8 Bald Eagles! 42 Raptors ...YTD-207

Today we hoped to see an upflight. That means we were hoping to see a number of birds today, that almost made it here yesterday. They overnighted nearish Rosetta and in the morning set off despite the fact that conditions were less than perfect.

The day began with a beautiful sunrise...again. At 647am we had our first Osprey of the day. As Paul, Theresa, Phil, Colin, Lee, Betty, Allison, and Carol joined Walter and I, the fun got started. By the end of the day we were thrilled to have seen 8 Bald Eagles. Betty spotted 3 of them first...she is really increasing the expectations on her now! Phil spotted several of them and Allison got on a few of the Eagles first too. Colin spotted one as well. I decided to give my little camera a workout and it pulled in a high adult Bald Eagle pretty well, distance excepted.

 

We had a good mix of raptors again today,spotting 8 countable species plus a couple of local Turkey Vultures. We spotted a few Common Loons. During lulls Yellow-rumped Warbler, Northern Parula and Red-eyed Vireo were seen too. A Mocking Bird sat co-operatively in a tree top.
The final totals today were:
7-Osprey
8-Bald Eagles (4 adults at 10:45, 11:02, 2 @ 12:42 and 3 juveniles @ 11:04,12:20,12:55 and an Immature(possibly 2nd year) @ 11:25)
2-Northern Harriers
6-Sharpshinned Hawks
2-Broadwinged Hawks
1-Redtailed Hawk
15-American Kestrels
1-Merlin
42-Total Raptors
Many of the birds were very very high and tough to spot in the blue sky. Much thanks to everyone for their contributions today. It was a great team effort to spot the birds.
Friday and Saturday both look like there could be a decent flight of raptors, with Saturday looking to be the more promising of the 2 days so far. Watch to see if the North wind that day holds up. Today brought us to our 2nd best August total ever. Our best season was 250 raptors, todays 42 gave us 207 this August with 2 days left. It seems unlikely but not impossible that we will surpass the top August count ever.