Nov 28th - A Couple More!

Today from roughly 10:00AM - 1:00PM the Hawk Watch doors were wide open for business.  Five birds decided to fly through - a Sharpie and four Red-tails.  Carol, Pat & Nancy, Winnie & Ed, Lee, Bruce, John, Betty, and I were on-hand for at least some of the action.  With unfavourable winds over the next two days, it's likely that these were our last birds of the season.....hopefully not tho.

Here's a nice highlight from today - a fox.  This was actually my first sighting of a fox at Rosetta this fall.

American Red Fox (Ed)

Walter

Nov 27th - 2 Reports, 2 Birds!

Unfortunately today life got in the way and I couldn't make down to the park to do any hawkwatching.  Luckily we had two folks that did spend some time there and they each had a countable hawk fly by.  First, Allison had a Northern Harrier at 10:30AM and then later in the day Bruce had a Northern Goshawk go by at 1:50PM.  Excellent news, thankyou both.

Walter

Special Post - Leucistic Red-tailed Hawk

On Sunday November 23rd Phil and I were out on another one of our legendary birding trips, this time it was in and around the Oakville/Burlington area.  Although it rained lightly off and on the whole morning we did manage to find a number of great birds including American Pipit, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Common Raven, Fox Sparrow, Snowy Owl, and an adult Bald Eagle.  As we returned home along the 401 we were commenting and looking at all the Red-tailed Hawks that lined both sides of the highway.  Suddenly we noticed a big white bird sitting in a tree on the opposite side of the road, I immediately thought it was a Snowy Owl, Phil on the other hand thought it looked more like an albino Red-tail.  We discussed what we had observed and thought it was worth getting off the highway, turning around and heading back down the other side.  As everyone knows, the 401, even on the best of days is as dangerous as Hell and not a safe place to stop anywhere on, especially with it's narrow shoulders.  Anyway, upon returning to the site where we spotted the bird, Phil put the blinkers on and we pulled off the road for a couple of quick photos out the window before we sped off again to merge back in to the traffic - whew!!!  The bird turned out to be a leucistic Red-tailed Hawk!  Nice call Phil!!!  Just as we were pulling away it flew a short distance to another tree and we could see that it had a few darker feathers out towards it's wing tips.  How cool, what a way to finish a great day!

Walter