Keweenaw Raptor Survey

Well, the season is over. We ended the year with just under 9600 raptors. You can find all the final numbers on the Hawkcount website: Brockway Mountain Hawkcount! I really enjoyed my time up on the mountain this spring. I saw a lot of very interesting things and met many interesting and friendly folks. I’d [...]

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Tomorrow is the last day! Greg, Zach and Joe came up and took down the shack today. There was heavy fog for the first hour and a half, then intermittent fog for the next hour. That gave us enough time to get the shack taken apart and ready to move. Once the fog lifted, there [...]

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I guess I missed 4. Rain yesterday ended the count at noon and fog today allowed for only two hours of counting. In that time I saw 1 TURKEY VULTURE!! Three days left.

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Five days left and 5 birds yesterday. 2 BROAD-WINGS, 1 TURKEY VULTURE, 1 MERLIN and 1 UNIDENTIFIABLE BUTEO.

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Zach counted today for me. Winds were out of the south around 5 MPH. Temps were around 17C. Here are the numbers for today: ——————————————————————- Species Day’s Count Month Total Season Total —————— ———– ————– ————– Black Vulture 0 0 0 Turkey Vulture 7 38 765 Osprey 0 2 45 Bald Eagle 3 12 785 [...]

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11 days left and migration has really tapered off. Over the last two days about 50 BROAD-WINGS, 2 RED-TAILS and 4 BALD EAGLES have been recorded. There seems to be a more Adult Broad-wings, I’m starting to wonder if some/most aren’t local. The local young COMMON RAVENS have been hanging around the top of the [...]

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The big excitement on the hill was a massive dragonfly hatch somewhere east of Brockway. There were about 25-50 flying west per second for nearly two straight hours! None stopped, but the one I was able to catch was a FOUR-SPOTTED SKIMMER, though from what I could see, the majority of the dragonflies appeared to [...]

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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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