I had a good day of birding today. I started off on the right foot by joining birding bud Kyle Knapp at Wickham Lake to enjoy a couple of LONG-TAILED DUCKS. They were my first sea ducks of fall migration, and Long-tailed Ducks have always been a favorite of mine – it’s hard to find a cuter duck out there; they are the puppy dogs of ducks as far as I am concerned.
From there, I headed up to Mount Peter Hawkwatch to count for the day. Moments after arriving, I had a nice photo op with a Pileated Woodpecker.
As for Hawkwatch, it was a busy enough day where I tallied over 60 migrating raptors with the help of fellow counter Rick Hansen, who joined me for a couple of hours. Raptor highlights included (3) Bald Eagles and nice flight of (9) Red-shouldered Hawks. Other highlights included numerous Common Ravens – I’d say I had at least thirty of them today. Also exciting was (2) Common Loons flying over – I always enjoy seeing them in migration. As always, I’m including my Hawk Migration Association report at the bottom of this post.
