This past weekend, I drove down to Bedford County to help Anna with some hawk watching where see works as well as help out one of Kim Van Fleet's interns with hawk identification. Friday night, Anna and I went to Shawnee Lake State Park birding and had a ton of Pine Warblers among other warbler species. We also had three Great Horned Owls calling to each other. Saturday morning, Anna, Kim's intern Corey Ritter, and I went back to Shawnee State Park around 6am to listen for flight calls of migrant birds. We were exctied to heard about 350 Swainson's Thrush fly over in addition to Scarlet Tanagers, Veerys, and Gray-cheeced Thrush. There were also quite a few calls we didnt know. For the rest of the day Corey and I went out hawk watching. We went to Dunnings Mountain first and had a decent amount of birds that I helped Corey to ID since he is just starting hawk watching and will be conducting a count at this location for the rest of the fall. Later in the day we went to Tussey Mountain to count and had another nice flight of birds. By the end of the day we had seen 173 raptors migrate past us. Most were Broad-winged Hawk of course, but we also had Sharp-shinned, Cooper's, Red-tailed, Bald Eagle, and Osprey. We also saw one Yellow-billed Cuckoo foraging in a tree near the hawk watch!
Below are two pictures I took this weekend of juvenile Broad-winged Hawks. Notice the difference in the amount of streaking on the breast's of these two birds. The first is lightly streaked, the second is quite heavily streaked.
Lightly streaked juvenile Broad-winged Hawk
Heavily streaked juvenile Broad-winged Hawk
Sunday I helped Anna at her Hawk Watch and we had another nice day with 116 raptors migrating past. After we finished for the day, we went to Shawnee State Park and had about 50 Pine Warblers and some other warbler species.
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