Swifts at Sunset

There is a chimney in a brickyard in San Rafael, CA. For a few nights every year, thousands of migratory Vaux's swifts spend the night in this chimney. Tonight, I came out to watch the amazing spectacle of thousands of birds soaring into the top of this chimney. Pretty awesome.

Banding 9/19: Hatch Year Female Cooper's Hawk

Particularly prominent "eyebrow"

This is a picture of me being yelled at by a Cooper's hawk.

Hawkwatch 9/18: Sun

It was a bright, sunny day on Hawk Hill today!

Another sunny day on Hawk Hill with temperatures in the 70's and a light wind coming from the west. We saw a lot of accipiters today, 28 Sharp-shinned Hawks and 41 Cooper's Hawks. To the great delight of the many hawkwatchers on the hill today (184 visitors on a Wednesday...maybe had something to do with the America's Cup final...), we also got some good looks at a Golden Eagle (subadult), a Ferruginous Hawk (juvenile), and two more Broad-winged Hawks. As usual, there were Red-tailed Hawks and Turkey Vulutres apleanty, and towards the end of the day, a Raven carrying a peanut-butter and jelly sandwhich was sighted as well.

Total Sightings: 235
Hours Counted: 5.5
HPH: 42.73
Total Species: 10

Golden Eagle silhouette.

Species Counts:
Turkey Vulture: 55
Sharp-shinned Hawk: 28
Cooper's Hawk: 41
Red-shouldered Hawk: 3
Broad-winged Hawk: 2
Red-tailed Hawk: 91
Ferruginous Hawk: 1
Golden Eagle: 1
American Kestrel: 3
Merlin: 1

Unidentified...
Accipiter: 8
Falcon: 1

Hawkwatch 9/17: Booby Watch

Oh, get your brain out of the gutter, please.

Birders get excited about seeing rare species, especially those that are keeping lists of birds seen in a certain state. For example, a blue-footed booby would be a big deal for birders listing California birds - this bird is rarely seen in California. So, when the hawkwatchers heard that a booby had been spotted at Land's End (the tip of San Francisco, easily seen from Hawk Hill) at 10:00 AM this morning, they started to get excited at the prospect of it potentially flying right past us. Thus, the south quadrant was given the extra task of "booby watch" today. (I giggled when given that assignment. Apparently, I refuse to grow up). Sadly, we never saw the bird.

Here's the HW report for the day:

Today was slow at the start, slow at the finish, with a flurry of raptor activity in the middle. The day was sunny and the wind direction was "all," seeming to change every three minutes or so. We were hopeful to get a look at the vagrant Blue-footed Booby, spotted just across the bay at 10AM today (thank you, eBird!) However, the raptors certainly kept our attention today. We got a good look at a juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk, followed by an even better look at its adult counterpart, a great lesson in distinguishing the two. Towards the end of the day, a distant dot was identified as a Ferruginous Hawk of unknown age. As for our usual suspects, the Turkey Vulutures beat out the Red-tailed Hawks by one bird today, 94-95.

An adult red-shouldered hawk (above) being ambushed by a juvenile Cooper's hawk (below).

The quintessential GGRO raptor: a juvenile red-tailed hawk.

Total Sightings: 251
Hours Counted: 5.5
HPH: 45.64
Total Species: 9

Species Counts:
Turkey Vulture: 95
Osprey: 2
Sharp-shinned Hawk: 13
Cooper's Hawk: 26
Red-shouldered Hawk: 4
Red-tailed Hawk: 94
Ferruginous Hawk: 1
American Kestrel: 5
Peregrine Falcon: 2

Unidentified...
Accipiter: 6
Buteo: 1
Falcon: 1
Raptor: 1

Banding 9/13: Small Sharpie

I went raptor banding again today and ended up banding two accipiters: a male Cooper's hawk and a female sharp-shinned hawk. As the migration picks up, these will be the two most common species we'll be banding, both because of the mass numbers of them that migrate through the Marin Headlands as well as the ease with which we are able to catch these particular species.

The sharp-shinned hawk is one of the smallest of the diurnal raptors in North America. It is funny to be banding them as they attempt to act "fierce" - biting at your finger for example - when in actuality, they just look really, really cute. The sharp-shinned hawk we banded today was a hatch-year female, and on the small side. For every bird we band, we have an "expected values chart" that lays out the average and mean range of all the measurements we take for a given species and sex. In this case, our female sharpie was on the low end of the mean range for all measurements.

Trying to look fierce. Actually looking cute.

Our data sheets and the "expected values chart."

Banding 9/12: Backpack

My backpack got locked into a fellow intern's car today, so I had to improv before heading up to the blind. Luckily, I found another pack in the lost and found and I was able to gather up some "lunch" including some granola bars, half a bag of peanut-butter pretzels, and some left-over banana walnut bread (lunch of champions!) At the end of the day, as I got into Lynn's car, I noticed that the window on the other side was rolled down - I could have gotten my backpack all along.

We banded one raptor this morning (the other blinds were much more productive today, including the first merlins of the season, an adult red-tailed hawk, a red-shouldered hawk, and a red-tailed hawk that got outfitted with a GSM tracking device). Our red-tail came out of nowhere without any warning. It was a hatch-year male. Since my initial taloning encounter, I've become much more confident handling and banding these big, sharp birds.

The rest of the day was pretty slow with very few birds passing by. We did see quite a bit of diversity, though, including an osprey, white-tailed kite, Northern harrier, and mysterious black falcon. By 3:00, the wind was blowing fast and we found ourselves surrounded by fog shortly thereafter.

Banded hatch-year red-tailed hawk.

This should probably be a meme.

Flying away!

Hawkwatch 9/11: Tweety Birds

It was a relatively slow day today demonstrated by our brief celebration at 3:00 when the count reached 100 raptors. Overcast with a light breeze, we mostly saw the usual: Red-tailed Hawks and Turkey Vultures (no Cooper's Hawks counted today!). There was some nice movement of non-raptor migrants ("tweety birds" as some hawkwatchers call them) to keep us occupied as well, including flocks of 23 White-throated Swifts, 20 Band-tailed Pigeons, and 15 Cedar Waxwings.

Anna let me play around with her fancy-DSLRey camera during the (great amounts of) downtime today. I took some picture of the non-migrant tweety birds that often hang out with us during the hawkwatch.

White-crowned sparrow.

Western scrub jay.

Total Sightings: 115

Hours Counted: 5.33
HPH: 21.58
Total Species: 6

Species Counts:
Turkey Vulture: 41
Northern Harrier: 2
Sharp-shinned Hawk: 1
Red-tailed Hawk: 65
American Kestrel: 4
Peregrine Falcon: 1

Unidentified...
Buteo: 1