Four members of JAS made the drive downriver today to take in the raptor migrations happening over the Detroit River from Canada. The hot raptor today was the Sharp-shinned Hawk. Our group saw probably 50 of these during our visit at the Erie Park boar launch area. Volunteers there have their annual counting station setup and are available to identify raptors as they migrate through. While the Broad-winged Hawks are generally plentiful this time of the year, our group only saw a few.
As we usually do, some of us took a loop walk through the woods and wetland to see if we could observe some other species farther down the food chain. There were large groups of Wood Ducks and Egrets in the park. We got a few warblers, as well as other passerines and some more ducks.
In addition to the raptors moving south there were lot and lots and lots and lots of Blue Jays running south. I put in 500 into my eBird list but the counting team there posted over 10 time as many (http://hawkcount.org/285-2022-09-20).
Our raptor species count was 10 for this trip.
Species List:
65 Canada Goose
127 Wood Duck -- Large group (75) off trail coming out of boat launch area.
4 Blue-winged Teal
40 Mallard
11 Pied-billed Grebe
2 Mourning Dove
1 Common Gallinule
2 Sandhill Crane
8 Killdeer
2 Lesser Yellowlegs
30 Ring-billed Gull
1 Herring Gull
1 Caspian Tern
30 Double-crested Cormorant
9 Great Blue Heron
112 Great Egret -- Majority in wet area nearest entrance.
6 Turkey Vulture
1 Osprey
8 Northern Harrier
22 Sharp-shinned Hawk
1 Cooper's Hawk
2 Broad-winged Hawk
1 Bald Eagle
1 Belted Kingfisher
2 Downy Woodpecker
1 Northern Flicker
7 American Kestrel
5 Peregrine Falcon
1 Merlin
500 Blue Jay -- Many more, did not count
1 Black-capped Chickadee
1 White-breasted Nuthatch
1 Carolina Wren
9 American Robin
3 American Goldfinch
18 Red-winged Blackbird
9 Common Grackle
1 Common Yellowthroat
1 Palm Warbler
9 Yellow-rumped Warbler
2 Nashville Warbler
3 Northern Cardinal
Number of Taxa: 42
My eBird Checklist
