for Brockway, and often bring the [...]

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Another strong raptor flight on May 1 bodes well for this week, even though the forecast is a bit dismal.  It is likely birds will move in sync with these fronts, so even brief periods of good weather offer good possibility of letting loose a wave of birds until the next round of precipitation moves [...]

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Rather than expound at length, today I’ll simply offer a sample (culled from the day’s HawkCount post) of what is to come this week.  I hope you’re gearing up.  The big BW push will almost certainly come before the end of the week.  Oh, and we had another Swainson’s Hawk on Saturday while I was [...]

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Periodically, I’m asked to recommend some books that serve as a functional entryway into the worlds of raptor and cloud identification.  So long as you fully realize that studying is no substitute for time spent in the field and actually practicing your newly discovered skills, I can help here. The  Good Book for hawkwatching in [...]

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Technical issues on my end continue, but there’s hope this will be resolved soon.  In the days ahead, I’ll begin posting shorter entries on a more regular basis to stay abreast of the quickening pace of migration. We’re approaching the peak for both Broad-winged Hawk and Sharp-shinned Hawk, recording our first of the former on [...]

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Barring Monday’s (April 2) flight, raptor migration proceeds at a modest pace since my last post.  We’ve seen a couple days of the densest fog/Stratus you’re likely to see anywhere.  (For those who’ve asked, the fundamental difference between fog and Stratus cloud is that fog touches ground level, where Stratus does not.)  And we’ve had [...]

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