Rockfish Gap Hawk Watch
Waynesboro, Virginia, USA
Daily Raptor Counts: Sep 03, 2020
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Species Day's Count Month Total Season Total
------------------ ----------- -------------- --------------
Black Vulture 0 0 0
Turkey Vulture 0 0 0
Osprey 23 31 98
Bald Eagle 9 11 77
Northern Harrier 0 0 6
Sharp-shinned Hawk 2 2 10
Cooper's Hawk 1 1 14
Northern Goshawk 0 0 0
Red-shouldered Hawk 0 0 8
Broad-winged Hawk 20 38 293
Red-tailed Hawk 7 10 58
Rough-legged Hawk 0 0 0
Golden Eagle 0 0 0
American Kestrel 5 6 22
Merlin 0 0 2
Peregrine Falcon 0 0 0
Unknown Accipiter 0 0 1
Unknown Buteo 0 0 0
Unknown Falcon 0 0 0
Unknown Eagle 0 0 0
Unknown Raptor 0 1 5
Mississippi Kite 1 1 2
Swainson's Hawk 0 0 1
Total: 68 101 597
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Observation start time: 07:00:00
Observation end time: 15:30:00
Total observation time: 8.5 hours
Official Counter: Vic Laubach
Observers: Dave Hunter
Visitors:
Penny Warren
Weather:
Still and hazy early. Winds picked up to moderate SW winds by noon, then
diminishing back down to mild S breeze by 3pm. Hazy all day with lots of
grey & white clouds. Humid with 21-31C temps!
Raptor Observations:
A great Osprey (23) and Eagle (9) day! 7 adult Bald Eagles, 1 1st-YR, and 1
2nd-YR. The highlight was an immature Mississippi Kite at 10:20am that
appeared straight to the north not far away, giving some photo opps. It
swooped, caught, and ate a couple dragonflies, then gained a lot of height
quickly and moved on south overhead. More Red-tails today (7).
Non-raptor Observations:
19 Ravens = CORVID 19!, 8 Monarchs, 39 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, 103
Chimney Swift, 1 Red-headed Woodpecker, 2 Red-breasted Nuthatch (flying
across the gap together), 1 Least Flycatcher, 26 Barn Swallow, 324 Common
Grackle, and 1 Black-throated Blue Warbler.
LOTS of dragonflies today mostly flying southward. I counted dragonflies
for the first 15 minutes of the 9am, 10am, and 11am hours giving counts of
220, 450, and 230 respectively. This adds up to 3,600 total dragonflies
(220*4)+(450*4)+(230*4), which comes out to 1,200 dragonflies/hour on
average. By noon the winds picked up too much for the dragonflies.
========================================================================
Report submitted by Vic Laubach (laubach@xxxxxxxxxxxx)
Rockfish Gap Hawk Watch information may be found at:
http://www.rockfishgaphawkwatch.org
More site information at hawkcount.org:
http://hawkcount.org/siteinfo.php?rsite=491
You are subscribed to VA-BIRD. To post to this mailing list, simply send email
to va-
bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx. To unsubscribe, send email to
va-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field. You can
also
unsubscribe, change your mail delivery settings to digest mode, or temporarily
disable
emails with vacation mode by going to https://www.freelists.org/list/va-bird, ;
entering
your email and selecting the desired option from the drop down.
